The Tale of Genji provides insights into the attitudes of an elite in the twilight of its power, argues Sean Ledwith

One of the most popular television shows of 2024 has been FX’s Shogun, based on James Clavell’s novel about the rise of a fictionalised version of the great warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu in sixteenth-century century Japan. With a compelling narrative focused on the battles and intrigues for hegemony among samurai chieftains, amid the backdrop of creeping European colonialism in the Pacific, the story probably represents the limit of what most Westerners know about pre-modern Japan. What is far less known in our part of the world is that the era which preceded the rise of Tokugawa witnessed a literary flowering in Japan and the creation of what is widely regarded as the world’s first novel: The Tale of Genji written by Lady Murasaki Shikibu around 1010 CE.

Many in the West might presume that writers such as Cervantes, Fielding and Richardson pioneered the form in the early-modern period as literacy rates and printing presses surged across Europe in the wake of the rise of capitalism. Murasaki’s work, however, is widely credited as the first example of the novel and retains its popularity in contemporary Japan with a status that matches that of Shakespeare or Dickens in Britain. Tokugawa himself recognised the influence of the work, even though he lived centuries later, and an illustrated copy of the story was passed down through his family for generations. The great twentieth-century Argentine writer, Jorge Luis Borges, has commented on the universal appeal of Murasaki’s novel which transcends its origins in early medieval Japan:

‘The Tale of Genji is written with an almost miraculous naturalness, and what interests us is not the exoticism—the horrible word—but rather the human passions of the novel. Such interest is just: Murasaki’s work is what one would quite precisely call a psychological novel … I dare to recommend this book to those who read me.’

Heian Japan

Murasaki Shikibu lived from about 978 to 1014 CE during what is known as the Heian period of Japanese history. The country had been first unified in the sixth century, but by Murasaki’s lifetime, the grip of the emperors was being loosened by the emergence of semi-privatised estates, or shoen, employing peasants who owed their loyalty to local lords rather than the imperial authority. Power in this era, which is usually dated from the building of a new capital at Heian (modern Kyoto) in 794 to about 1200, nominally resided with the emperor, but the growing economic and political power of provincial nobles sowed the seeds of the transformation that would climax with the accession of Tokugawa Ieyasu to the position of Shogun at the turn of the seventeenth century.

A warrior class of aristocrats situated outside the capital incrementally accumulated a degree of independence from the emperor which could be compared to the feudalisation of the countryside which was taking place in Western Europe at roughly the same time. Of these clans, the Fujiwara would emerge as the most dominant in the lifetime of Murasaki and most emperors would depend on some connection to the family, usually through marriage or adoption. It is speculated that the novel’s eponymous hero could be based on the historical figure of Fujiwara Michinaga who became regent in the early eleventh century.

The shifting of de facto power away from the royal court facilitated the cultural flowering exemplified by The Tale of Genji, as a detached and insular mentality evolved among the elite based in Heian. The Marxist historian, Chris Harman in his People’s History of the World, notes how the slippage of imperial authority affected the political landscape of Japan in this era: ‘It neither had the great canals and irrigation works of China nor a strongly centralised state. Until around 1600 it had an economic and political system like that of medieval Europe. There was a weak emperor, but the real power lay with great territorial lords, each of whom presided over armed samurai (roughly equivalent to medieval Europe’s knights) who directly exploited the peasants and fought in their lord’s army against other samurai.’

Shogun power

In the period preceding the rise of Tokugawa, the Samurai would consolidate their economic and military power as the real source of power beneath the veneer of the imperial superstructure. The Shogunate, or institution of generalissimos, based in the rival capital of Kamakura, co-existed with the emperors but the former’s monopoly of repressive and fiscal functions underlined the reality of the latter’s subordinate position. The Samurai would take credit for thwarting Mongol invasions of Japan in the thirteenth century which further enhanced their status as the armoured core of political power.

Another feature of the Heian period was the cultivation of a distinctively Japanese culture, consciously based on moving out of the shadow of China, the giant neighbour to the west. An outbreak of political turbulence in the latter at the end of the ninth century led to the suspension of Japanese diplomatic missions and the halting of Chinese imports. This favouring of homegrown culture would be known as kokufu bunka and is evident in Murasaki Shikibu choosing to write her novel in vernacular Japanese script, as opposed to Chinese which had been the language of choice for politicians and diplomats up to that point.

By her lifetime, the imperial capital of Heian-Jyo was a massive city populated by about 100,000 people, far bigger than anything in contemporary Europe. At the heart of the city was the parasitical layer of unproductive aristocrats which Murasaki would make the subjects of The Tale of Genji. The lifestyle of this sophisticated but unproductive elite has been vividly characterised by historian James Murdoch: ‘An ever-pullulating brood of greedy, needy, frivolous dilettanti – as often as not foully licentious, utterly effeminate, incapable of any worthy achievement but withal the polished exponents of high breeding and correct form.‘

In her lifetime, this imperial clique, probably representing less than 1% of the total Japanese population, had become rigidly hierarchical with society divided into about thirty grades based on one’s birth, with status measured in superficial indicators such as ceremonial dress and the number of folds permitted in hand-held fans. Inevitably, there is barely any mention of the hundreds of thousands of rural toilers in any of the great works of literature to emerge from this era. Murasaki’s dissection of the mores of Heian elite is, as such, a classic vindication of Marx’s dictum that the ruling ideas of every society are the ideas of the ruling class.

The Pillow Book

We know little about Murasaki’s life apart from the scant details she left in an autobiographical fragment. The real name of the author of The Tale of Genji is unknown and the fact that she bears the same name as the best-known female character in the story is probably a testament to its popularity in her own lifetime. Her other name, Shikibu, is simply the title of her father’s position in the imperial administration at the Office of Rituals. Murasaki was born into a lesser branch of the influential Fujiwara clan and married a cousin called Nobutaka, but he died of the plague after just two years of marriage. Her family connections enabled her to secure a post as lady-in-waiting to the Empress Shoshi and it was the activities she observed in that role that gave her the inspiration for The Tale of Genji.

Murasaki was known to the other great female writer of the era, Sei Shonagon. The latter’s collection of notes, anecdotes and observations of life at the Heian court, known as The Pillow Book, is perhaps better known outside Japan than Murasaki’s fictional rendition of the same subject, partly due to an Ewan McGregor film version from 1987. Remarkably, even though there was apparently little love lost between the two writers, their joint reflections on the imperial elite provide a fascinating glimpse into the mentality and manners of an elite slowly sliding into historical obscurity. The two are unique in the history of pre-capitalist global culture as women from the same milieu, albeit members of a rarified strata, articulating their thoughts on a class-based and patriarchal order. Murasaki rather begrudgingly comments on Shonagon’s literary ability: ‘Someone who makes such an effort to be different from others is bound to fall in people’s esteem and I can only think that her future will be a hard one. She is a gifted writer, to be sure. Yet if one gives free rein to one’s emotions even under the most inappropriate circumstances, if one has to sample each interesting thing that comes along, people are bound to regard one as frivolous.’

Sex and politics

In both The Tale of Genji and The Pillow Book, most of the story takes place in the shuttered, introspective, and self-absorbed world of the nocturnal court palace, as one of the diplomatic niceties of Heian Japan was that official engagements should preferably happen at night. Murasaki and Shonagon are skilfully attuned to the snobberies and sensibilities that accompany politics and sexuality among the elite. The eponymous hero of the former’s novel is an illegitimate son of the emperor who, although forbidden from acceding to the throne, is showered by his father with wealth and luxury, which together with his good looks, leads him to be known as Hikaru Genji or the Shining Prince. His brother, Suzaku, in contrast is expected to inherit the Chrysanthemum Throne and hence the prince must be wary of not taking his privileged status for granted:

‘Genji the Shining One … He knew that the bearer of such a name could not escape much scrutiny and jealous censure and that his lightest dallyings would be proclaimed to posterity. Fearing then lest he should appear to after ages as a mere good-for-nothing and trifler, and knowing that (so accursed is the blabbing of gossips’ tongues) his most secret acts might come to light, he was obliged always to act with great prudence and to preserve at least the outward appearance of respectability.‘

Empathy

On a superficial reading, Genji’s odyssey through life as charted by Murasaki might appear to be an ephemeral and inconsequential sequence of events, largely consisting of his multiple affairs with aristocratic women and his ultimately successful scheming to situate himself near the apex of political power. The delicacy and sensitivity of Murasaki’s characterisations, however, give characters such as Utsusemi, Yugao and Murasaki-no-ue, a depth and individuality that belies their cossetted status at the imperial court. The author’s empathy with the predicaments of Heian upper-class women undoubtedly enabled her to penetrate the repressed psyche that their regimented lifestyles would have created. The author ingeniously devises, for example, that Tamakazura, a young courtesan who Genji underestimates, forces him to concede that reading fiction is actually as essential as studying history in order to comprehend the nature of a civilisation:

‘I have been very rude to speak so ill to you of tales! They record what has gone on ever since the Age of the Gods. The Chronicle of Japan and so on give only a part of the story. It is tales that contain the truly rewarding particulars! Not that tales accurately describe any particular historical person; rather, the telling begins when all those things the teller longs to have pass on to future generations—whatever there is about the way people live their lives, for better or worse, that is a sight to see or a wonder to hear— overflow the teller’s heart.‘

MeToo Murasaki

To a modern audience, particularly one attuned to the agenda of the twenty-first-century women’s rights movement, the central character might initially come across as little more than a misogynistic playboy, motivated solely by a desire to maximise amorous conquests. Murasaki, however, had probably encountered far too many aristocratic oafs in her lifetime to allow them to dominate her narrative. Genji evolves psychologically throughout the story, from a callow youth to a contemplative  old man, and near the conclusion expresses regret concerning the transgressions of his former self:

‘Despite himself he could not help seeing that that old habit of his, to suffer agonies for impossible desires, was with him still. This was beneath him. Not that he had not done far worse, but he reminded himself on the subject of his early escapades that the gods and buddhas must have forgiven errors committed in his thoughtless youth, and that thought reminded him how much better he now understood the perils of this path.‘

The novel is also suffused by the notion of mono no aware, as identified by the eighteenth-century Japanese critic, Motoori Norinaga. This can be understood as the sense that all aspects of reality before us are subject to change and are fated to vanish in the fullness of time. Despite his carefree lifestyle, Genji at the end of his life is frequently prone to bouts of melancholy as he perceives the flux which belies the apparent tranquillity of the world:

‘“Like the waterfowl that play there on the lake, I too am floating along the surface of a transient world.” I could not help comparing them with myself. For they too appeared to be enjoying themselves in the most carefree fashion; yet their lives must be full of sorrow.’

It does not require a huge leap of imagination to regard this as a variation on Engels’ articulation in his Dialectics of Nature of the ineluctable power of dialectical change in the universe:

‘All nature from the smallest thing to the biggest. from grains of sand to suns, from the primary living cells to man, has its existence in eternal coming into being and going out of being, in a ceaseless flux, in unresting motion and change.’

Genji and his class were ultimately swept away by the likes of Tokugawa. The parasitical layer that currently wallows in hedonism and self-indulgence in our time can likewise expect history to catch up with them one day.