What if someone told you that you were not allowed to speak or write in a certain language, because it was the language of government, and thus only proper for men? I would say, “Challenge accepted,” and so did Lady Murasaki Shikibu 1000 years ago, in Heian period Japan. And then on top of that, she wrote what is widely considered to be the very first modern novel, “The Tale of Genji.”
Lady Murasaki, likely the court nickname of Fujiwara no Takako (records of women’s personal names were not kept in this time, so no one can be quite sure), was a bit of an anomaly. In an era when husbands and wives kept entirely different households and children were raised with their mothers, Murasaki grew up with her brother in her father’s house. She was born to a lesser branch of the powerful Fujiwara clan, so her brother was taught to write and speak Chinese in preparation for a career in government.
It was not socially appropriate for Murasaki to learn alongside her brother, but that did not stop her. She listened at the door as her brother practiced. She wrote in her diary: “When my brother was a young boy learning the Chinese classics, I was in the habit of listening to him and I became unusually proficient at understanding those passages that he found too difficult to understand and memorize. Father, a most learned man, was always regretting the fact: ‘Just my luck,’ he would say, ‘What a pity she was not born a man!’” She was eventually allowed by her father to study properly alongside her brother.
Murasaki married in her mid- to late-twenties, which was quite late for a lady of her station. She likely began to write her famous tale during this period. However, her marriage was to be short-lived; within three years, Murasaki’s husband was dead, succumbing to a cholera epidemic. This was when she was called to court to be a lady-in-waiting to the Empress Shoshi, at least partially because of her growing reputation as an author.
At court, Lady Murasaki functioned as a sort of companion-teacher-chronicler for the young Empress. She surreptitiously taught her Chinese while writing poems and diaries about court life. Though Murasaki was careful to downplay her knowledge of the language, it got out in the way that things do in court. This earned her the nickname “The Lady of the Chronicles.” A rival lady-in-waiting made up the name, accusing Murasaki of flaunting her knowledge after a few chapters of “The Tale of Genji” were read aloud to the Emperor and his courtiers and they observed that the author seemed highly educated. Murasaki wrote, “How utterly ridiculous! Would I, who hesitate to reveal my learning to my women at home, ever think of doing so at court?”
Court was also where “The Tale of Genji” really took root. Though Murasaki had started it when her husband was still alive or very shortly thereafter, it grew to be a commentary on court life drawn from her own experiences. It was a revolutionary work, and was an immediate success. Most of the literature of the time was in the form of poetry, or else in a genre called a Pillow Book, a sort of gossip magazine-equivalent filled with lists, poems, and personal takes on events and people. This genre was named after a particular work by Sei Shonagon, a rival of Murasaki. A newer genre had also been developing – monogatari, or romances written in the newly developed Japanese written script called kana. “Genji” took the form of the monogatari and expanded it, and made it into something new, and, at that time, unique - what we would identify today as the modern novel.
“The Tale of Genji” is a three-part novel with 1100 pages and 54 chapters. It took roughly a decade to complete, but chapters were often read as they were written (much like how Charles Dickens published his novels in literary magazines, one chapter at a time). Though it follows the traditional format of monogatari, Murasaki developed her story far beyond the bounds of the genre – she mixed Chinese and Japanese script, drew from Chinese histories, narrative poetry, and contemporary Japanese prose, eliminated the fantastical elements that were typical of earlier monogatari, and incorporated real character development and psychological observations. Her main theme of the fragility of life, literally “mono no aware” or “the sorrow of human existence,” is universally appealing and made her work incredibly popular, both during her lifetime and after. Her work became required reading for court poets for centuries.
So, next time you think about how so much of what the West considers “great literature” was written by white men, remember that a Japanese woman got there first.
