The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Genji Monogatari

(The Tale of Prince Genji), a Japanese novel from the end of the tenth or beginning of the 11th century, by Murasaki Shikibu, a lady at the court. It consists of 64 chapters. The work is considered the peak of aristocratic court literature of the ninth to 12th centuries in Japan. Based on its content it can be divided into three parts: in the first, Genji’s youth and love affairs are described; the second deals with his mature years, his exile, return to the capital, the years of his glory, and his death; the third part is devoted to the life of Genji’s adopted son Prince Kaoru. The general idea of the novel is Buddhist karma (retribution). The image of the hero is idealized, but the other characters and the setting are described in a lively and realistic fashion. The novel influenced the development of Japanese literature; adaptations and imitations of Genji Monogatari appeared all the way up to the 19th century, and individual motifs were used in dramas.

REFERENCES

Konrad, N. I. Iaponskaia literatura v obraztsakh i ocherkakh. Leningrad, 1927.
Vostok: Sbornik, vol. 1. Moscow-Leningrad, 1935.
Literatura Vostoka v srednie veka, part 1. [Moscow] 1970. Pages 274–79.
Genji-monogatari: Ikeda Kikan-kochu, vols. 1–7. Tokyo, 1955–56.
The Tale of Genji. New York, 1923. (Translated from Japanese by A. Waley.)

N. G. IVANENKO

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References in periodicals archive

Over two thousand participants in the procession that reaches almost two kilometers in length display costumes, hair styles and accessories reminding of important events and personalities--such as shoguns, samurai, famous aristocrats, the forerunner of the Kabuki Theatre, as well as Murasaki Shikibu--the author of the first novel of the world, Genji Monogatari, that came out at the very beginning of the 11th century.

Matsuri: - essence of Japanese spirituality -

Edward Seidensticker wrote in Genji Days, the diary he kept while translating Lady Murasaki Shikibu's Genji Monogatari, that getting lost in one's subject, the utter absorption in one's work, is the real stuff of research.

Lost--and found--in translation: a memoir of hard work

(In the twelfth-century Genji Monogatari Emaki scrolls, which illustrate Murasaki's novel, the hats are prominent as black shapes.) The picture of the Genji operates paratactically to expand the poem's formal and emotional range.

A foreign substance

The later versions of the 12th century, created on long rolls of paper, follow the drama of the original story and are illustrated with scroll paintings in the style of the Yamato School, and are known by the name of Genji Monogatari Emaki of Illustrated Scrolls of the Tale of Genji.

Tea ceremony marks Tale of Genji

The other is Genji Monogatari (The Tale of Genji), which provides the "vengeful spirits" of the living who set out to do others harm (71), as well as the ghosts, spirits and other supernatural phenomena informing Murakami's creative technique.

Murakami's Kafka on the Shore: everything in life is metaphor

(2) A somewhat longer fragment from the Genji monogatari is treated equally badly (p.

The Structure and History of Japanese: From Yamatokotoba to Nihongo. (Reviews of books)

Graham's libretto is based on the first three books of Lady Murasaki's six-volume novel ''The Tale of Genji'' (''Genji Monogatari''), often dubbed as the first great novel in world literature and a masterpiece of Japanese prose.

FEATURE: 'The Tale of Genji' opera opens next week

In Genji Monogatari ("Genji Tales"), a long novel written at the start of the eleventh century, there is a description of a garden where the different species are arranged in such a manner that its four parts always represented the four seasons.

Makura no Soshi

Since one of the reasons Bloom wrote his Western Canon was to retort to feminists who rave and rant about their "needing" to read other female writers, I should point out that Genji Monogatari was written by a lady, Murasaki Shikibu, and that two other earthshaking landmarks in classical Japanese literature were also written by ladies: The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon, and Sarashina's diary As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams, both beautifully translated by Ivan Morris and therefore highly readable.

The Western Canon