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BOOK CORNER: THE TALE OF GENJI

February 7, 2023Uncategorizedchina, emperor kiritsubo, heian period, hikaru genji, japanese literature, kamlesh tripathi, lady fujitsubo, murasaki shikibu, shravan charity mission, suematsu kencho, tang dynasty, the tale of genjishravancharitymission

‘The Tale of Genji’ is regarded as one of the oldest novels ever written. It was written around the year 1000 A.D., during the Heian Period. It’s a classic work of Japanese literature written in the early 11th century by a noblewoman and lady-in-waiting. Her name was Murasaki Shikibu. The original manuscript of this book was created around the peak of the Heian period and during the last lapse of classical Japanese history, between 794 and 1185 A.D. which no longer exists. It was created on “concertina” a free-reed musical instrument or Orihon, a type of book, prevalent during the Tang dynasty in China in which several sheets of paper are pasted together and folded alternately in one direction and then the other.

The work is a rare account of the lifestyles of high courtiers during the Heian period. It is scribbled in the archaic language in a poetic and complex fashion making it unreadable to the average Japanese reader or speaker without specialized study. It was not until the early 20th century that the narration was translated into modern Japanese by poet Akiko Yosana. The first English translation of the narration was attempted in 1882 by Suematsu Kencho, but was of poor quality and also incomplete.

The novel is about the Japanese high society. The work recounts the life of handsome Hikaru Genji, or say the “Shining Genji”, who is the son of an ancient Japanese emperor known to readers as Emperor Kiritsubo and a low-ranking concubine who is Kiritsubo’s Consort. For some political reasons, the emperor removes Genji from the line of succession, demoting him to a commoner by giving him the surname ‘Minamoto’ a surname vouchsafed by the Emperors of Japan upon members of the imperial family who were excluded from the line of succession. Thereafter, a choiceless Genji pursues a career as an imperial officer. The tale focuses on Genji’s romantic life and describes the customs of the aristocratic society of those times. It is perhaps the world’s first novel. One could even say it is the first psychological novel, as claimed by Argentinian short-story writer Jorge Luis Borges, and the first novel yet to be considered a classic, particularly in the context of Japanese literature. There is debate over how much of the novel was actually written by Murasaki Shikibu. The debates over the novel’s authorship have gone on for centuries now, and are unlikely to be settled ever unless some major archival discovery comes about.

The title has a rather lascivious plot. It starts with the death of Genji’s mother when he is three years old. Emperor Kiritsubo who is deeply in love with her cannot forget her. But soon, the Emperor meets a woman by the name of Lady Fujitsubo, formerly a princess of the preceding emperor, who resembles Kiritsubo’s deceased concubine and the mother of Genji. Later Lady Fujitsubo becomes one of his wives. Genji first loves her as a stepmother, but later as a woman when they fall in love with each other. But Genji is frustrated because of his forbidden love for Lady Fujitsubo and is therefore on irritable terms with his wife. His wife’s name is Aoi-No-Ue or Lady Aoi. Even though Genji feels guilty he soon engages in a string of love affairs with other women. These love affairs are however unfulfilling, as in most cases his advances are rebuffed, or his lover dies suddenly, or he is bored of them.

Genji visits Kitayama, a rural hilly area to the north of Kyoto. There he finds a beautiful ten-year-old girl by the name of Murasaki. He is fascinated by her. Genji discovers that she happens to be the niece of Lady Fujitsubo. He kidnaps her and brings her to his own palace and educates her to be like Lady Fujitsubo, who is, Genji’s ideal woman. During this time Genji also meets Lady Fujitsubo secretly, and she bears his son, Reizei. Everyone except the two lovers believes that the father of the child is Emperor Kiritsubo. Later the boy becomes the Crown Prince and Lady Fujitsubo the Empress. Genji and Lady Fujitsubo swear to keep the child’s true parentage a secret.

Genji and his wife, Lady Aoi, finally reconcile. She gives birth to a son but dies soon after. Genji is sorrowful but finds solace in Murasaki, whom he marries. Later Genji’s father, Emperor Kiritsubo, also dies. He is succeeded by his son Suzaku, whose mother Kokiden, together with Emperor Kiritsubo’s political enemies, grabs power in the kingdom. Thereafter another adultery or secret love affair of Genji is exposed: Genji and a concubine of Emperor Suzaku are caught while meeting in secrecy. Emperor Suzaku quietly conveys his amusement to Genji at his exploits with the woman named Oborozukiyo but is duty-bound to punish him even though he is his half-brother. He exiles Genji to the town of Suma in rural Harima Province now part of Kobe in Hyogo Prefecture. There, an affluent man by the name of Akashi Novice entertains Genji. Genji has an affair with Akashi’s daughter. She gives birth to Genji’s only daughter, who later becomes the Empress.

In the capital, Emperor Suzaku is unsettled by certain dreams of his late father Kiritsubo, and something begins to affect his eyes. Meanwhile, his mother, Kokiden, falls ill, which weakens her influence over the throne, and culminates in Emperor Suzaku ordering Genji to be pardoned. Genji returns to Kyoto. His son from Lady Fujitsubo, whose name is Reizei, becomes the emperor. The new Emperor Reizei knows Genji is his biological father and raises Genji’s rank to the highest level possible and that is Genji’s apogee.

However, when Genji turns 40 years old, his life begins to retard. His political status does not change, but his love and emotional life begin to incrementally dwindle as middle age takes charge of him. He marries another lady, the Third Princess known as Onna-Sannomiya. But Genji’s nephew, Kashiwagi, later forces himself on the Third Princess, and she bears his child Kaoru who is in a similar situation to that of Reizei and is legally known as the son of Genji. That reminds Genji of his past. Genji’s new marriage changes his relationship with Murasaki, who expresses her desire of becoming a nun (a bikuni) but the wish is rejected by Genji. Later Genji’s beloved Murasaki passes away.

In the following chapter, ‘Maboroshi’ which means “Illusion”, Genji ponders how fleeting life is. And immediately after the chapter titled Maboroshi, there is a chapter titled ‘Kumogakure’ which means”Vanished into the Clouds”, which is left blank. It insinuates the death of Genji after leading a salacious life.

The book is made of 54 chapters. Chapters 45–54 are known as the “Uji Chapters”. These chapters are about Kaoru and his best friend, Niou. Niou is an imperial prince, the son of Genji’s daughter, and the current Empress because Reizei has abdicated the throne. Kaoru is known to the world as Genji’s son but is fathered by Genji’s nephew. The chapters involve Kaoru and Niou’s rivalry over several daughters of an imperial prince who lives in Uji, a place a little away from the capital. The tale ends abruptly, with Kaoru wondering if Niou is hiding Kaoru’s former lover away from him. Kaoru has at times been called the first anti-hero in literature.

The tale has an abrupt ending. Opinions vary on whether this was intended by the author. Arthur Waley, who drafted the first English translation of the whole of ‘The Tale of Genji,’ believed that the work was completed. Ivan Morris, the author of ‘The World of the Shining Prince,’ believed that it was not complete and that later chapters were missing. Edward Seidensticker, who made the second translation of ‘The tale of Genji,’ believed that Murasaki Shikibu didn’t have a planned story structure with an ending in mind but would have simply continued writing as long as she could have. Since the novel is about 1000 years old there are missing linkages that cannot be corroborated.

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By Kamlesh Tripathi

https://kamleshsujata.wordpress.com

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ONE TO TANGO … RIA’S ODYSSEY

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TYPICAL TALE OF AN INDIAN SALESMAN

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INTERESTING FACTS EPISODE 4: James Joyce, Captain Cook, Lenape Tribe, Lin Zexu and The tale of Genji

December 29, 2022Uncategorizedamerican, australia, british, canada, captain cook, chinatown, delaware, facts, general knowledge, gk, hikaru genji, ireland, irish government, james joyce, kamlesh tripathi, lenape, lin zexu, manhattan, melbourne, murasaki shikibu, ontario, qing dynasty, shravan charity mission, the tale of genji, wisconsin, zurichshravancharitymission

Why did the Irish government decline repatriation of James Joyce’s mortal remains to Ireland? Were they communal? Or were they greedy?

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. On 11 January 1941, Joyce underwent surgery in Zürich for a perforated duodenal ulcer. He fell into a coma the following day. He awoke at 2 am on 13 January 1941 and asked a nurse to call his wife and son. They were en route when he died 15 minutes later, less than a month before his 59th birthday.

His body was buried in the Fluntern Cemetery in Zürich. Swiss tenor Max Meili sang “Addio terra, addio cielo” Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo at the burial service. Joyce had been a subject of the United Kingdom all his life yet only the British consul attended the funeral. Although two senior Irish diplomats were in Switzerland at the time, neither attended Joyce’s funeral. When Joseph Walshe, a secretary at the Department of External Affairs in Dublin (capital of Ireland), was informed of Joyce’s death by Frank Cremins, charge d’affaires at Bern (Switzerland), Walshe responded, “Please wire details of Joyce’s death. If possible find out did he die a Catholic? Express sympathy with Mrs Joyce and explain my inability to attend the funeral.” Buried originally in an ordinary grave, Joyce was moved in 1966 to a more prominent “honour grave”, with a seated portrait statue by American artist Milton Hebald nearby. Nora, whom he had married in 1931, survived him by 10 years. She is buried by his side, as is their son Giorgio, who died in 1976.

After Joyce’s death, the Irish government declined Nora’s request to permit the repatriation of Joyce’s physical remains, despite being persistently lobbied by the American diplomat John J. Slocum. In October 2019, a motion was put to the Dublin City Council to plan and budget for the costs of the exhumations and reburials of Joyce and his family somewhere in Dublin, subject to his family’s wishes. The proposal immediately became controversial, with the Irish Times commenting: ” … it is hard not to suspect that there is a calculating, even mercantile, aspect to contemporary Ireland’s relationship to its great writers, whom we are often more keen to ‘celebrate’, and if possible monetise, than read”.

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CAPTAIN COOK IS ONE OF THE BEST-KNOWN NAMES IN AUSTRALIAN HISTORY. But public feelings about Cook are divided. Cook only spent about 40 days on Australian shores in two brief visits in 1770 and 1773. However, he and his crew carefully examined the coast and waters, collecting detailed information for the British Empire about the economic potential of the land and how future ships could navigate the coast. Cook and his crew were the forerunners of the British colonisation of Australia, and centuries of British influence in the pacific more broadly.

A wealthy Melburnian purchased cook’s cottage for the city in 1934, to celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the colonisation of Victoria. The cottage is just one of the many hundreds of public monuments commemorating Cook that have been sponsored by governments or citizens of influence. However, members of the public have registered a different perspective on Cook’s legacy by vandalising such moments and using them as a rallying point. This has generated debate over how Cook and his legacy should be dealt with by officialdom and represented to the public.’

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The Lenape also called the Leni Lenape, Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are the indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands that include the Native American tribes, who live in the United States and Canada. Their historical territory included present-day northeastern Delaware, New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania along the Delaware River watershed, New York City, western Long Island, and the lower Hudson Valley. Today, Lenape people belong to the Delaware Nation and Delaware Tribe of Indians in Oklahoma; the Stockbridge-Munsee Community in Wisconsin; the Munsee-Delaware Nation, Moravian of the Thames First Nation, and Delaware of Six Nations in Ontario.

The Lenape have a matrilineal (tracing of kinship through the female line) clan system but historically they were matrilocal (the societal system in which a married couple resides with or near the wife’s parents).

During the last decades of the 18th century, most Lenapes were removed from their homeland by expanding European colonies. The divisions and troubles of the American Revolutionary War and the United States independence pushed them farther west. In the 1860s, the United States government sent most Lenape remaining in the eastern United States to the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma and surrounding territory) under the Indian removal policy. In the 21st century, most Lenape now reside in Oklahoma, with some other communities in Wisconsin and Ontario.

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Statue of Lin Zexu: The bronze statue of Confucius has dominated the landscape in Manhattan’s Chinatown since 1984, casting a learned and paternal look towards Mott Street, the World Trade Center and the world beyond. But Confucius has company now. A statue of a Qing Dynasty official from Fujian Province has been placed there now. The new statue is of Lin Zexu, who helped to ignite the Opium War by banning the drug, to the chagrin of British officials. Those who brought the Lin statue to Chatham Square say they did so to deliver a strong anti-drug message.

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The Tale of Genji: Written 1,000 years ago, the Japanese epic The Tale of Genji is often called the world’s first novel. Following the life and romances of Hikaru Genji, it was written by a woman, Murasaki Shikibu. The Tale of Genji. Written by Murasaki Shikibu, a lady-in-waiting in the early eleventh-century imperial court, and often referred to as the world’s first psychological novel, the tale recounts the amorous escapades of the “Shining Prince” Genji and introduces some of the most iconic female characters in the history of Japanese literature.

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