it was written in the eighteenth century during the Manchu dynasty, and is considered not only the greatest novel of Chinese literature but also one of the world's master-pieces, It influenced another Chinese erotic novel which appeared about twenty years later, Jou Pu Tuan (The Prayer Mat of Flesh). It is attributed to Lu Hsün, one of the most outstanding Chinese novelists and historians of that time.2
Unlike art, philosophy, and religion, where Chinese influence was paramount, Japan never received influence of value from the Chinese novel. In Japan and China the novel has developed along completely different lines. The Chinese novel is long, employs very realistic technique, revels in details, and is content with "telling the story without the subjectivity characteristic of the novels of Western Europe, writes Lin Yutang. "Fine psychological portrayal there is, but there is very little room for the author to expand over his psychological knowledge."3
We will see later that the Japanese novel also revels in details and has a slow tempo; but on the other hand it is generally short, subjective, and rich in poetic feeling. At the same time it is poor in constructive imagination and psychological depth. The Japanese began to look down upon the novel later when it left the subjects of aristocratic life and began to choose its characters and atmosphere from among the merchants and the poor, Before and after the Meiji Restoration, fiction and literary art in general were despised; novelists were considered more as entertainers of the common people. An inferior form of the novel somewhat influenced by its Chinese prototype was then regarded as a means for promoting morals with punishment of vice and reward of virtue according to the Confucian feudal morality.
Novelists and translators of Western novels tried to introduce to Japan "the manners and feelings" of the West, and to help the Japanese "to gain their individual liberty in the manner of those courageous foreigners." But intelligent men like Yukichi Fukuzawa showed little appreciation for literature. In his time, empiricism and utilitarianism in the promotion of a material civilization had a definite priority over the arts.4
THE TALE OF GENJI
The Tale of Genji is a vast fresco extending through three generations with a huge cast of over four hundred characters. More than thirty of them are of first importance, and are characterized with psychological vividness and realism.
This novel, one of the longest ever written, is about the love adventures of Shining Prince Genji, son of the emperor and a concubine. The story continues with Genji's children and grandchildren. Though the image of Genji is romantically idealized, the social background and life of the aristocracy are portrayed with great realism. This combination of idealism and truth gives great enchantment to the novel. The tale is indeed remarkable for its vivid descriptions of the social milieu, for the psychological character studies drawn with subtlety and deep insight.
Murasaki Shikibu (975-1024) wrote most of The Tale of Genji during the three or four years after the death of her husband and before she returned to the court. Her husband had been a lieutenant in the Imperial Guard and left her a widow when she was twenty-three years old.
The Tale of Genji is the highest exponent of the aristocratic literature of the time, and announces the transition from the government of the aristocracy to the government of the military class. It displays a modern self-awareness of the society it portrays, as Nyozekan Hasegawa has pointed out. A review of The Times of London noted that its translation by Arthur Waley reads surprisingly like a modern novel.
The opinions of the first Western writers who read The Tale of Genji were not enthusiastic. Georges Bosquet called Murasaki that boring Japanese Scudéry," and Ernest Satow found the plot "devoid of interest" and "only of value as marking a stage in the development of the language."
That it was written by a woman is not exceptional in Japan. We find in the same epoch some remarkable diaries whose authors were women. Women were the only notable writers for a period of about one hundred years. To Ono no Komachi is due a reputation of ardent love and passion which is continued by Lady Ise, Izumi Shikibu, Sei Shonagon, and Akiko Yosano, all of whom have shown their superiority over men in a country where men have at times enjoyed a social superiority as probably in no other civilized country. In China notable women poets have appeared, among them Li Ching-Chao, known for her tz'u, who lived some years after Murasaki.
In an attempt to explain this upsurge of literary genius in the women of the Heian period, Nyozekan Hasegawa emphasizes the fact that the aristocracy had lost its role as intelligentsia, this role having passed into the hands of women. It is also true that the traditional position of woman in Japanese society was quite strong.5
THE CONCEPT OF THE NOVEL IN "THE TALE OF GENJI" AND THE WESTERN CONCEPT OF THE NOVEL
Murasaki expresses in Genji her concept of the novel:
I have a theory of my own about what this art of the novel is, and how it came into being. To begin with, it does not simply consist of the author's telling a story about the adventures of some other person. On the contrary, it happens because the storyteller's own experience of men and tilings, whether for good or ill—not only what he has passed through himself, but even events which he has only witnessed or been told of—has moved him to an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart. Again and again something in his own life or in that around him will seem so important that he cannot bear to let it pass into oblivion. There must never come a time, he feels, when men do not know about it. That is my view of how this art arose.6
Though the novel is mere invention, we accept this invention, even in its crudest absurdities, as an account of something that has really and actually happened.
In the third part of her novel ("A Wreath of Cloud") Murasaki thought that the novel contained the higher, everlasting truth of reality; that fiction moulded in the eternal beauty of the language the important moments of life before they vanish. In the first part, Murasaki finishes chapter fourteen saying that she narrated all the detailed matter which Genji wanted to conceal, because she feared that her novel might be accused of being "no history but a mere made-up tale designed to influence the judgement of posterity."7
Therefore, while telling the story Murasaki tries to give it the firmness and density of reality, pretending that the story has really happened. By this stratagem she elicits credibility and evokes the reader's imagination and sensibility. This texture of reality grows from the author's knowledge of men and things. Books of history narrate only facts and supply information on social events, without entering into the personal life of the individual; the novel, says Genji, penetrates into men's souls, discovers the universal and inner nature of man.
The Tale of Genji is built around a few main ideas: the idea of love, illustrated by a certain number of amorous characters, Prince Genji being the centre of them; the idea of power, which determines the behaviour and fixes the destiny of several of the characters; the idea of time, which imbues the whole action of the novel.
The secret of masterpieces, writes Robert Lidell in A Treatise on the Novel, lies in the concordance between the subject and the temperament of the author. It is obvious that the personality of Murasaki, as we know it from her novel and from her diary, is very sympathetic to her social environment. Maybe she was not completely identified with it, and that was why she kept the necessary distance to observe and describe it with such deep, realistic analysis. But she loved the elegance and grace of court life. She probably dreamed of some charming young prince of her own, and that is why she over-idealized Genji.
For tightening the structure of her novel, Murasaki used certain patterns of action which, as Ivan Morris has observed, occur with variations at widely separated points in the narrative, like the motifs of a musical composition. This deliberate repetition of situations, settings, and relationships between characters appeals to the aesthetic sense of the reader and gives unity to the novel. This is a device used also by
