Tale of Genji (2)
Murasaki Shikibu, an 11th-century noblewoman, is said to have written the Tale of Genji on the night of the full moon in the eighth month after praying in a temple for inspiration. Whether or not the legend carries any truth, the book is widely celebrated as the greatest literary achievement of the Heian period and perhaps the first novel ever written. Its 54 chapters follow Genji, a son of the emperor who is rejected from the nobility due to his mother’s low birth, through a series of romantic entanglements. In chapter 36 a princess has an affair with another man after becoming Genji’s lover; the ensuing pregnancy and death of her infant son result in the princess living out her days as a nun. Chapter 50 describes another disowned daughter of royalty who survives in hiding, her story paralleling Genji’s own situation. These vivid portrayals must have been highly entertaining for Murasaki’s audience of aristocratic women; her imperfect characters embodied anxieties shared by women across the medieval world.
While Murasaki’s original folded paper manuscript no longer survives, the twelfth-century Tale of Genji Scroll now divided between the Tokugawa and Gotoh Museums is widely considered the most important medieval exemplar of the book. Pitt’s black-and-white facsimile from 1915 is discussed further in the Making Copies section of this exhibition.
To the best of our knowledge, the manuscript has yet to be fully digitized and made available online; however, some images are available at the website of the Tokugawa Art Museum.