Murasaki of Japan

Long ago in the mists of time in feudal Japan a daughter was born to a provincial governor and his wife. They named her Murasaki Shikibu.

Not only was the governor an official, but he was also a scholar. The traits of the enjoyment of learning and curiosity was passed on to his daughter who from a young age showed a remarkable ability to grasp and understand literature and languages. This was a miracle and a source of pride and disappointment for Murasaki's father who once said to her, "If only you were a boy, how happy I should be!"

Murasaki's brother, unlike her, did not display her swiftness in learning. In ancient Japan, women were allowed to do some basic learning, but the realm of the classics which were in Chinese was the province of men. Being a man with an open mind and appreciating his daughter's singularity, Murasaki's father allowed her to sit in on her brother's private tutoring sessions.

When Murasaki came of age, she was married off to a distant relative. She bore him a daughter. In time, plague appeared in the land, and Murasaki's husband was carried off in the epidemic. Alone, except now for her daughter, Murasaki began to write a book. Since she was the daughter of a prominent man and quite a curiosity herself, she captured the attention of the empress. She was brought to court, where she became the special companion to the empress, even teaching her Chinese in secret. She is given the title of "lady."

Lady Murasaki continues to write her book which is about a prince named Genji, getting ideas for the plot from her surroundings. She also keeps a diary which is a vivid description of life at the Japanese court and also expresses her distaste for what she sees as a vapid existence of nobles intriguing, backbiting, and focusing mainly on the silly and trivial. She writes one day in her diary, "Pretty and coy, shrinking from sight, unsociable, fond of old tales, conceited, so wrapped up in poetry that other people hardly exist, spitefully looking down on the whole world-such is the unpleasant opinion that people have of me. Yet when they come to know me they say that I am strangely gentle, quite unlike what they had been led to believe. I know that people look down on me like some old outcast, but I have become accustomed to all this, and tell myself, 'My nature is as it is."Despite her indifference and dislike of court life she becomes a reluctant celebrity when her novel, The Tale of Genji, is discovered. It is presented as a serial and read orally. Lady Murasaki writes this in her diary, "His Excellency saw The Tale of Genji laying about in the Empress's apartments. He made his usual stupid jibes, and then handed me a poem written on a piece of paper to which he had attached a branch of plum-blossom: 'What with these ardent tales of love, little can I think that men have passed you by, as they might this plum-tree's sour fruit.' And so I replied, 'If no man has tasted, who can say if the fruit is sour, or if the writer of these tales herself has known such love?'' Is the novel's hero, Prince Genji, Lady Murasaki's alter ego?

Unlike most at court who live only for the moment, Lady Murasaki knows winds of change are moving inside Japan. The decadent lifestyle of the court will eventually be swept away by the samurai who will install a military dictatorship ruled by a shogun.

At age 50, Lady Murasaki asks to retire from the court, leaving it for the peace and serenity of a convent. Finally, she is at peace.

This is my personal rendition of the life of Lady Murasaki (973-1025?) She is believed to have written the first modern novel, The Tale of Genji. Both Genji and the Diary of Lady Murasaki can be purchased on Amazon.com. The quotes listed in my tale are from Lady Murasaki's diary.

In 2001, Liza Dalby, an anthropologist and the only westerner to have been trained as a geisha, wrote the novel The Tale of Murasaki which is a fictionalized account of the life of Murasaki Shikibu.

Ideas for the writing style in this post were inspired by entries in the blogs The Victorian Era and Emma Alvarez Site, Hans Christian Anderson, The Brothers Grimm, and The Thousand and One Nights.