A Beginner's Guide to The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu – Eustea Reads (2024)

Now that I’m done with rereading the unabridged version of The Tale of Genji, I thought it would be interesting to make one mega-post about the book. I hope that after you read this, you’ll have an idea of what this book is about, why you should/shouldn’t read it, and know where to find lots of resources (blogposts and books) to dive into.

What is this book about? [Spoilers]

The Tale of Genji can be broken into two main sections:

Chapters 1 – 41: The actual tale of Genji, covering his birth, youth, exile, and later rise to status. Key events include:

• Genji’s affair with his stepmother, which results in a son who is passed off as Genji’s stepbrother and becomes the Emperor
• Genji kidnapping a girl (Murasaki) to raise as his wife
• The death of Genji’s principle wife, Aoi
• Genji’s exile and return
• Genji’s rise to power, his marriage to the Third Princess, and how history repeats himself when someone else (Genji’s nephew) has a child with the Third Princess and her son, Kaoru, is assumed to be Genji’s)

Chapters 42 – 54: What happens after Genji dies. Key events in this section of the novel include:

• Kaoru and Niou’s rivalry for the affections of two sisters (the Uji princesses), which results in the death of the older sister as she feels like she failed her younger sister and father
• Kaoru and Niou’s rivalry for the affection of the Uji Princesses’s half sister, Ukifune, which ends in Ukifune trying (but failing) to kill herself by throwing herself into the river).

Sidenote: My thoughts on The Tale of Genji

My feelings about this book are complicated – I mostly dislike ALL the male characters (there are only a few moments where I’m like “hey, Genji’s being nice) but I have to say that Murasaki has a gift for capturing the human psyche.

A lot of the court politics and culture is completely foreign to me, even though I’ve lived in Japan, but there are a few things that resonate. The thing that struck me on this re-read is the immense amount of pressure placed on women to be doormats when it comes to matters of the heart – if a woman shows any sign of jealousy that her husband/lover is cheating on her, then she’s chided. Actually, the expectation goes beyond doormat into “unattainable” because even if she tries not to show any jealousy (Murasaki did this), then the man is likely to talk about how she no longer cares about him and moan about it. Basically, women can’t win in this novel.

One interesting (albeit unimportant) thing I noticed was that Genji is a lot more likeable than his descendants. I was frequently frustrated by Genji, but I also had moments where I found myself liking him. Niou and Kaoru, on the other hand, both felt equally unpleasant and their chapters were the more unpleasant ones for me.

Why is it important?/Should I read this?

The Tale of Genji is important because of its outsized influence on Japanese culture. Not only are there countless works based on Genji, such as plays, paintings, manga, and even films, but there have also been many pictures based on parodies of The Tale of Genji. I was at a Ukiyo-e exhibition the other day and counted a few pictures based on Rural Genji (sp?) – a derivative of The Tale of Genji.

There is even something called 源氏名（げんじな/Genji-na）or “Genji’s name”, which is when courtesans take names from The Tale of Genji to use as their professional names.

Now, do you have to read The Tale of Genji? It’s really up to you. I’m not going to pretend that it’s a must-read but if you’re interested in classical Japanese culture, The Tale of Genji might be useful. It could also be helpful if you’re planning to study medieval Japan and want to see what poems/references were popular at that time. But must you read it to understand Japanese pop-culture? I don’t really think so.

Which Translation/Version of The Tale of Genji should I Read?

I’m just going to tell you right now that the most accessible version of The Tale of Genji is going to be an abridged version. This book is a doorstopper – it’s huge and intimidating and frankly, there’s so much in the book that it’s easy to be overwhelmed.

The abridged version I read was translated and abridged by Edward Seidensticker and honestly, it was a good introduction to Genji for me. It’s basically a translation of about one quarter of the original novel plus a summary of the remaining three quarters, which allows you to get a good feel of the book and its contents. My full review of the book is here.

If you’re looking for an unabridged version, I’ve read both the Waley and Washburn translations. From what I understand, Waley’s translation is the “loosest” and he translated for readability, not for fidelity, as classical Japanese is extremely indirect. The Seidensticker translation is supposed to be closer in style to the original, without sacrificing readability and thought I can’t really find much about the accuracy of it (though people call him longwinded), the Washburn translation is the latest and readable. If you’re looking for a book that hews very closely to the original text, then I think the Tyler translation is for you. This link will lead away from my blog, but I found this blog post by Marina on the different versions of The Tale of Genji to be very helpful.

Further Reading: Books and Blogposts

Blogposts

Wearing Your Heart on the Sleeve – This post was my attempt to connect the dots between the Tale of Genji Uniqlo shirts and the story itself. If you’re interested in some common motifs from the book, this post will provide an introduction to them.

What I’ve Learnt from Papers about The Tale of Genji – Confused about all the poems in The Tale of Genji? Wondering what China has to do with the story? Wondering about perfumes used in that time (there’s even a perfume competition in the book!)? This blogpost was my summary of three papers about The Tale of Genji that I found.

My Review of The Tale of Genji (Waley Translation) – This was my first time reading the unabridged version of The Tale of Genji and I had a lot of thoughts. Actually, I had a lot of thoughts the second time I read it (this time the Washburn translation) and you can find a running commentary in this google doc (warning, I didn’t edit this document so it’s very rough to read but it will give you a summary with my opinions).

3 Things in The Tale of Genji that still Exist – Partway through rereading The Tale of Genji, I could not hold it in longer and listed three things that I felt still existed today and honestly, all these three things are bad. Like, stop putting women to such high standards and then blaming them when you cheat on them/try to sleep with their half-sister (looking at you, Niou).

Things from Genji that Still Exist (Crowdsourced Version) – I came across a thread on a Japanese forum where users discussed episodes from Genji that they thought still made sense/resonated today. While I couldn’t translate the whole thread, I did pick up some of the most popular answers and translated them into English so you can get a sense of why Genji still endures as a cultural touchstone/can be relatable to the modern-day person in Japan.

Books

Note: all links in this section lead to my reviews of the book.

河原崎奨堂 源氏模様 – This is a book of paintings/pictures by Unsodo (who collaborated with Uniqlo on the shirts I wrote about above) that were inspired by the Tale of Genji. It’s absolutely beautiful and if you can read Japanese, you will also appreciate the explanations at the end of the book.

The Tale of Genji: A Reader’s Guide – If you’re intimidated by how different Heian society seems, this guide will help! Broken into three parts, this book will give you the cultural background, a synopsis of the first part, and even some questions to help you if you’d like to study the book. There is also a helpful list of characters in the appendix, in case you’re confused like me.

The World of the Shining Prince – If you need one book to go into detail about Heian society without being too academic, this is the one. It’s a bit more general than The Tale of Genji: A Reader’s Guide (which is really focused on the book) but if you’ve read parts of The Tale of Genji and just want to know more about this society, I think you’d enjoy this.

Chinese Literary Forms in Heian Japan – Although this is an extremely academic work, it can help you understand certain aspects of The Tale of Genji. For example, why does Genji send his son to the Academy and what does it mean? This book also provides context about the literary and courtly world of Heian Japan.

The Search for the Beautiful Woman – Many, many characters in Genji are described as beautiful or their looks are commented upon in some way. While not everything in this comparative study of Japanese and Chinese standards of beauty will apply to The Tale of Genji, you might find this book useful in understanding why beauty was so remarked upon and what this meant.

If you found this helpful, please consider buying me a cup of tea via Ko-fi! And of course, if you have any questions about The Tale of Genji, leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to answer them