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The Japan Society Review 80 Book, Stage, Film, Arts and Events Review Issue 80 Volume 14 Number 2 (April 2019) The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari) is arguably Japan’s most The Japan Society Review also includes reviews of two celebrated work of literature. Written by Murasaki Shikibu, a Japanese novels. Picnic in the Storm by Motoya Yukiko is a lady-in-waiting in the early eleventh-century imperial court, it collection of short stories examining a wide range of issues such is often considered the first example of a psychological novel in as loneliness, loss of identity and gender roles in contemporary the world. The Tale of Genji has influenced Japanese literature, Japan. A celebrated and prolific playwright and theatre director art and crafts for more than ten centuries and still does so today. as well as novelist, Motoya won the Akutagawa Prize in 2016 This issue of The Japan Society Review opens with a review of for ‘An Exotic Marriage’, a novella-length story included in this the catalogue of an exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum volume. Ueno Tokyo Station by Yu Miri describes with a touching in New York in recognition of the one thousandth anniversary authenticity the experiences of an unfortunate man whose of the publication of The Tale of Genji. As Professor Timon life is tragically linked to Ueno Park in Tokyo. Yu, who also won Screech (SOAS) discusses in his review, both the catalogue and the Akutagawa Prize in 1996, uses her perspective as a zainichi the exhibition illuminates the importance of Genji in Japanese Korean writer to depict concealed parts of Japan’s history in visual culture. relation to the social issues of poverty and exclusion experienced The second review of this issue focuses on an academic by vulnerable people in Japan. publication The Ghost of Namamugi: Charles Lenox Richardson Finally, this issue also presents for the first time the review and the Anglo-Satsuma War. The book re-examines the death of of a TV show, Japanese drama Switched, an exhilarating, beautiful the British merchant, Charles Lenox Richardson, in the so-called and dark story of body swapping and friendship. Based on the ‘Namamugi Incident’ which resulted in the British bombardment homonymous manga by acclaimed writer Kawabata Shiki, this of the city of Kagoshima, during the late Tokugawa shogunate. 6-episode Netflix show addressed global issues such as bullying, Locating the incident within the wider context of British imperial beauty stereotypes and mental health through the lives of four expansion in East Asia, The Ghost of Namamugi makes use of teenagers attending school in Japan. previously unpublished sources, such as Richardson’s personal letters, to explore this difficult episode in the Anglo-Japanese Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández relations. Contents 1) The Tale of Genji: A Japanese Classic Illuminated by John Editor T. Carpenter and Melissa McCormick Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández 2) The Ghost of Namamugi. Charles Lenox Richardson and the Anglo-Satsuma War by Robert S.G. Fletcher Reviewers 3) Picnic in the Storm by Motoya Yukiko Severah Noureen Akhtar, Morgane Chinal-Dargent, Timon Screech, 4) Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri Trevor Skingle and Beau Waycott. 5) Switched directed by Matsuyama Hiroaki Image: Butterflies (Kochō), Tosa Mitsuyoshi, late 16th–early 17th century The Tale of Genji: A Japanese Classic Illuminated The Tale of Genji: monogatari, and offers some thoughts. The extract A Japanese Classic has been repeatedly quoted to illustrate how readers Illuminated probably understood the genre at the time. Genji makes a positive contrast with histories, which deal by John T. Carpenter and Melissa McCormick with Monika Bincsik with event and fact. Genji is made to say that, indeed, and Kyoko Kinoshita, preface by monogarari and their emotions can be the better way Sano Midori to understand human existence. It seems implicit that Metropolitan Museum of Art (2019) histories were male domains, while monogatari were distributed by Yale University Press for women. However, this gender division has recently ISBN-13: 978-1588396655 been challenged. It was certainly the case that men Review by Timon Screech read monogatari too, and also wrote them. There was no reason, then or now, why ‘matters’ were a female It is customary to refer to the Tale of Genji as the world’s preserve. However, the Tale of Genji was itself written first psychological novel. The case can be argued, for by a woman, that is, by a court lady, who could not over the course of its 54 chapters, the reader follows have known as much about ‘history’ as a learned male the lives, states of mind and emotional shifts of a range might. of characters. Prince Genji dies long before the end, In keeping with expectations of the time, the and the tale continues with his son. ‘Novel’ is a modern author’s name is not recorded. Ladies did have names, word and appeared many centuries after the Tale but these were taboo outside the family, so they were was written, and on the other side of the globe. The known by sobriquets, taken from a feature of their Japanese term is monogatari, ‘talking about matters’. apartments (eg, ‘lady of the wisteria tub’) or the title The title of Genji monogatari may or may not have or office held by a male relative. The author of Genji been assigned by the author, but the work was soon must have had a relation in the Office of Ritesshikibu ( ) known as such, and the designation defined the work’s as Shikibu is the name by which she was known. The meaning ever after. It focusses on the eponymous hero chief female character in the Tale, whom Genji idolises, and ‘matters’ surrounding his life. pursues and (since his is a child) rears, is referred to as The monogatari became an established form Murasaki, ‘purple’. Life follows art, so this name was well before the year 1000, and some examples from adopted, and the author became widely known as that early period survive. Others are known only from Murasaki Shikibu. references in other fictional texts, or court diaries. Some monogatari speak of ghost and monsters, or far-away lands, but the majority address the world in which the reader lived. They cover the ‘matters’ of real life, and unfold in the types of building in which readers lived in, with people they might plausibly meet, and the thrills and anguishes that attended their daily round. The ‘they’ was the tiny number of literate courtiers – whose attitudes towards people beneath them, when such persons even appear, is deplorable. Some monogatari, like early novels, offered moral lessons, about hubris, immorality or other wickedness, and some characters gets their comeuppance, but not always, and Genji has only the subtlest advice to Parody of Murasaki Shikibu at Her Desk, Okumura offer here. It depicts a world governed by karma where Masanobu, ca. 1710, Japan spirits can help or hinder, but only in ways that would What looks like a depiction of an Edo-period courtesan have seemed logical to readers of the time, and on at a writing table is actually a parodic image of The the whole they still do today. It is the complexity of Tale of Genji’s author, Murasaki Shikibu. While most emotions that is to the fore, and which makes Genji so imaginary portraits show her in eleventh-century dress, here she appears clad in the fashion of the artist’s own fascinating. day. Interestingly, within the tale is an episode Part of the exhibition and catalogue The Tale of Genji: in which Prince Genji stumbles on ladies reading A Japanese Classic Illuminated 2 Issue 80, Volume 14, Number 2 (April 2019) Some earlier English discussions call her Lady Murasaki. Historians can discover hidden given names, and it is proposed that Murasaki Shikibu was Fujiwara no Kaoruko. Certainly she was from that powerful court family, though a minor branch of it. Her father, Fujiwara no Tametoki, did indeed serve in the Office of Rites. The identify of her mother is not clear. We know a little about the historical Murasaki Shikibu from comments by other ladies, many of whom kept diaries (Murasaki kept one too). She must have been reclusive, or at least capable of isolating herself from court intrigues long enough to concentrate on a book well over 1000 pages in a modern edition. Frustratingly, it is not quite certain when she did this, or how long she took. Murasaki is known to have lived from about 975 to about 1016 (though some date her death as late as c. 1130). She probably lived to about the age of 40. She went to court in 1005 to serve the empress, some dozen years younger, and whose Costume (Karaori) with Cypress Fans and Moonflower father, Fujiwara no Michinaga, was a distant kinsman (Yūgao) Blossoms,18th–early 19th century, Japan of the writer and the most powerful person at court. The pattern of a moonflower lying on an open cypress The empress encouraged the literary arts. After a short fan evokes Chapter 4 of The Tale of Genji, “The Lady number of years, having born sufficient sons, she of the Evening Faces” (Yūgao), and Genji’s tragic love affair with the woman known as Yūgao. retired, rather notionally, spending time outside the Capital. Murasaki Shikibu seems to have accompanied Part of the exhibition and catalogue The Tale of Genji: A Japanese Classic Illuminated her, and a myth was generated that she wrote Genji at the Ishiyama Temple overlooking Lake Biwa. Surely it It was not long before Genji became too hard to took a decade to complete. The first refence to the tale read.