The
Novel
The
Tale of Genji is
one of the most important stories of ancient Japanese
literature. It is considered to be one of the world's
finest and earliest novels. A woman writer, Murasaki
Shikibu, wrote it in ca.1020. In her novel, Lady Murasaki
depicts an ideal aristocratic society whose members were
in love with elegance, and were themselves models of grace,
culture and artistic skill. The events span almost
three-quarters of a century and involve more than 430
characters. It is a story of Genji, son of an emperor,
from his youth through his rise in rank and influence.
The focus is on numerous romantic encounters with women
of various classes, positions and appearances. The
narrative centres on themes of love, lust, affection,
filial loyalty, family and the interaction between men
and women.
The Author - Murasaki Shikibu
Lady
Murasaki (973-1025) was the most prominent writer of the
Heian period (794-1185). She was born into the Fujiwara
family and was the daughter of a governor and a prominent
scholar. Always very intelligent, as a child she learned
quickly and surpassed boys of her own age in reading difficult
books and Chinese classics. She was married in her
early twenties and her only daughter was born in 999. After
her husband died in 1001, she gained a position at the court
working for the Empress Shoshi. At court she began
a diary where she recorded her impressions of court life
and observations of the daily activities and attitudes of
upper class society. Her later life is obscure. She may
have left the court to seek seclusion in a convent at about
the age of fifty
The Paintings
The
scroll paintings evoke the ideal of the aristocratic
society in early eleventh-century Japan. The
work incorporates the arts of painting, calligraphy
and decorated paper. A fusion of traditions of monogatari,
Yamatoe painting and kana calligraphy, the
work emerges as the very epitome of Haian aesthetics.
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Detail
from Kemari,
chapter of The Tale of Genj.
artist
unknown, 17th
c.
six-panel folding screen.
Image Source
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The Original Scroll
The
Tale of Genji was painted likely between 1120
and 1130. The work has fifty-four chapters in
various lengths. It appears that there was an
average of two paintings for each chapter and an average
of three to four pages of text for each painting.
The original scroll must have contained over one hundred
paintings and three hundred and seventy sheets of
calligraphy. In the twelfth-century original,
each page of painting was seventeen and half inches
long and each page of text was nine and half inches
long. The whole work would have been 450 feet
long and consisted of twenty rolls. The surviving
scrolls contain twenty-eight sections of text and
twenty segments of paintings. They are comprised
of nineteen paintings, sixty-five sheets of text and
nine pages of fragments, which constitute only 15
percent of the original work. These are
divided into several collections with Gotoh Museum
in Tokyo and Tokugawa Reimeikai Foundations having
the largest share. |
Pictorial Techniques
The
characteristic pictorial technique used in the Tale
of Genji is tsukurie (manufactured painting).
It is a form of painting in which all the empty space
on the paper is covered with heavy pigment.
It was used in all works of the onnae category
(woman's painting). Such types of paintings
illustrated tales that concentrated on narratives
about life at court and decorated sutra scrolls, depicting
the Pure Land, the realm of eternal bliss in twelfth-century
Buddhism. Onnae illustrations were used
to reveal a quiet, elegant world of yugen (the
profound and mysterious). This follows that
pictorial representation of The Tale of Genji
a monogatari about Court life, which was written
by a woman, and aimed at evoking aesthetic scenes
of yugen, should be executed in the onnae
style and based on the tsukurie technique.
The illustrators of the Tale of Genji used
another two painting conventions: hikime-kagihana
and fukinuki-yatai. The hikime-kagihana
stands for 'dashes for eyes - a hook for the nose'.
It depicts highly stylized figures, which allows the
viewers to identify themselves psychologically with
and "become" the characters in the pictures.
It is characteristic of the onnae style.
The fukinuki-yatai, literally 'stage with the
roof blown away' was a convenient device to show the
interiors of rooms from above, without ceiling, roof,
or inner partitions, so that viewers had unobstructed
views of human activity within. Both of these
pictorial conventions survived through every historical
period. |
The Tale of
Genji - Artists through the ages
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Tosa
Mitsunobu (ca. 1434-1525) founder of the Tosa
school and the first official painter of the court.
Tosa school preserved the traditional Japanese painting
style of yamato-e (Japanese painting) over
the centuries.
Tosa
Mitsumochi (1523-70) was the artist whose connection
to Genji was first recorded in literature.
In 1560 Emperor Ogimachi commissioned him to paint
an episode from chapter nine (Heartvine) on a folding
screen.
Tosa
Mitsumoto (1530-69) son of Mitsumochi; the earliest
surviving Genji albums of shikishi
were attributed to him.
Tosa
Mitsuyoshi (1539-1613) was a pupil of Mitsumoto
and established the true miniaturist style for use
by the school.
Tosa
Mitsunori (1583-1638) was son (or pupil) of
Mitsuyoshi; perfected his style, the hakubyo
(gossamer fine ink drawing); painted in the album
format.
Tosa
Mitsuoki (1617-1691) son of Mitsumori and the
last great leader of the school who revitalised
it in the Edo period. Introduced a degree of realism
into his miniatures (gold is used sparingly); chose
to illustrate episodes that were not often portrayed
before his time; the Burke Album images are attributed
to him; first to sign his work.
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Bibliography
Burke, Richard. Murasaki Shikibu: Her Diary and
Poetic Memoirs. Princeton:
Princeton
University Press, 1982.
Dalby,
Liza Crihfield. The Tale of Murasaki: a Novel.
New York: Nan A. Talese,
Doubleday,
2000.
Japanese
Scroll Paintings. Genji Monogatari Emaki. Vol.1,
Nihon Emakimono Zenshu.
Tokyo:
Kadokawa Publishing Co., n.d.
Kitagawa,
Rose Anne. "Behind the scenes of Harvard's
Tale of Genji album." Apollo,
154,
no. 477 ( November 2001); 28-35.
Murase,
Miyeko. Iconography of The Tale of Genji. Genji
Monogatari Ekotoba.
New
York and Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1983.
The
Tale of Genji scroll. Translated by
Ivan Morris. Facsimile, Tokyo: Kodansha
International,
1971.
The
Tale of Genji: Legends and Paintings. Introduction
by Miyeko Murase.
New
York: George Braziller, Inc., 2001.
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Location:
Fine Arts, UBC Library
Date:
Summer 2002
Credits
Images
courtesy of and copyright held by The Ruth and Sherman Lee Institute for Japanese
Art at the Clark Center,
Hanford, California.
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