Selections from Genji Monogatari | Page 3

whenever they
found opportunities, and the ladies of the time were not disposed to
disencourage them altogether. The Court was the focus of society, and
the utmost ambition of ladies of some birth was to be introduced there.
As to the state of politics, the Emperor, it is true, reigned; but all the

real power was monopolized by members of the Fujiwara families.
These, again, vied among themselves for the possession of this power,
and their daughters were generally used as political instruments, since
almost all the Royal consorts were taken from some of these families.
The abdication of an emperor was a common event, and arose chiefly
from the intrigues of these same families, although partly from the
prevailing influence of Buddhism over the public mind.
Such, then, was the condition of society at the time when the authoress,
Murasaki Shikib, lived; and such was the sphere of her labors, a
description of which she was destined to hand down to posterity by her
writings. In fact, there is no better history than her story, which so
vividly illustrates the society of her time. True it is that she openly
declares in one passage of her story that politics are not matters which
women are supposed to understand; yet, when we carefully study her
writings, we can scarcely fail to recognize her work as a partly political
one. This fact becomes more vividly interesting when we consider that
the unsatisfactory conditions of both the state and society soon brought
about a grievous weakening of the Imperial authority, and opened wide
the gate for the ascendency of the military class. This was followed by
the systematic formation of feudalism, which, for some seven centuries,
totally changed the face of Japan. For from the first ascendency of this
military system down to our own days everything in society--ambitions,
honors, the very temperament and daily pursuits of men, and political
institutes themselves--became thoroughly unlike those of which our
authoress was an eye-witness. I may almost say that for several
centuries Japan never recovered the ancient civilization which she had
once attained and lost.
Another merit of the work consists in its having been written in pure
classical Japanese; and here it may be mentioned that we had once
made a remarkable progress in our own language quite independently
of any foreign influence, and that when the native literature was at first
founded, its language was identical with that spoken. Though the
predominance of Chinese studies had arrested the progress of the native
literature, it was still extant at the time, and even for some time after
the date of our authoress. But with the ascendency of the military class,

the neglect of all literature became for centuries universal. The little
that has been preserved is an almost unreadable chaos of mixed
Chinese and Japanese. Thus a gulf gradually opened between the
spoken and the written language. It has been only during the last two
hundred and fifty years that our country has once more enjoyed a long
continuance of peace, and has once more renewed its interest in
literature. Still Chinese has occupied the front rank, and almost
monopolized attention. It is true that within the last sixty or seventy
years numerous works of fiction of different schools have been
produced, mostly in the native language, and that these, when judged as
stories, generally excel in their plots those of the classical period. The
status, however, of these writers has never been recognized by the
public, nor have they enjoyed the same degree of honor as scholars of a
different description. Their style of composition, moreover, has never
reached the same degree of refinement which distinguished the ancient
works. This last is a strong reason for our appreciation of true classical
works such as that of our authoress.
Again, the concise description of scenery, the elegance of which it is
almost impossible to render with due force in another language, and the
true and delicate touches of human nature which everywhere abound in
the work, especially in the long dialogue in Chapter II, are almost
marvellous when we consider the sex of the writer, and the early period
when she wrote.
Yet this work affords fair ground for criticism. The thread of her story
is often diffuse and somewhat disjointed, a fault probably due to the
fact that she had more flights of imagination than power of equal and
systematic condensation: she having been often carried away by that
imagination from points where she ought to have rested. But, on the
other hand, in most parts the dialogue is scanty, which might have been
prolonged to considerable advantage, if it had been framed on models
of modern composition. The work, also, is too voluminous.
In translating I have cut out several passages which appeared