The World’s First Novel: The Tale of Genji

The Tale of Genji, the world’s first novel, is six volumes long, spanning a whopping 54 chapters, and, perhaps most surprisingly, was penned by a woman. It is still studied and read today and has been translated more times than we can count, despite being written so long ago. So what is it about the first novel that has people picking it up, centuries after it was written?

What’s the Story?

The Tale of Genji is the story of Genji, the son of an emperor. It follows him and his many wives, concubines, children, and the exploits that tie them all together. In it, he is removed from the line of succession, has affairs with his father’s mistresses, and is even exiled. The story is an epic tale of fortune, intimacy, and a great demonstration of noble life in Heian Japan. 

The narrative spans over four generations and has around 800 poems interspersed within it. It features a number of female characters, all of whom are distinct from one another, and is often said to have a loose plot.

The Woman Behind the Novel

We may not know her name, but what do historians know about the woman who invented the novel? 

It is thought that she was born circa. 978 and died around 1014 in the part of Japan that is now called Kyoto. Her father was a provincial governor, and she was born into a branch of the famous Fujiwara Clan.

As an adult, she was a lady-in-waiting, and historians have discovered that she was recently widowed when she took to writing The Tales of Genji. The story is written in Japanese, but Shikibu also spoke Chinese, which was incredibly rare for women at that time. Her diaries reveal that she taught herself the language by listening outside the door as her father taught her brother.

Translation

There is an extreme lack of certainty about many of the elements of life in Japan in this era, and where the story inevitably features references to culture, poetry, and phrases from the time of its conception, much of it is lost on Japanese and English scholars. This is made even harder by the fact that Shikibu only refers to most of the characters by their rank, not their birth names. It was deemed incredibly rude to refer to anyone by their birth name!

This means that a literal word-for-word translation of The Tale of Genji is near impossible, and even if it were possible, it’d be unreadable. Instead, translators work in one of two ways.

They either try to tell the story using the same kind of lyrical language that Shikibu used, or they try and tell the story in the most succinct way possible, deeming the accuracy of the tale more important than the language used to tell it.

This dichotomy can be seen with the two most popular English translations of the story: Arthur Waley’s 1900s translation maintains as best it can the style of the tale, skipping out untranslatable sections in favor of new, fanciful English passages. Alternatively, Edward Seidensticker’s translation from 1976 favored the message of the story and did all it could to make the tale succinct, even though that meant stripping away the beauty of the language used.

The Tale of Genji in the Modern Day

Unfortunately, the original manuscript no longer exists, but as we’ve said, the story is far from dead. There are 5 chapters that were transcribed in the 1200s by Teika, a poet. There are also plenty of translations of the text that allow people to enjoy the story, all these years later. These translations have given people the chance to really study the text—and study they have! 

There are a number of different approaches and theories about The Tale of Genji. Some see it as a story of seduction and intimacy, even though there are no explicit examples of either within the narrative. Others see it as a useful glimpse into a world long gone into the social etiquette and behavior of the noble Japanese people. The novel shows that marriage politics ruled the country, and that the women behind the scenes played a much larger part than often given credit for. This leads to one of the most common explorations of the novel, which sees it as a discussion on and monument to gender roles in Japan. 

Beyond all of that, the first novel has elements that we can see in our literature today. There are scenes that are absolutely pre-cursors to our modern-day genres. As mentioned earlier, there is a haunting—one of Genji’s wives is unfortunately possessed by a wicked jealous spirit, leading to scenes that are without a doubt straight from a horror novel. There are also strong feminist themes and ideals throughout, even though it was written in a time that pre-dates any such notion.

Shikibu’s story very clearly differentiates between Genji’s wives, concubines, and lovers in a way that is outright abnormal for this period. She even gives the allusion that, to some degree, the wives and women have behind-the-scenes control over their men! There are also, of course, intimate themes and romance throughout the novel, so much so that it has even been adapted into a rom-com and the trials and tribulations of a soap or drama. 

Was It All Murasaki?

The original manuscript of The Tale of Genji is long gone, but we still have the story, and it is still all credited to Shikibu—but was it all her? 

Well, we actually can’t be sure. The book does seem to have a unity of style, sensibility, and themes, although it does get darker toward the end of the novel, which certain scholars like Dennis Washburn argue is evidence of sole authorship. On the other hand, the literary quality of the book is not even throughout, and so several scholars, such as Royall Tyler, believe that sole authorship is unlikely. 

The reality is, we may never know. But what we do know, is that Shikibu wrote enough of the story to have mentioned it in her diaries, and without another author to credit, the first novel is rightfully attributed to her.