I am ploughing my way through Lady Murasaki’s Tale of Genji. I am on page 1066 (out of 4088 pages) – I am reading a free ePub edition on my iPad. I downloaded the book from one of the online libraries but I forget which (maybe Project Gutenburg?) Should I attempt literary criticism? I do not understand Japanese literature well enough for that but here’s my reaction:
Of course, my Western sensibilities are deeply offended by Genji, even more offended now than they were when I first read the book about thirty years ago. To a Westerner he resembles what used to be called a ‘waste of space’ – he does nothing productive other than some vaguely implied court duties (I imagine he is at most a figurehead and someone else does the actual work, engages in actual intrigue, carries the burdon of exercising power, his great enemy, his father’s Empress, for example, whilst Genji simply has the appearance and trappings of power). Not exerting himself much in any area of human endeavour his life seems devoid of purpose, energy, ethos, spirituality. He follows the rules of protocol, manners, aesthetic appreciation but otherwise has no discernable ethics, no politics, no religion. Who said “the examined life is not worth living”? Was it Socrates? One of the Greeks (who was probably quoting a more ancient authority, maybe Indian, maybe Shakyamuni?) Genji has no self-examination, no self-knowledge, no moral compass. He wastes his own life and blythely ruins the lives of others. His only motivator appears to be his sense of entitlement and his lust for sensual pleasures. Some of his sensual pleasures involve sexual relations which result in pregnancy. Almost by oversight he reproduces himself but never experiences any deep parental bond to anyone. He seems incapable of familial love and affection. As for romantic love, his sexual encounters are devoid of any real insight, empathy, tenderness, affection or compassion. His attitude is self-indulgent and predatory. His ‘affairs’ are usually prosecuted through serial rape. His victims of choice are vulnerable children (boys or girls) or vulnerable women. Usually, his victims are without kin, protectors, wealth, power or status and always psychologically damaged in some way e.g. by bereavement. Sexuality is sado-masochistic. Sexual relations a kind of warfare. This is the sort of sociopath we in the West would seek to cure or to imprison for the protection of society. I find it almost impossible not to despise Genji to the point of such disgust I am unable to continue reading. I read only in the hope he gets some come-uppance or to learn of the fate of his victims and whether they ever find healing and peace of mind. All of this is, as I admit, the biased reaction of a C21st Westerner.
Lady Murasaki, by contrast, constantly tells us how wonderful, almost Heavenly, Genji is. She is not being entirely ironic. Another reason I continue reading is to try and understand Lady Murasaki – she writes with great attention to details, dry wit, a callous lack of care for her female characters and their sufferings, a gushing admiration and identification with her male characters (which she subverts by occasional sly remarks that make us doubt her sincerity about her admiration for men and indeed about anything). It is like reading the history of court life from the perspective of a cat, a feral cat, admitted to the palace, and beloved by the Emperor, but indifferent to his affection, and untamable. Seen from the perspective of Lady Murasaki or her refined alley cat-muse, I find Genji more comprehensible but still repellant. I imagine some exquisite washi paper, fragrant, making the whispered music to be expected from the best quality paper as it is expertly folded into some elegant three-dimensional form. Now I attribute desire to that folded paper. I imagine it is not only a delight to our senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and movement but is itself sentient and capable of sensory delectation. I imagine the paper enjoys being folded but only by someone worthy to touch it, someone equally delicious to the senses. I imagine a cat-like paper, cruel, predatory, precise, untamed, accepting a caress only reluctantly and only from a very favoured human. We are in the realm of melting senses: heady, delirious, animal, amoral. Soulful, aesthetically aware, but morally and spiritually dead, Genji, origami cat-man, is revealed. His dances, koto-playing, poetry-writing, clothing, accessories, possessions, companions, exploitation of victims are all well-done, well-performed, well-chosen according to rules of courtly taste. They have no other value. Beautiful and empty. Paper folded so precisely around a void. The origami-Genji is as much a self-portrait of Lady Murasaki as of the character she has invented. She is too sly to be reflected in her novel as in a mirror. No, the metaphor of folding rather than reflecting is a better description of what she does. In the West novels are more often mirrors of the soul of the author and his/her character. A novel as a folding of the author to make characters is attractively strange to me. I am hooked. I want to see how this art works.
Genji is superficially repellant but Murasaki often has her minor characters and even her authorial voice hail him as ‘saintly’, ‘Heavenly’, ‘a Bodhisattva’, ‘a Buddha’ and his well-mannered conduct is frequently described as a revelation of the Pure Land. We are told it is a privilege to see him, even at a distance; how much more a privilege to be close to him, close enough to be sexually exploited, raped, victimised by him. Can anyone take this seriously? Well, I have a tentative answer to that question. Since my criticism of Genji comes from my Western perspective, it is fitting that his defence comes from the West too. My argument is this: according to one Western, i.e. Indian, sutra (the name eludes me) the teachings of Shakyamuni are “fragrant”, like incense. When this Western teaching arrived in China it was taken as meaning that the dharma could be taught not just through words but through other sensory experience such as the encounter with fragrances. One could achieve enlightenment not just by reading sutras but by smelling incense or even by smelling something foul. The Ch’an-tradition taught that sudden enlightenment could be attained if one by-passed the rational mind and worked with the non-rational. This encouraged many developments in high art, advanced craftmanship, refined courtly and monastic life including, for example, the development of sophisticated incenses and a tradition of refined skill in smelling incense or ‘listening to it preach’ the dharma. These Chinese refinements arrived in other Eastern countries e.g. Vietnam, Korea, Japan and underwent more refinement. In Japan it is customary to talk about “listening to incense” rather than smelling it. What if we see Lady Murasaki’s literary creation not as a portrait of a ‘life-like man’ according to the anachronistic expectations of Western realism and humanism (which, of course, it could never be) nor as a description of an origami-man made from folded paper (which would be mere nihilism) but instead as a description of fragrant incense smoke imagined as a Buddha i.e. as an exercise inspired by Ch’an or Zen Buddhism?
In Japan the best incense is called aristocratic or courtly and is said to invoke a mental image of a consumate male courtier – in fact, someone like Genji. Could we re-imagine the Tale of Genji as a long reverie invoked by inhaling excellent incense; an exercise in imagining a courtly man from the fragrance, and writing his tale. If so, it becomes an allegory, a meditation on the dharma, an invocation of the Pure Land. The sexual exploits are then not reprehensible abusive acts but metaphors for ravishing spiritual encounters, for moments of sartori. When Lady Murasaki says the people around Genji were fascinated by him and thought him worthy of being a Buddha, I don’t think she is expecting us to laugh. I think she wants us to take her seriously. Given that Genji is portrayed as a complete scumbag how can she expect us to go along with her? My impression is that she is describing an encounter with incense and she is saying, yes, this sort of encounter could bring enlightenment, but no, I am not yet enlightened and the man revealed to me by the dharma of the incense is not perfect but flawed, so for me the incense is teaching a flawed dharma and revealing a flawed Buddha. The Tale of Genji would then be Lady Murasaki’s self-portrait as a flawed, not-yet-enlightened one giving her description of flawed, not-yet-enlightened others. Genji is Murasaki’s incense-induced vision of Shakyamuni. But this is Shakyamuni before enlightenment, still asleep in the pleasures of courtly life.
I hope that expanation is not too confusing! What I mean is that Genji might be offensive to the rational mind but if inhaled as perfume he might touch the non-rational mind in a way which is spiritually meaningful. This makes me hesitate to reject the Tale of Genji outright as a depraved book by a corrupted woman who finds excuses for cruelty by telling us things like the child-raping Genji was well-dressed and wrote a nice poem about it afterwards. Maybe this apparent amoral nihilism is not what it seems to be to a first superficial glance? I try to read the book with sophistication as an extended allegory. If Lady Murasaki can only describe a flawed incense-vision, does she not point us in the direction of a better vision, point us to a practice which might bring us better enlightenment? What better response to Genji than to start appreciating good incense and seeking our own less flawed enlightenment? Maybe Lady Murasaki is writing an apologia for Zen? Or maybe the moral of the story is not that we should be more diligent in seeking sartori than Lady Murosaki but that we realise our own best efforts are not likely to be any more satisfactory than her’s. Not able to achieve perfect enlightenment through our own efforts (whether this is by studying sutras or listening to incense or reading novels) maybe Lady Murasaki is teaching us to turn more earnestly to the other-power of the truly Enlightened One. Maybe the book is an allegory which instils a sense of our own flaws and directs us to rely on real faith rather than to place any trust in elegant outward conformity to the conventions of religion? Maybe she is an apologist for Pure Land Buddhism?
I am not sure that my defence of Lady Murasaki convinces even me (chuckle). I think what fascinates me and keeps me reading is uncertainty. Yes, an argument could be made that this is a description of flawed depravity held up for appreciation and as such the book is foul. Yes, an argument could be made that the book operates on a symbolic level to appeal to the aesthetic, non-rational mind and thus, like incense, preaches the dharma by other means. If you can attain sartori by pissing in a bucket, there’s no reason why you cannot do so by reading the Tale of Genji. The book then becomes Buddhist scripture, in the Zen and Pure Land traditions. But I think the novel is neither fully good nor fully bad but an odd mixture of the two. The off-centred, never resolved mystery of the work intrigues me. I guess that is the true scent of the book, and of Lady Murasaki. I see her as someone steeped in the culture of Zen and Pure Land but as detached from them, unable to commit, unable to trust, unable to summon enough faith to ‘get’ Buddhism at the deepest level. I see her as world-weary, cynical, wounded. She evokes deep compassion in me – even more because she is herself apparently unable to feel compassion for herself or her avatars in the folds of her book. I think she is able to really speak to and for contemporary people because of her flaws and twists. I think Western Buddhists who are invested in denying that Buddhism is a ‘religion’ because they are unable to trust, unable to have faith, would find this novel especially difficult and potentially rewarding.
Well, dear reader, read the Tale of Genji and see what you think. I recommend reading a few chapters then taking a rest, burning some incense mindfully, then resuming. I would treat it as a sutra or as incense rather than as a novel. But you will find your own approach.
Blessing
I, Shi Pasang, devoutly and fragrantly bless my readers. May my readers bless me!
