Shukado Newsletter No.7 Genji#3

Shukado Newsletter No.7 Genji#3

Dear customers and friends,

Ohayo-gozaimasu, good morning from Ginza,Tokyo

This is Shukado Newsletter No.7 from "Japanese-finearts.com by Shukado".

Today I will continue to talk about the Tale of Genji or Genji Monogatari.

For these several years, Japan's imperial family has been suffering from some problems with their family affairs. The most serious problem is the Crown Princess Masako’s mental illness. She might have lost mental health after the wedding with the Crown Price Naruhito. The reason of her illness is said to be that rigid and outdated traditional rules of the imperial family puzzled the Crown Princess who used to be an intelligent and active diplomat agent before her marriage. But nobody knows the real reason.

Last week the top-ranking officer of the Imperial Household Agency made a comment at the press conference that the Crown Prince Naruhito’s family should pay more frequent visits to their parents, the Emperor and Empress, and make more opportunities that they could meet their grandchild, Princess Aiko. It was surprising that a mere bureaucrat advised the imperial family what to do and we could imagine there was a something serious problem happening in our imperial family.

On last Saturday, which fell on his birthday of 48 years old, Naruhito spoke to the media that he would try to increase their visits to the Emperor, but refused to talk further about it because, he said, that is their private matter.

Although, in my personal view, the problem of the imperial family does not seem to matter to non-Japanese nationals, most Japanese people are seriously concerned about the future of imperial family or of this nation. However, to tell the truth, when I was a teenager, I thought I do not have anything to do with the imperial family or imperial system of Japan, or I even thought that the imperial system in Japan was nothing but useless.

As I grew up, off course, I changed my mind. Because I came to know that Japan needs the imperial system to maintain its unity as a nation. That is the reason even General Douglas MacArthur did not destroy our imperial system. In Japan, the imperial family (or system) is still recognized as more important symbol of the nation of Japan than the Constitution of Japan or anything else.

The legitimacy of emperor is enhanced some cultural symbol. In another words, admiration for noble of royal dynasty is assured by imperial culture, which large people love. Very important one of them is The Tale of Genji.

The story and writing style of Genji is very beautiful, but the content is full of love and hate relations and crazy behaviors in a way.

The Hikaru Genji or “Shining Genji”,the main character, has so many love affairs that he seems to be in a kind of mental illness. But he does not think himself “fickle”, but faithful and caring.　 Actually, he gained popularity among women due to his honest and caring attitude and his exceptional handsome features make him even more attractive. Although in those days there was a practice of polygamy, his curiosity and obsession to women went too far and people around were perplexed by his behavior.

When I read the beginning of story, his love affairs seemed to be as a part of his follies of youth. But as the story develops, his behavior seems to be over the top. For example, he dared to kidnap his favorite noble girl called Murasaki no Ue to his house and married her, or he had a love affair with a wife, Fujitsubo, of his father, the Emperor.　Genetic father of the boy born to Fujitsubo was Hikaru Genji, but this fact was kept secret between Fujitsubo and him. After a while, the boy became the Emperor and Hikaru Genji gained his political power.

Such conducts which sometimes contradicted with his careful personality caused a lot of interpersonal conflicts including mental sufferings and jealous for his lovers, political jousting, political battle among imperial member, death of his lovers and acquaintances and escape to the priesthood. Reading through those dynamic interpersonal relations and the death of Hikaru Genji, readers see the subtleties of human nature through human’s infinitive desire with constant changes as well as the beauty of passions and humor. Every character appears in the Tale of Genji gets old and dies in the end regard less of how they live their lives. Even after Hikaru Genji passes away, the story goes on. This reminds the readers of the sense of mortality or “monono aware” which means the sadness, the fleeting beauty in life and nature and deeply takes roots at the base of Japanese culture.

In my opinion, the most notable thing with the Tale of Genji is that if this story were to be written as a modern literature, it might be a very grotesque story, but the writing style of the Tale of Genji is very subtle and nothing is depicted in a revealing manner. Various love affairs and strong passions are described through waka (Japanese poetry) and conversation through misu (bamboo blind) in a very indirect way. This makes a great contrast with modern films (e.g. Quentin Tarantino’s), which are full of violence. Although this story is very long and contains some odd episodes, in my view, its writing style gives sophisticated and beautiful impressions to the readers.

There are lots of paintings depicting some scenes of the Tale of Genji and the most famous one is the Genji Monogatari Emaki (the Picture Scroll of the Tale of Genji). With each painting, stories and emotions of the characters are depicted in a very suggestive way and tricks were made with them by the artists so that the people who do not know much about the story or children just see those paintings as pretty or nice.

A good example of this is our recommended item, the byobu (http://www.japanese-finearts.com/item/list2/107006610/) depicting two scenes from the Tale of Genji. The left panel shows the scene of Asagao and the right panel Momiji-no-ga.

In the episode Asagao, Hikaru Genji let a child to play with snow in the garden and talk about the old stories to his young wife Murasaki-no-ue (a kidnapped noble girl). Hikaru Genji told her not to worry too much about his flirtation because she was suffering from mental illness from such behaviors. Although this scene of show play is usually depicted for this volume Asagao, it is not much to do with the main story of this volume. In the main story, Hikaru Genji fell in love with a lady called Asagao but he was dumped by her then this snowy scene comes next followed by his mother in law whom he had an affair with appeared in his dream and said not to tell their secret to her. Even though the snow man which the child made is nothing to do with the main story, it was often depicted in the artworks based on the Tale of Genji. The snowy scene looks very beautiful and heartwarming; however, the sufferings of Murasaki-no-ue are hidden behind this scene.

The scene of Momijino-ga is one of the most beautiful and gorgeous ones in this story. Hikaru Genji and his best friend Kashira-no-Chujo performed an excellent dance called Seigai-ha on the celebration of the Emperor’s birthday. Fujitsubo, who was pregnant with Hikaru Genji’s child, saw their rehearsal because she can not see it at the ceremony. Fujitsubo who was suffering from this secret saw his wonderful performance and was fascinated by his beautiful figure. His dance with outstanding beauty at the stage enchanted the most of audience and he gained his fame to be promoted in the Imperial court.

It is not sure whether the scene depicted with this byobu is the rehearsal or the actual stage, but seeing the little number of audience, this looks like the rehearsal. If so, the Emperor and Fujitsubo, who were viewing this rehearsal, are not depicted with some kind of intention. This artwork just focused on the beauty of the dance but it does not give the details of Fujitsubo’s sufferings or even her existence in the view.

This byobu’s painting emphasize just on elegant and pleasant feelings with dainty motif and for the people who do not know much about the story, they just see the gorgeous beauty in this artwork. This representation technique is a typical one to hide the complicated love and hate story of love affairs like the Tale of Genji to be subtly presented to viewers for appreciation.

I my opinion, the writing technique used by Murasaki-shikibu still has some kind of charm more than just writing a long story for us after 1000 years since it was created.

In Japan, we celebrate the Doll Festival on the March 3rd. This festival is one of the traditional events that tells the gorgeous scenes of the Imperial culture. In another words, it is a festival which transformed the world of Genji into a popular event.

It is fun to decipher what kind of traditional Japanese theme is actually expressed or depicted in such artworks. It is something like the Da Vinci Code that was in fashion a few years ago, isn’t it?

By the way, looking at the current royal family again, they are considered as role models for the Japanese national. Therefore, they may see their family issue is representing the collapse of the Japanese family system and feel anxiety. The Crown Prince refused to give details of the issue at the press conference saying “this is a private matter”. This remark gave unfavorable impression of him being irresponsible as a royal family member. However, there have been a lot of earthly stories such as political tactics and power struggles around the Emperor like the story of Genji and the Imperial system faced several crises after the Heian period. Current Imperial family also has their problems with modern issues. The Japanese people should be more relaxed to see their problems. The most serious issue for the current Imperial family is the succession to the throne and their legitimacy. I hope that they come up with a solution to this issue harnessing the combination!
of traditional and modern wisdom.

That’s all for this week!

See you next week!


**We are sending Shukado News Letter - the information of
new arrivals.
If you would like to join our mailing list, please visit here:
http://www.japanese-finearts.com/mail/join.htm
backnumber:
http://japanese-finearts.blogspot.com/
---------------------------------------------
Japanese Fine Arts.com by SHUKADO
Address: Sone Building 7F, Ginza 6-4-8, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-0061
TEL:(international number)+81-3-3569-3620 FAX:+81-3-3569-3621
email: info@japanese-finearts.com
http://www.japanese-finearts.com/

ONLINE GALLERY SYUKADO (Japanese)
http://www.syukado.jp
master@syukado.jp

Shukado President's Blog(including backnumber of Shukado News Letters)
*Blogger site
http://japanese-finearts.blogspot.com/
*Ichiroya site
http://www.ichiroya.com/blog/Chiaki/