Lady Murasaki Shikibu was a highly educated Japanese writer and lady-in-waiting in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. She wrote The Tale of Genji, considered one of the masterpieces of Japanese literature, featuring a central character who interacts with various court ladies. Lady Murasaki’s work has never been looked down upon, and her life is an interesting look into women’s studies and literature studies.
Lady Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese writer, a lady-in-waiting and considered by many to be the world’s first female writer. Unlike many women of her time, in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, Lady Murasaki received an education nearly equivalent to her contemporary male peers. She studied Chinese with her brother, she didn’t think it was an appropriate study topic for women. Some accounts say that her father complained that he was not a boy, since he learned faster than his brother
By the time she was twenty, Lady Murasaki was married to an elderly relative and had her only daughter with him. Accounts of her say that she sincerely mourned the death of her husband, a man delighted with her ability to write and her ability to compose waka, an early Japanese poetic form. Evidence from her suggests that she had begun writing her own stories The Tale of Genji before starting her life at court after her husband’s death.
What makes Genji distinctive is that it features a central character who sports with various court ladies in a variety of related anecdotes. Such stories, when short, were often called “pillow books” and were read by ladies and gentlemen of the Japanese court. Lady Murasaki didn’t want Genji to be a novel. In fact, there was no word in her life like novel. Instead the stories were written one at a time. They were collected in one volume during her lifetime and were immensely popular, whether read aloud or enjoyed privately.
Genji is considered one of the masterpieces of Japanese literature and marked for its unusual nature. Lady Murasaki was extremely intelligent and expressed herself with wit and ingenuity. This explains the continued popularity of the novel and its translation into numerous languages.
Lady Murasaki served at court as a lady-in-waiting to Empress Akiko and is thought to have possibly retired to a Buddhist convent when she was in her early fifties. The court she described would soon undergo an immense change with the feudal military government created by the Shoguns, called the Shogunate. Yet even with the military government in power, her work has never been looked down upon. Although the original manuscripts have been lost, there are Genji manuscripts believed to be 12th-century copies.
In women’s studies and literature studies, Lady Murasaki is a remarkable and interesting figure. You have clearly lived a non-traditional life. As Jane Austen hid her work under blotting paper when people visited her, Lady Murasaki hid her higher education and her knowledge of Chinese so as not to be considered unfeminine. An interesting look into her life is the 2000 work The Tale of Murasaki by Liza Dalby, the first American woman to become a geisha. This is a fictionalized account of the diaries Lady Murasaki kept, but which have never been found. You can also find many modern translations of The Tale of Genji.
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