Plenty of Nothing

Genji in Three Translations

    Genji arrived in the hour of the Monkey. He looked very handsome with his long childish locks, and the Sponsor, whose duty it had just been to bind them with the purple filet, was sorry to think that all this would soon be changed and even the Clerk of the Treasury seemed loath to sever those lovely tresses with the ritual knife. The Emperor, as he watched, remembered for a moment what pride the mother would have taken in the ceremony, but soon drove the weak thought from his mind.    (Waley)

At the appointed hour in midafternoon Genji appeared. The freshness of his face and his boyish coiffure were again such as to make the emperor regret that the change must take place. The ritual cutting of the boy’s hair was performed by the secretary of the treasury. As the beautiful locks fell the emperor was seized with a hopeless longing for his dead lady. Repeatedly he found himself struggling to keep his composure.    (Seidensticker)

Genji appeared at the hour of the Monkey. His Majesty appeared to regret that Genji would never look again as he did now, with his hair tied in twin tresses and his face radiant with the freshness of youth. The Lord of the Treasury and the Chamberlain did their duty. The Lord of the Treasury was plainly sorry to cut off such beautiful hair, and His Majesty, who wished desperately that his Haven might have been there to see it, needed the greatest self-mastery not to weep.    (Tyler)

 

Costume Museum, Kyoto

Take a tour of the Genji Monogatari exhibit at the Costume Museum in Kyoto.

Palm-of-the-Hand Genji

Pages from a 28-volume boxed set of mini Genji commentaries, also useful for identifying frangances or as a board game. Source.

Teika's Wakamurasaki

A copy of chapter five of the Tale of Genji transcribed by Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241) has been discovered in a box in a storeroom of the noble Okochi family. Teika's is the oldest known manuscript of the novel, and this is only the fifth chapter of it to come to light. Source.

Nise Murasaki Inaka Genji

Read about False Murasaki's Rustic Genji and other reimagined Heian classics here.

Moriyasu Bon Genji Monogatari Emaki

Prince Genji mourns Yugao in the recently uncovered Moriyasu Bon handscroll. Source.

Genji at the Met

The Metropolitan Museum in New York will have an exhibition of art associated with The Tale of Genji until June 16. Source.

Google Monogatari

This Google doodle for November 1, 2008 commemorated the thousandth anniversary of The Tale of Genji.

Kikou Yamata by Tsuguharu Foujita

Kikou Yamata (1897-1975) was a French-Japanese novelist and journalist, who produced the first French translation of The Tale of Genji in 1928. This portrait is by Tsuguharu Foujita (1886-1968), the French-Japanese painter. Source. See her bibliography here.

Murasaki Shikibu by Harunobu

Murasaki Shikibu as Fidelity, by Suzuki Harunobu from the series Five Cardinal Virtues, c. 1767.