The Tale of Genji, chapter 5: Lavender

[rachelmanija]

I got so curious over the chapter that telophase was having fits ("SKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANK!") over that I read ahead. My reaction, in brief: "SKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANK!"

Genji has malaria, so he goes to a mountain monk to hit on any women or young female children in the vicinity get cured. While he's there, he notices a beautiful ten-year-old, who resembles his step-mother Fujitsubu, who in turn resembles his dead mother. Genji pervs on her like there's no tomorrow, figuring he can bring her up and, like Pygmalion, mold her into the perfect mother-figure woman. Let's unpack this a bit: Genji's perfect woman is a girl young enough to be his daughter, who closely resembles his mother, and whom he will raise as if he's her father. It's a Freudian Ouroboros.

Genji hits on the little girl, but everyone around her is all, "Nope, sorry, she's way too young. Call again in four years, when at least she'll have hit puberty." So Genji proceeds to kidnap her! And install her and her nurse in one of his residences (hopefully not another haunted one), and treat her like a creepy little sexualized Mommy-daughter-fetish doll. And-- this is Murasaki! Who ends up being the love of his life! Eeeeeew!

If I can drag myself away from the main SKANK thought SKANK that this SKANK chapter left in my mind, I find it interesting that every single other person in the chapter thought the girl was way too young for anyone to be sexually interested in, and even Genji realized that his fascination with her was freaking people out. Which suggests that even in Heian Japan, men who perv on ten-year-olds are pervs. Which makes me wonder how Murasaki's readers received this chapter.

Comments

[telophase.livejournal.com]

SKAAAAAAAAAAAAANK!

I am really happy that no matter how much manga and fanfic I read, this is still a creepy chapter.

And the part of CLAMP's CLAMP Campus Detectives where the twelve-year-old boy ninja has a FIVE YEAR OLD girlfriend in KINDERGARTEN now makes so much sense. Still creepy, but now it's historically creepy.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

SKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANK!

....OMG must read this.

[oyceter]

I know!! That's my main conclusion of the book actually!

[oyceter]

You probably already know this, but "Murasaki" means "lavender" (or... just sort of purple). Oh dear, I hope I'm not coming off as awfully snooty or something with the translation notes; it's just that that's about the only thing I remember from the entire book, even after writing a paper on it =(.

Well, that and the fact that the ghost battle between Lady Rokujo and Yugao and Aoi is the subject of many a Noh play, and I only know this because that was what my paper was on. (in Chicken Run British chicken voice) It was really boring.

[marici.livejournal.com]

Also, the murasaki plant whose roots provided lavender dyes is the symbol of loyalty. ^_^

SPOILERS
Oh yeah, I think the Rokujo Lady's jealosy may have been implicated in Yugao's death. It definitely caused Aoi's. She's another example of the emotional pornography of female helplessnes -- her illness and weakness are described in detail, and Genji's love for her grows as she fades.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Please feel free with the translation notes-- I did know that murasaki means purple (or lavender) and other miscellaneous words, but I really don't speak Japanese.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Huh. I thought it was "Wisteria". Go figure! (says the non-Japanese-speaker)

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Well, it does mean purple, but Japanese has many, many homonyms, so it could also mean wisteria.

I found two references to that. One says that murasaki is the word for wisteria (which is frequently purple.) The other says: "The name Murasaki may derive from that of a major figure in her novel, The Tale of Genji, or from its meaning of “purple,” a pun on the Fuji of fujiwara, which means “wisteria”"

There might be different names for different types/colors of wisteria as well.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Noh plays are generally boring. But those comic interlude plays-- um... kyogen?-- surprisingly, many of them are actually funny.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Oh, more translation notes, at least for me, please! I know I'm missing about ninety percent of everything.

[marici.livejournal.com]

I can't say anything for sure, but the writing environment of the Heian court strikes me as something more like fandom than formal publishing. You wrote for a small circle of friends, in women's language (low status, but relatively free from male censorship), published chapter by chapter and got feedback immediately, and (in my view) pushed fantasy elements to extremes. In this case, I'd say that the beauty of female vulnerability is being pushed to the edge of the id vortex, both in the context of females unable to resist Genji's advances and in Murasaki's helpless innocence in the face of Genji's mad desires. A second line might be to emphasize the depth of feeling by adding elements not acceptable in that culture, the similar to the way slash writers often have their characters face and overcome homosexuality taboos. I don't take the Tale as either a historical document or moral guide, and I really doubt that the author meant me to.

[octopedingenue]

Ha! That must be the chapter the manga "Gekka no Kimi" is based on!

Damn, now I have to see if my school library has The Tale of Genji. Hmmm, plane reading on the flight to Ireland...

[oursin.livejournal.com]

I raise you Edward White Benson, Victorian clergyman subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury, who picked out Mary Sidgwick, 11-year old sister of his friend Henry Sidgwick, as his future wife when he was already in his ?20s. Their marriage was notably tense, at least partly due to the fact that she was pretty consciously sexually attracted to women (ended up in widowhood shacking up with another archbishop's female relative). EF Benson (of Mapp and Lucia fame) was one of their 6 offspring.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I would love to see Murasaki (the character) turn out to be a lesbian, but I doubt that it will happen.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

....reminds me of wossname, Ruskin? oh dear, the Victorians.

[larryhammer]

Rushkin. And his problem was sort of the invert of that.

---L.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Nope, Ruskin.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Ruskin and Rose La Touche, yup yup yup.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

It's Ruskin. I do know my Victorians.

[larryhammer]

Yup, Ruskin. The h is a habitual tyop. Or a brain fart -- I keep putting in there, despite knowing better for years.

A freaky guy under either spelling.

---L.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Your comments are great, and they're great fun to read too. Please soldier on.

Besides skankiness, this and the previous Fan Lady episode point up that Genji seems to be untouchable in a legal sense. Not that there was a police force with detectives in Heian Japan, but there sure were feuds and vendettas. As far as I recall, Genji suffers no consequences (other than his own perfect wallowing in melancholy). His rank, though unofficial, is high.

We do have this book somewhere. But can we find it? Hahahaha...

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

It shouldn't be too difficult to find-- it's enormous.

[(Anonymous)]

Actually there was something like a quasi-military police force attached to the imperial court, and a fairly brutal one too. It turns up in the "Eiga Monogatari" - translated as "A Tale of Flowering Fortunes" - which is a part-fictionalised chronicle of the rise of Chancellor Fujiwara no Michinaga, a distant but much grander relative of Murasaki's.

The Heian period wasn't nearly as bloodthirsty as the civil wars which succeeded it, but for all the beautiful clothes and beautiful people, the power struggles seem to have been as vicious as anywhere else. I believe it's Ivan Morris, in "World of the Shining Prince", who suggests that the many unfortunates who died on their way to distant places of exile may well have been the victims of discreet poisoning, rather than broken hearts... - JennyN

To be fair...

[(Anonymous)]

Unless we grant Genji supernatural early-puberty, he's not old enough to be her dad. The age difference is about 7 years.
Equally, though I'm not sure if this makes it better or worse, Genji repeatedly shows a certain impulse to take in small children (especially girls)--in the previous chapter, he tries (and possibly succeeds?) to take in Yugao's daughter, age three, to raise--and sees no reason a 17-year-old (ish) man shouldn't be entrusted with the care of a random small girl, who he wants to abduct secretly. Again, to be fair, neither does the girl's nurse. So he has a recurring tendency to basically try to adopt small girls by force. And since he had no creepy designs on Yugao's daughter, I think it might be safe to suppose that he didn't actually fall in love with Murasaki when she was 10; he saw in her what she would someday be, not what she currently was.

(For SERIOUSLY creepy skank-ew-pedophilia, see the musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood--the girl being CONSTANTLY perved on, who is supposed to be GETTING MARRIED [and they're supposed to GO ON A HONEYMOON, implying that said marriage would be CONSUMMATED] is twelve and no less than THREE separate men (all of whom, with the possible exception of her fiance, are in their twenties AT LEAST. One, the freakiest, actually makes her sing him...well, this song:
Between the very dead of night and day,
Upon a steely sheet of light, I'll lay
And in the moonfall,
I'll give myself to you.
I'll bathe in moonfall and dress
myself in dew.

Before the cloak of night reveals the morn,
Time holds its breath while it conceals the dawn
And in the moonfall, all sound is frozen still,
Yet warm against me, your skin will warm the chill of

Moonfall, I feel its fingers
Lingers the veil of nightshade...
Light made from stars that all too soon fall.
Moonfall that pours from you.
Betwixt our hearts, let nothing intervene.
Between our eyes, the only sight I've seen
Is lust'rous moonfall as it blinds my view,
So that soon I only see but you.

So, yeah. Genji has NOTHING on that.)