Yosano Akiko and The Tale of Genji by G. G. Rowley

Author:G. G. Rowley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies
Published: 2020-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six:

A Genji of Her Own: Textual Malfeasance in Shin’yaku Genji monogatari

Katawara ni Genji no kimi no soibushite

aru o oya mishi itsu zo ya no koto. (2:176)

When was it that my father saw me

with Genji lying by my side?

Kimi masanu hashi-i ya amari kazu ōki

hoshi ni yosamu o oboekeru ka na. (1:162)

You do not return; and reminded by the myriad stars of the many times

I waited on the verandah, a night chill comes over me.

The question bypassed in the previous chapter was unanswerable in its local context. None of the translation strategies that could be identified in the passage from ‘Hahakigi’ analyzed there offer the slightest clue why Akiko should suppress the long climactic scene of Genji’s attempt to seduce Utsusemi. In an expanded compass of inquiry, however, this act of self-censorship emerges in a more revealing light.

Seeking an explanation for the major omission, one first of all recalls a series of minor omissions, all of which have one thing in common: Genji ignoring his wife while he charms the young ladies of her suite; his bawdy and only half-jesting suggestion that his host provide “shellfish” for his guests; his insomniac irritation at the waste of sleeping alone (itazurabushi); his delight in the sight of a woman in distress. All of these, like the suppressed climactic scene, diminish the image of Genji as the perfect lover; and all are omitted in Akiko’s translation of ‘Hahakigi.’

Further afield, a similar pattern can be detected in other chapters of her Shin’yaku. On the basis of this and other evidence to be reviewed in this chapter, I have come to the conclusion that these cuts are intentional (though most likely the intent is unconscious), and that Akiko has highly personal reasons for making them. Akiko’s involvement with Genji is at times so total that she projects the facts of her own life back upon the source of her inspiration. Not only does she draw material from Genji into her own life and work; she sometimes turns the tables and refashions Murasaki Shikibu’s text—and even Murasaki’s life—to conform with events in her own life. This practice produces striking misrepresentations that to date have passed unnoticed, both in Japan and in the West. The trail of evidence that leads to an explanation of this complex transaction between life and art begins with a poem cited at the very beginning of this study:

Genji oba hitori to narite nochi ni kaku

Shijo toshi wakaku ware wa shikarazu. (7:156)

Writing Genji alone, left behind

Murasaki was young; I am not.

As we have seen, Akiko’s identification with Murasaki Shikibu here is total: both women begin “writing Genji” after they have become widows. We have seen, too, that this view contradicts the conclusions of Akiko’s own scholarship, in which she asserts that Murasaki may have begun writing Genji well before she was married. To maintain her sense of identity with Murasaki, Akiko must, at least for the purposes of this poem, repudiate her own construction of the facts of her paragon’s life.

On first encounter, this discrepancy seems mildly interesting, but of no great significance.

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