sechan19 | Thoughts on Genji.

I'm now more than a fifth of the way through The Tale of Genji. (I admit, I took a break from it at the end of the semester and only now picked it up again.) I always knew that Genji was very bad, but I guess I hadn't realized the extent of his badness--that he was a kidnapper and a rapist, in addition to being an adulterer and a libertine. I'm trying to figure out if the implication here is that this was the way of society (although Genji's closest friend Tō no Chūjō certainly does not comport himself in quite the same manner), or if Genji was meant to be a subversive figure; one of the first anti-heroes. Certainly, the liberties men of that society enjoyed in regards to women were very different from anything a western woman like myself would condone, and I am aware of the lack of parity, but as I said above Genji really does seem to be beyond the pale in certain of his endeavors.

I haven't read much about the Genji tale from any perspective so I don't know what scholars feel about this. For my part, I'm rather amused by the narrative tone. Murasaki Shikibu chides him from time to time in her narrator's voice, but the general attitude of the book seems to be that his outrageous behavior--though deplorable in some--is accepted in most cases because he is just so beautiful that one could hardly do otherwise.

As it ever is with the world--if you want to behave like a demon, you'd best look like an angel.