The Disaster of the Third Princess

252 Pages·2009·1.71 MB·English

The DisasTer of
The ThirD Princess
Essays on The Tale of Genji

The DisasTer of
The ThirD Princess
Essays on The Tale of Genji
royall Tyler
Published by ANU E Press
The Australian National University
Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
Email: [email protected]
This title is also available online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au/third_princess_citation.html
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Author: Tyler, Royall.
Title: The disaster of the third princess : essays on the tale of Genji / Royall Tyler.
ISBN: 9781921536663 (pbk.) 9781921536670 (pdf)
Notes: Bibliography.
Subjects: Murasaki Shikibu, b. 978? Genji monogatari.--Criticism and interpretation
Japanese literature--To 1600--History and criticism.
Japan--Social life and customs--794-1185--History
Dewey Number: 895.6314
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
Cover design by Teresa Prowse.
Printed by University Printing Services, ANU
This edition © 2009 ANU E Press
Table of Contents
Foreword vii
Introduction 1
1. Genji and Murasaki: Between Love and Pride 15
2. Genji and Suzaku (1): The Disaster of the Third Princess 63
3. Genji and Suzaku (2): The Possibility of Ukifune 97
4. Genji and the Luck of the Sea 131
5. Pity Poor Kaoru 157
6. Two Post-Genji tales on The Tale of Genji 185
7. Feminine Veils over Visions of the Male 209
Abbreviations 229
Works cited 231

Foreword
Four of these seven essays were published under different titles and
in earlier forms between 1999 and 2006, and a fifth appeared in
1
Japanese translation in 2008. The most recently written (“Genji and
the Luck of the Sea”) dates from 2007. Its initial version, like that of
all the others, has been extensively revised, re-titled, and updated for
this publication.
Sympathy for Murasaki in her struggle to hold her own in her
relationship with Genji inspired the opening essay and led, through
analysis of Genji’s marriage to the Third Princess, to further work on
that theme and others. The standpoint throughout the collection is
that of a translator intensely concerned with the text both in detail
and as a whole. This gives the collection no special authority, a
translator’s views on a work being as debatable as anyone else’s. It
simply explains the essays’ character. No suppression of the
first-person pronoun can hide their personal nature.
To a degree, the collection resembles a preliminary sketch for a
consecutively organized book. Although edited to fit together as well
as possible, these separately written essays remain imperfectly
integrated and still overlap at times. They cover topics that are
important and worthwhile for any reader of the tale, but they also
neglect matters that deserved acknowledgment or fuller treatment.
However, passing time and changed circumstances now discourage
any thought of developing the sketch further. If the essays sometimes
contest the views of others, such is the nature of reading and
understanding. Diversity of opinion on The Tale of Genji has a long
history and is inevitable.
1 In their order here, “‘I Am I’: Genji and Murasaki,” Monumenta Nipponica54:4 (Winter
1999); “The Possession of Ukifune,” Asiatica Venetiana5 (2000, published May 2002);
“Rivalry, Triumph, Folly, Revenge: A Plot Line through The Tale of Genji,” Journal of
Japanese Studies29:2 (Summer 2003); “Sagoromoand Hamamatsuon Genji:
Eleventh-Century Tales as Commentary on Genji monogatari,” Nichibunken Japan Review
18 (2006); “Dansei no imēji o ou josei no bēru” (“Feminine Veils over Visions of the Male”),
in Haruo Shirane, ed., Kaigai ni okeru Genji monogatari(Kōza Genji monogatari kenkyū
11), Benseisha, 2008.
vii

Introduction
Rather than introduce The Tale of Genji in a general way, these seven
essays offer a few fundamental perspectives on a work that has stood
for a thousand years as a rich and varied masterpiece. They remain
generally silent about the pleasures the tale offers (elegance, sensibility,
wit, poignancy, and so on) and about many of the issues that it raises.
No interested reader should find them unapproachable, but they
admittedly assume a degree of familiarity with the work. Essential to
each will be the widely recognized tripartite division of the tale into
1
Part One (Chapters 1–33), Part Two (34–41), and Part Three (42–54).
This Introduction will review each essay briefly and then summarize
the principal reading developed in the earlier ones, concerning Genji
and his brother Suzaku. Next it will discuss the provisional character
of any approach to the tale, the inevitable emergence of
incommensurable views, and the position of Hikaru Genji in the work
as a whole. Finally, it will turn to an issue raised in several of the
essays: the difference in character between Part Three of the tale and
the rest.
An overview of the essays
The first essay (“Genji and Murasaki: Between Love and Pride”) follows
Genji’s long relationship with Murasaki, the woman most important
to him during the greater part of his life, while the second (“Genji and
Suzaku [1]: The Disaster of the Third Princess”) emphasizes his even
longer relationship with his elder brother, Suzaku. Both relationships
intersect when Genji marries Suzaku’s favorite daughter, the Third
Princess, at the beginning of Part Two. These two essays therefore
view this turning point and its aftermath from different angles. “The
Disaster of the Third Princess” also discusses the supernatural
influences that encourage Genji’s triumph over the faction centered
on his brother.
Taken together, these two essays propose an underlying dramatic
structure for what easily appears to be a fragmented, episodic work
centered on love relations. However, they do not question the
importance of these relations, which naturally and properly remain the
principal focus of reader interest. Rather, they propose a background
unity that leaves the tale’s main appeal intact and, at the same time,
extends the range of the author’s achievement. The third essay (“Genji
1 On this division, see Shirane, The Bridge of Dreams, xx.
1
The Disaster of the Third Princess
and Suzaku [2]: The Possibility of Ukifune”) discusses the nature and
experience of the tale’s last heroine, her psychological condition, her
likely future fate, and the significance of the exorcism scene in the
penultimate chapter. It speculatively identifies the possessing power
as the angry spirit of the late Suzaku, thus suggesting a possible
thematic link between the first two parts of the tale and the third.
The fourth essay (“Genji and the Luck of the Sea”) approaches the
relationship between Genji and Suzaku in Part One from the perspective
of myth. Genji’s exile and triumphal return hark back to the Nihon
shoki story best known in English as “The Luck of the Sea and the
Luck of the Mountains” and referred to below in this collection as the
myth of Hikohohodemi. The essay develops this parallel and links the
myth to the history of the Sumiyoshi deity, who plays so vital a role
in this phase of Genji’s life.
The fifth essay (“Pity Poor Kaoru”) discusses the main hero of Part
Three. While many readers accord Kaoru psychological depth, “Pity
Poor Kaoru” argues instead that the narrator’s chief interest in him
lies in manipulating his experience so as to elicit the greatest possible
sympathy for him. It also contrasts the portrayal of Kaoru with that
of Genji and discusses in this connection the distinctiveness of Part
Three.
The sixth and seventh essays (“Two Post-Genji Tales on The Tale of
Genji” and “Veils of the Feminine over Visions of the Male”) treat more
restricted topics. The former analyzes passages from the
mid-eleventh-century Sagoromo monogatariand Hamamatsu Chūnagon
monogatari in order to shed light on how their authors read The Tale
of Genji. It particularly discusses ancient and modern views of
Ukifune’s failure to drown herself. The latter essay analyzes and
attempts tentatively to explain a motif that has stirred the curiosity
of many readers: that of a man or men wishing that a beautiful man
were a woman.
Genji’s rise and the collapse of his world
The essays that consider Genji’s life and career differ with the view
expressed by Norma Field in her book on the tale: “Now for Genji to
qualify as a fictional hero, he must be free of the taint of political
desire, and there is no more powerful antidote for this than erotic
2
desire.” The discussion in them rests on the contention that “political
desire” is fundamental to Genji as a fictional hero; that erotic desire
2 Field, The Splendor of Longing, 27.
2