THE DIARY OF LADY MURASAKI

EISBN: 978–0–141–90765–9

For Marian Ury – in memoriam

PREFACE

This book is a re-edited and revised version of the author’s earlier work Murasaki Shikibu: Her Diary and Poetic Memoirs (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), which has been out of print for some years. The revision has involved a number of major changes, not the least of which has been the decision to omit the collection of poetry (Murasaki Shikibu shū). Such is the nature of these short, largely conventional, poems that their inclusion in a book destined for a wide audience would probably end in puzzlement rather than pleasure or enlightenment, even if the task were attempted by a more able translator of poetry than myself. Annotations that dealt with specialized textual problems have also been omitted. A more general set of introductory essays has been supplied, although it is tempting just to guide the reader in the direction of Ivan Morris’s The World of the Shining Prince (Kōdansha International, 1994), which covers a lot more ground with a good deal more wit and style. The translation of the diary itself has been extensively revised in the light of comments by reviewers of the earlier book, further study of recent Japanese commentaries, and a reading of the French translation by René Sieffert, which was a belated discovery. I cannot speak for its style, which seems consciously archaic, but it is a work of impeccable and impressive accuracy. For the footnotes I make no apology. They are an absolute necessity when translating a work of this nature, which was written with the unstated assumption that the reader would already have extensive background knowledge of the culture and the times.

A NOTE ON JAPANESE NAMES AND DATES

Names

All Japanese names in this book are presented in conventional Japanese order: family, or clan, name first (for example, Fujiwara) and personal name second (for example, Michinaga). In the period concerned, it was the custom to insert the particle no, signifying ‘of’, between the two names. I have retained its use, although this custom seems to have died out after about 1200.

Readers will find that men, in particular, are identified in the translation sometimes by title, sometimes by name and sometimes by both. In the original Japanese one finds only titles, and quite often the same person is identified by different titles in different places, even in the course of what is a very short narrative. Occasionally it is clear why one title has been used in preference to another in a particular context, but this is not always the case. Where possible, I have tried to retain the use of titles, but personal names have been added where necessary. The translation of titles, with very few exceptions, follows those set out in the detailed appendices to William H. and Helen Craig McCullough, trans., A Tale of Flowering Fortunes (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980).

The only women to be given personal names in the diary are servants. Ladies-in-waiting are usually identified by a combination of rank, or position, with a name derived from the title or land-holding of a near male relative. This was necessary because a number of women might hold a specific title, hence they needed an additional label. I have followed convention and by and large simply transliterated rather than translated these names. Ben no Naishi, for example, was a handmaid (naishi), whose father or husband held (or had held) the rank of Controller (ben) in the Council of State. The term ‘Lady’ has been used freely and subsumes a number of distinct but ill-understood female titles. The author’s real name (if such a concept would have meant anything to her) is unknown. ‘Lady Murasaki’ translates, or rather stands for, Murasaki Shikibu. This is a combination of a nickname – Murasaki – which refers to the main female character in her major fiction Genji monogatari (‘The Tale of Genji’), and the name of a ministry – Shikibu or ‘Ministry of Ceremonial’ – in which her father had once held a post.

Dates

The Western (Julian) calendar and the Japanese calendar do not coincide, with the result that conversion of dates is no easy matter. The Japanese had days and months, as one might expect from a lunar calendar, but years were calculated in ‘eras’, and a change of era name might be precipitated by anything from an epidemic to an omen. Era names were not linked to emperors’ reigns until the modern period. The convention followed here is: a date written Kankō 5 (1008).7.16 signifies the sixteenth day of the seventh month of the year Kankō 5. This equates to 20 August 1008 in the Julian calendar, but since in this context it is not usually relevant to know the precise Western equivalent, most dates have been left unconverted except for the guide as to the year in question, which appears in brackets. The reader should be aware, however, that although this system works fairly well for most of the calendar year in question, it does not work if the date falls near the beginning or the end of the year, when the rule-of-thumb equation fails. Kankō 3, for example, is usually marked as 1006, but Kankō 3.12.29, when we think Murasaki first entered court service, was actually 20 January, 1007. To translate it as such, however, would only confuse matters, because to Murasaki herself it represented the penultimate day of the year.

INTRODUCTION

Cultural Background

GENERAL

Lady Murasaki, or Murasaki Shikibu as she is known in Japanese, lived at the height of the Heian Period (794–1192), a long era of relative peace and stability, which takes its name from the capital, Heian-kyō (‘Capital of Peace and Tranquillity’), the ancestor of what is now the city of Kyōto. Japan was emerging from a period of intense absorption of Chinese material and written culture, during which alien concepts such as the centralization of power, the role of bureaucracy, and the mysteries of Buddhist philosophy were first imported and then gradually naturalized. The court decided as early as 894 to abandon the practice of sending official embassies to China, partly because the T’ang dynasty was already in terminal decline and partly because a willing ambassador could not be found. The last Korean goodwill mission visited Japan in 928. By the time of Murasaki’s birth in c. 973, therefore, Japan had turned in upon itself. What had been imported had by this stage been well digested and we can begin to see the main outlines of subsequent Japanese culture emerging. Murasaki’s own monumental work, the Genji monogatari (‘Tale of Genji’) was, therefore, the product of a native culture, enriched by Chinese example, finding a truly sophisticated form of self-expression for the first time. China was, of course, to remain as a kind of touchstone, but it was geographically and psychologically remote enough to allow the unhampered growth of an indigenous tradition.

This shift away from things Chinese occurred not only in literature and religion but also in politics and government. Early attempts to impose a Chinese-style bureaucracy never really succeeded in supplanting native habits, and power remained very much a matter of heredity. At court, the Emperor stood at the spiritual centre, but he was politically impotent and was usually under the influence of whichever aristocratic family happened to be in a position to force decisions. The Emperor’s daily existence was largely involved with ritual, and his links to the actual machinery of government were extremely tenuous. He was, in any case, often too young and inexperienced to be able to have a mind of his own. The coveted post in the system was that of Regent, the degree of power being directly related to the proximity of Regent to Emperor as measured through family ties. It is only to be expected then that ‘marriage politics’ should have emerged as a major technique whereby power was gained and then maintained.

In Murasaki’s day the court was dominated by one clan, the Fujiwara, and in particular by one branch, the Northern Branch, and by one man, Fujiwara no Michinaga (966–1027). His chief asset was a carefully designed network of marriage ties, which he manipulated to great effect. He was also lucky in matters of births and deaths. Such a position of prominence was only achieved as the result of much internecine strife between various family factions vying for power throughout the late tenth century. Rivalry within the Fujiwara clan itself came to a head in 969, when the major remaining threat from a different clan, Minamoto no Takaakira (914–82), was finally removed from the scene on a trumped-up charge of conspiracy. From that time on there ensued a series of intrigues that set brother against brother, nephew against uncle, and that led to the early demise of three emperors, Reizei, En’yū and Kazan. A typical example is that of Kazan (r. 984–6), who was sixteen at the time of his accession. Under strong pressure from Fujiwara no Kaneie, who wanted to put his grandson, later Emperor Ichijō, on the throne, he was eventually tricked into taking orders and thus relinquishing authority. Ichijō (r. 986–1011), who reigned during the time of most interest to us in the present context, came to the throne at the age of six and was naturally dominated by his grandfather. Kaneie had three sons, Michitaka (953–95), Michikane (961—95), and Michinaga (966–1027). When Kaneie died in 990, he was initially replaced by Michitaka, who immediately proceeded to consolidate his position by making his daughter, Teishi, Imperial Consort and promoting his son Korechika (973–1010) by leaps and bounds in the next few years. But Michitaka died five years later and Michikane followed soon after in an epidemic. Michinaga was now left the job of consolidating his position, and he immediately came into direct conflict with Korechika. It was mainly due to the influence of Michinaga’s sister Senshi, Ichijō’s mother, that the young Emperor was ‘persuaded’ to favour his uncle. Only a year later, by a mixture of luck and guile, Michinaga managed to put an end to Korechika’s hopes.

The story goes that Korechika, under the impression that retired Emperor Kazan was competing with him for the favours of a certain lady, surprised Kazan one night and started a scuffle in which the retired Emperor was actually winged by an arrow. Whether or not the whole scene had been engineered by Michinaga we do not know, but it provided him with the excuse he needed. Combined with an accusation that Korechika had been trying to place a curse on his uncle, it was enough to have him banished from the court for several months, and from this time on Michinaga proved virtually unassailable. In 999 he introduced his ten-year-old daughter Shōshi (988–1074) to court as Imperial Consort, and she quickly became promoted to Second Empress or Chūgū.

In the twelfth month of 1000, Teishi, who had been under considerable pressure since the disgrace of her brother Korechika, died in childbirth, and Shōshi’s position became secure. It was into her entourage that Murasaki, from a different and much less important branch of the Fujiwara, was to be introduced as a kind of companion-cumtutor. As we can tell from her diary and Sei Shōnagon’s Makura no sōshi (‘Pillow Book’), the women’s quarters in the Palace were organized around major consorts, and the quality of the cultural ‘salon’ that each woman could attract was a major factor in their constant rivalry. The real moment of success for Michinaga came when in 1008 Shōshi gave birth to a son, Prince Atsuhira (1008–36). This meant that if all went well Michinaga would be in full control of the next generation. This birth is the main event that Murasaki chronicles in such detail in her diary, hardly surprising in view of the supreme importance of the birth for the faction with which she now found herself involved. It was also a relief to Michinaga, given that the omens had not been very propitious: Shōshi seems to have taken a full nine years to become pregnant.

Michinaga continued to gain influence throughout his career. In the end he could count himself as brother-in-law to two emperors (En’yū and Reizei), uncle to one (Sanjō), uncle and father-in-law to another (Ichijō), and grandfather to two more (Goichijō and Gosuzaku). There is evidence, however, that at this early stage Korechika continued to be a thorn in the flesh, for another scandal erupted in the first month of 1009 when it was ‘discovered’ that Korechika had arranged for a curse to be laid on Shōshi and the new prince. Korechika was banned from the court again, this time for six months.

It should be clear that women had an important role to play in the politics of the time. They were vital pawns, ‘borrowed wombs’ as the saying went, and, depending on their strength of character, might wield considerable influence. We know that they had certain rights, income and property that mark them off as being unusually privileged in comparison to women in later ages. Michinaga’s mother, for instance, seems to have been a power to be reckoned with, and his main wife Rinshi owned the Tsuchimikado mansion, where he spent so much of his time and which serves as the backdrop for most of the events in Murasaki’s diary.

It is much more difficult, however, to determine the true position of women in society at large. The testimony we have from the literature of the period, much of it written by women of a lesser class, draws a picture of women subject to the usual depredations of their menfolk, prey to the torments of jealousy, and condemned to live most of their sedentary lives hidden behind a wall of screens and blinds. Seldom were they known by their own names; they existed rather in the shadow of titles held by brothers and fathers, borrowed labels. Secondary wives of major figures probably had the worst position, as we can tell from a reading of the Kagerō nikki (‘Gossamer Years’). The author of this particular autobiographical work was trapped at home, at the mercy of her husband’s slightest whim; he had official business and other love affairs to keep him busy. For women like this there were only two escapes – to enter service at court, or to seek solace in

Main members of the Fujiwara clan
[Names mentioned in the diary are in italics]

religion. Murasaki seems to have decided on the first option, which probably came in the form of a request to join Shōshi’s entourage; but even so, her diary tells us that life at court was not all it was cracked up to be. Amid a certain magnificence, she also found drunkenness, frivolity, back-biting, and a general sense of life being wasted. We should not, of course, be surprised by any of this. What is truly remarkable is that a number of court women were able to write about their situation in such a fashion that their predicament speaks directly to us today, across barriers of time and place. It is perhaps salutary to remind ourselves that as Murasaki was writing in such exquisite detail of court ceremonial on the one hand and personal feelings on the other, we in England had still full sixty years to go to the Norman Conquest.

LANGUAGE AND STYLE

The impact of Chinese civilization was felt everywhere in ninth-century Japan but perhaps nowhere more strongly than in matters of language. The Japanese had no writing system of their own prior to their contact with China, so literature itself was a concept learned from Chinese example. By Murasaki’s time, written Chinese had been the main vehicle for the bureaucracy for some centuries. By the mid ninth century a syllabary had been developed from a set of Chinese characters used solely for their phonetic value, and this finally led to the growth of written Japanese. In the early stages this was restricted to private correspondence and native poetry. We know from a famous passage in Murasaki’s diary that it was still considered unbecoming for a woman to know Chinese, a useful fiction if the intention was to keep the language of bureaucracy in male hands. What this did, however, was to encourage the women to develop written Japanese for their own ends, and in particular for self-expression. So it is that Heian Japan offers us some of the earliest examples of an attempt by women to define the self in textual terms.

Part of the importance of women such as Murasaki is, therefore, their role in the development of Japanese prose. It is sometimes forgotten how difficult a process it is to forge a flexible written style out of a language that has only previously existed in a spoken form. Spoken language assumes another immediate presence and hence can leave things unsaid. Gestures, eye contact, shared experiences and particular relationships all provide a background which allows speech to be at times fragmentary, allusive and even ungrammatical. Written language on the other hand must assume an immediate absence. In order for communication to take place the writer must develop strategies to overcome this absence, this gap between the producer and receiver of the message. The formidable difficulties that most of these texts still present to the modern reader are in large measure attributable not to obscure references (although there are some, of course), nor to deliberate archaisms or what we commonly refer to as ‘flowery language’, but rather to the fact that the prose has still not entirely managed to break free from its spoken origins.

Murasaki’s diary can be read as a kind of testing ground for different styles – three styles, to be exact: first, the kind of factual record one might expect from someone practising to be a chronicler of the time; second, the kind of self-analytical reflection that one might expect of a writer of fiction; and third, a letter to a friend or relative.

We may find the record sections of the diary somewhat tedious, but it is important to remember that such a style and such a subject was still fairly new; records were usually written by men in Sino-Japanese, a hybrid form of writing that was, in a sense, designed for this specific purpose and was certainly far removed from the spoken form of either language. Murasaki was by no means the first to attempt this kind of impersonal, decentred writing in Japanese, but there can be no doubt that it was still in the process of being formed. It was something that had to be practised, something that an aspiring writer in her own native language would have to be able to handle without difficulty. It thus holds an interest and a stylistic importance that is difficult for us to re-create today, especially in translation.

The second style is, if anything, even more important, because without it Murasaki’s work would not have the kind of strong appeal it does. Sino-Japanese was so artificial and inflexible a medium that it is difficult to imagine a Japanese of the time being able to use it to express innermost thoughts. Perhaps Fujiwara no Sanesuke (957–1046) in his diary Shōyūki comes closest, but still the gap between what he finds himself revealing and what Murasaki can reveal is vast. In this sense, then, Murasaki’s diary was another major step, not only for women, but for the language as a whole.

Lastly, whether or not one believes the ‘letter’ section of the diary to be a real letter or a fictional one, it shows the author dealing with yet another problem: how to maintain a fairly recently developed literary style in a context which closely approached the spoken. This is perhaps the most difficult of the three experiments. Near the end of the letter there are in fact signs that the style is breaking down, degenerating into precisely those disjointed rhythms that are characteristic of speech.

POETRY

Here and there in the diary, the reader will come across the odd poem or exchange of poems. To an English reader they may seem cryptic in the extreme and somewhat puzzling. A Japanese poem appears at first sight to be little more than a statement thirty-one syllables long. There is no rhyme and no word stress to form the basis of a prosody, so the basic rhythm is provided by an alternating current of 5/7 or 7/5 syllables. The form that we find in the diary, so-called tanka or ‘short poems’, is made up of five such measures: 5/7/5/7/7. There is often a caesura before the final 7/7 but not always. These measures are phrases but not really lines as the term is usually understood, and most Japanese poetry is in fact found written in a single vertical line. It is for this reason that the usual poetic techniques in English cannot be brought into play when attempting a translation. Add to this the fact that much use is made of various kinds of wordplay, intertextual reference, inversion and the like, and it should be obvious why translation is an extremely hazardous affair. Japanese poetry may be short but the result is often a complex weave of words: the texture is the poem.

Poems as short as this do not survive well on their own. Clever statements usually call for some kind of response, otherwise they simply hang there in mid-air. Hardly surprising then to find that poems like these often occur in pairs, their natural habitat being dialogue. They are thus ideally suited to flirtatious banter, used as one of the most important weapons in what we might call a Japanese version of the ‘battle of the sexes’. But that is not all. It would appear that the ability to toss off an appropriate poem on any occasion was a sine qua non of court life. The number of good poets was probably as limited as it always is, and much of the poetry was certainly mediocre, but it is a commonplace of court societies everywhere that the most ordinary and obvious of activities becomes wrapped in ritual and technique so that essential difference may be preserved and highlighted. Legitimacy, and indeed raison d’être, lies within such difference, and what could be more exclusive than the habit of conversing in pairs of cryptic 31-syllable statements? It amounted to a special, artificial dialect. The problem with artificiality of this kind, however, is that it becomes extremely difficult to identify a personal voice behind the strict conventions that grow up around such poetry. Given that much of it was, in any case, meant to be indirect, allusive, and ironic in tone, perhaps it is best to assume that to look for a personal voice is a fool’s errand.

RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND

Although it is extremely doubtful whether Murasaki would have had a concept of ‘religion’ as a definable area of human experience, she would have certainly recognized the difference between sacred and profane. She would not, however, have seen ‘Shintō’ and Buddhism as being traditions in any way commensurate. Indeed they managed to coexist precisely because they fulfilled very different needs and so came into conflict but rarely. The use of a term such as ‘Shintō’ (‘Way of the gods’) in such a context is in fact anachronistic, because during this period it was neither an organized religion nor a recognizable ‘way’ to be followed by an individual. The attempt to create a doctrine and so to provide a viable alternative to Buddhism came much later in Japanese history. Shintō was not an intellectual system in any sense. It was rather the practice of certain rituals connected with fertility, avoidance of pollution, and pacification of the spirits of a myriad gods. At the individual level this was not far removed from simple animism, an activity governed by superstition and the need to pacify whatever was unknown, unseen and dangerous. At the level of court and state, however, we find something more formalized, a collection of cults connected to aristocratic families and centred on certain important sites and shrines. Although there did exist formal institutional links between these shrines, in the sense that the government made attempts to put them under some measure of bureaucratic control, they were essentially discrete cults; we cannot, therefore, treat ‘Shintō’ as a true system. The Fujiwara clan, for example, had its cult centre with its shrine at Kasuga in the Yamato region. This was not linked in any meaningful sense to the shrines at Ise, where the cult centre of the Imperial Family was situated. The Imperial Family sought legitimacy for its rule via the foundation myths propagated in the Kojiki (‘Record of ancient matters’) of 712, but from a Western perspective it is important to understand that this text was mytho-historical in nature, not sacred in the sense of having been ‘revealed’. It was not itself of divine origin. It merely explained the origins of Japan and its gods and justified the rule of the Emperor by the simple expedient of linking him directly to these gods. Few could have questioned the story it told; but by the same token it was nothing more than a record of the country’s past. The concept of a sacred text does not exist apart from prayers and incantations.

Cult Shintō