READERS AND READING IN THE AUTHOR'S TIME

In Murasaki Shikibu's world, the men (apart from clerics) were all officials great or small. They studied philosophy, history, law, and so on in Chinese, learned to write the Chinese language, and also composed Chinese poetry—Chinese being the learned, written, formal language; its status was similar to that of Latin in medieval Europe. They of course composed poetry in Japanese as well, but fiction was in principle beneath their dignity, since it was classified as worthless fantasy—an idea hardly unique to early Japan. Still, some clearly knew about tales anyway, and once Genji came to be widely admired, it was men who most visibly championed its worth.

Women were not supposed to study Chinese, but some did. Murasaki Shikibu wrote in her diary that she taught the Empress to read Chinese poetry, although she had to do it in secret. Chinese was considered unladylike. The tale describes a scholar's daughter who taught her lover to write Chinese poetry and gentlewomen who liked to fill their letters with Chinese characters, but such things were plainly not encouraged. A lady who could read Chinese advertised her knowledge at her peril.

Prose fiction in phonetically written Japanese, with few Chinese characters, was therefore especially for women. In Genji only women openly read or listen to tales. In chapter 25 ("The Fireflies") Genji is talking to a young lady who has been copying out a tale for herself when he launches into what is taken to be the author's own defense of fiction. He seems to know a lot about tales, but he might claim, if asked, that he has only overheard them being read aloud to other people.

A woman caught in strange or painful circumstances might comb tales for examples like her own, just as an Emperor might review the formal histories of China and Japan in search of a precedent for his plight, but of course a tale's usual purpose was to entertain. A new tale in the possession of an imperial wife might even make her company more attractive to a young Emperor or Heir Apparent and so give her (hence her family) an advantage over her rivals. Paintings play just that role in chapter 17 ("The Picture Contest"). The Tale of Genji does not mention anyone writing a tale, but in "The Picture Contest" gentlewomen, as well as professional artists, paint illustrations for tales.

A great lady like an Empress would have owned copies of tales but seems not to have read any on her own. Instead she listened while a gentlewoman read the story aloud, exactly as in the case of Genji itself, and she herself looked at the pictures. This has led some to talk of "performance" merely supported by the written text. Seen this way, Genji might resemble a script intended to accommodate ad-libbing and improvisation, and no doubt some gentlewomen did that well. However, others believe the tale to be primarily a literary work. Certainly, it was read silently from the start by lesser people fortunate enough to have access to a copy. The Daughter of Takasue, for example, wrote that she shut herself up in her room to read it day and night. Over the centuries, countless readers have done the same.