NARRATION, COURTESY, AND NAMES

The narrator of Genji is acutely aware of social rank and assumes the reader is, too. She seems to be a gentlewoman telling a tale to her mistress, and the way she refers to the characters is in most cases extremely discreet. The rare personal name she mentions is that of an intimate male subordinate to a great lord or an occasional page girl. Normally she refers to a character by official or customary title, if any. Those who have one include court officials, male or female, and Buddhist clerics. Officials move from title to title in the narration as their careers progress.

A gentlewoman is designated by her meshina ("service name"), which, as in the case of the author herself, alludes to a government organ or post associated with a male relative. Several gentlewomen in the tale therefore have the same meshina—for example, Chujo (literally, "Captain") and Jiju (literally, "Adviser"). In this book these meshina are transliterated rather than translated, so that in practice they look like names. Princesses as well as several Princes are known by number—for example, First Princess (Onna Ichi no Miya), Second Princess (Onna Ni no Miya), Third Princess (Onna San no Miya), or Third Prince (San no Miya).

Women without a title or a meshina may have no personal appellation at all in the narration. Aoi, Genji's first wife, is an example. Readers call her Aoi only for convenience. "Murasaki," like "Aoi," resembles a name, but the word actually starts out as a common noun alluding to Fujitsubo, and it does not refer regularly to Murasaki until much later in the book. A great lady (like, in historical practice, a great lord) may also be designated by the place where she lives. Fujitsubo, for example, lives in the Fujitsubo ("Wisteria Pavilion"), a pavilion in the palace compound; Rokujo lives on Rokujo ("Sixth Avenue"); and the normal designation for Murasaki in a large section of the work is Tai no Ue (approximately, "the mistress [ue] of Genji's household, who lives in the wing [tai] of his residence"). Other female characters are identified as daughters. Oigimi, the traditional appellation of the elder Uji sister, simply means "elder daughter"; Naka no Kimi means "younger daughter."

Keeping track of the characters easily in the original requires an almost instinctive grasp of its world, supported by memory and by the discreet, context-dependent clues that the narration provides. That is why readers long ago assigned the characters consistent designations after all. Most of the women's (Yugao, Oborozukiyo, Hanachirusato, Tamakazura, Ukifune, and so on) are words from poems by them or addressed to them. An outstanding example among the men, with their changing titles, is Genji's oldest friend and colleague, To no Chujo. To no Chujo first appears in the tale (chapter 1) as a Chamberlain Lieutenant (Kurodo no Shosho), an initial appointment, and rises in time to the lofty office of Chancellor (Okiotodo). However, the title by which readers know him for convenience means Secretary Captain; it is the one he has in chapter 2. Genji, too, goes by his changing titles. The word "Genji" hardly appears in the text.

This translation follows the usage of the original in spirit, if not always in the letter. A character with an official or customary title (Captain, Commander, Minister, Mistress of Staff, and so on) keeps it, and all such titles are translated. A woman who lacks such a title appears as she does in the original, so that women distinguished only by the occasional "Princess" (Miya), "daughter" (himegimi), "his darling" (onnagimi), and so on remain unnamed. To assist the reader, each chapter begins with a list of characters (including designation in the translation, age, and customary appellation). Where necessary, a note provides a spot identification by customary appellation. Only these appellations appear in the notes.

For the most exalted personages the translation also adopts certain forms of address that acknowledge the social tie between the fictional narrator and the character, or among the characters themselves. Examples are "His Excellency" for a Minister or Chancellor, "Her Highness" for a Princess, "Her Majesty" for an Empress, and "His Eminence" for a Retired Emperor. Since this usage conveys recognition of community (only someone in a Minister's own social world would call him "His Excellency"), use of the title proper may be exploited in English to convey distance. In the early chapters "the Minister" designates preferentially the Minister of the Right, the political enemy of "our" (Genji's) side, whereas "His Excellency" is Genji's father-in-law, the Minister of the Left.

The only traditional name used throughout is that of Genji himself, although his current title appears in direct speech or interior monologue. The term of address reserved for him after his return from exile is "His Grace." Strictly speaking, "His Grace" might correspond better to the title of Honorary Retired Emperor, which he receives only much later, but the unique prestige he comes immediately to enjoy justifies this liberty, which identifies him consistently to the reader while also acknowledging his supreme distinction.

This feature of the original text has been retained to preserve the character and structure of the social world that the narrator brings to life. The fictional narrator speaks from within this structure, and for her, good manners require conventional discretion. As a gentlewoman to a great lady, she of course stands high in the overall population of her time, counting from peasants up, but peasants and so on do not belong to her world. Hers is that of the court, in which she has a modest place. Her language must acknowledge this place, and it must also convey the way her characters would think and talk about each other if they were real.

To put it another way, the absence of personal names from the narration is another distancing device that screens a lord or lady's person from the outsider's gaze. The holder of an official title, man or woman, could properly be identified by that title or, sometimes, by residence, but a personal name, even if recorded in a genealogy, was too private to use in speech. The way the narrator refers to people affirms less their individuality than their position in a complex of communally acknowledged relations that was of absorbing interest to all. To give the characters invariant designations (in effect, personal names) would therefore be to shift the narrator's courtly stance toward a modern egalitarian one. Sometimes it would also be to confuse a character (who could not possibly know the traditional nickname of someone else in the book) with the reader; to make one character privy to another's intimate secrets; or even to make a character, or the narrator herself, speak with offensive familiarity.