Dennis Washburn, ed. & trans.: The Tale of Genji: Norton Critical Edition (2021)•
Dennis Washburn (2011)The Tale of Genji: Norton Critical Edition (2021)
[Fishpond.co.nz - ordered: October 23 / received: November 10, 2021]:
Murasaki Shikibu. The Tale of Genji: Norton Critical Edition. Ed. & trans. Dennis Washburn. 2015. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2021.
Some time ago now, in 2013, I wrote a blogpost about the Japanese monogatari tradition.
Since then I've made a few more significant acquisitions, and have been accused by no less an authority than my friend and colleague Jo Emeney, who studied Japanese at Cambridge University with Richard Bowring and Ivan Morris, translators (respectively) of Lady Murasaki's Diary and The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon, of being a complete Tale of Genji 'fangirl'.
I'm forced to acknowledge the truth of her comment. I am, indeed, a Murasaki fangirl, though I might have chosen a slightly different appellation for this state of swooning adoration of all things Genji.
Reading The Tale of Genji: Sources from the First Millennium.Ed. Thomas Harper & Haruo Shirane (2015)
The above, for instance, which I acquired a couple of months after the hardback edition of Dennis Washburn's translation, is a most interesting work. What may seem - to us - the extreme perversity of some of the early readings of the Genji goes someway towards underlining the sheer weight of time between us and its author.
While it's tempting to construct a Lady Murasaki according to our own understanding of such a 'literary figure' - a kind of Japanese Virginia Woolf avant la lettre - it's misleading to do so. If we're to have any chance of reading the Genji at all, as opposed to the Proustian pastiche created by its first translator, Arthur Waley, we'd better pay at least as much attention to the gaps as the continuities in the thousand-year-old tradition of trying to fathom this, the first and greatest of all psychological novels.
There are, now, four complete translations of the Genji into English - as well as a number of abridged and partial versions, ranging through the partial Suematsu translation of 1882, Helen McCullough's abridged version of 1994, Kazuyuki Hijiya's translation of the last ten 'Uji' chapters of 2013, and now Melissa McCormick's English version of the 1510 Genji Album, the oldest set of Genji illustrations known to exist.
Kenchio Suyematz, trans. Genji Monogatari: The Most Celebrated of the Classical Japanese Romances. London: Trubner, 1882.
Helen Craig McCullough, trans. Genji & Heike: Selections from The Tale of Genji and The Tale of the Heike. Stanford University Press, 1994.
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Kazuyuki Hijiya, trans. The Tale of Genji: The Uji Chapters, Part I (2013)
Kazuyuki Hijiya, trans. The Tale of Genji: The Uji Chapters, Part II (2013)Kazuyuki Hijiya, trans. The Tale of Genji: The Uji Chapters. 2 vols. Kyoto: Yamaguchi Shoten, 2013.
Melissa McCormick. The Tale of Genji: A Visual Companion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018.
Of course, it's far more important to chart the 'big four' - the four attempts at a complete translation of the novel (although Waley's pioneering version does, admittedly, omit one whole chapter, no. 38: 'The Bell Cricket'). Lucy Day W. has made an excellent summary of their respective advantages and disadvantages in her article "What’s the best translation of The Tale of Genji?" (20/3/21) on the welovetranslations.com website, so there doesn't seem much point in repeating all that here.
I do have my own views on the matter, mind you, but for the main part I'd prefer just to illustrate the various choices: the iconography of Genji translation, if you like:
Lady Murasaki. The Tale of Genji: A Novel in Six Parts. Trans. Arthur Waley. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1935.
- The Tale of Genji (1925)
- The Sacred Tree (1926)
- A Wreath of Cloud (1927)
- Blue Trousers (1928)
- The Lady of the Boat (1932)
- The Bridge of Dreams (1933)
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Arthur Waley (1925-33):
- Murasaki, Lady. The Tale of Genji: A Novel in Six Parts. Trans. Arthur Waley. 1935. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1957.
- Murasaki, Lady. The Tale of Genji. A Novel in Six Parts: The Tale of Genji, The Sacred Tree, A Wreath of Cloud, Blue Trousers, The Lady of the Boat, The Bridge of Dreams. Trans. Arthur Waley. 1935. New York: The Modern Library, 1960.
- Murasaki, Lady. The Tale of Genji: A Novel in Six Parts. Volume One: Part 1. The Tale of Genji; Part 2. The Sacred Tree; Part 3. A Wreath of Cloud. Trans. Arthur Waley. 1925, 1926, 1927. 2 vols. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1965.
- Murasaki, Lady. The Tale of Genji: A Novel in Six Parts. Volume Two: Part 4. Blue Trousers; Part 5. The Lady of the Boat; Part 6. The Bridge of Dreams. Trans. Arthur Waley. 1928, 1932, 1933. 2 vols. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1973.
- Murasaki, Lady. The Tale of Genji. Trans. Athur Waley. 1935. 2 vols. Rutland, Vermont & Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc., 1970.
What can I say about Arthur Waley? Not only did he first bring the novel to the attention of English-speaking readers everywhere, but he also alerted many Japanese, uncomfortable with the archaic language of the original, to the importance of Lady Murasaki in world literature.
His version is still very readable, despite changing fashions in just how many concessions need to be made for a contemporary Western audience. Perhaps it's just we've just spent a lot more time with Japanese culture since then. Nevertheless, if you're keen on the Genji and haven't read Waley's version, you're denying yourself a treat.
Murasaki Shikibu. The Tale of Genji. Trans. Edward Seidensticker. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976.
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Edward G. Seidensticker (1976):
- Murasaki Shikibu. The Tale of Genji. Trans. Edward Seidensticker. 1976. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.
- Murasaki Shikibu. The Tale of Genji. Trans. Edward Seidensticker. 1976. 2 vols. Rutland, Vermont & Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc., 1997.
- Murasaki Shikibu. The Tale of Genji. Trans. & abridged Edward Seidensticker. 1985. Vintage Classics. New York: Random House, Inc., 1990.
- Seidensticker, Edward G. Genji Days. Tokyo & New York: Kodansha International Ltd., 1977.
- Seidensticker, Edward G. Genji Days. 1977. Tokyo & New York: Kodansha International Ltd., 1983.
This is where I came in. Ever since I first saw - and immediately bought - the massive Penguin paperback of Seidensticker's Genji in 1981, in St. Andrews, Scotland (and very inconvenient it was to cart it round with me for the next six weeks or so on our European family holiday), I've been reading in and around and through it, in an attempt to penetrate its obscurities.
While it appealed to me most, initially, as an aesthetic object, I have to say that I still get a kick from Seidensticker's sparse, allusive prose - as well as his excellent versions of the many, many poems included in the text. All those years spent translating Kawabata and Mishima and other modern Japanese novelists were a great assistance to him in finding a tone calculated to appeal to aficionados of that type of writing.
It has been criticised, since (mainly by rival translators), for its lack of explanatory notes and appendices and all those other contextualising gestures beloved of scholars. Seidensticker had the soul of a poet, though, and it's a shame if his version, which I would think is by far the most accessible to the general reader of the four now in existence, has fallen into eclipse.
Murasaki Shikibu. The Tale of Genji. Trans. Royall Tyler. 2 vols. New York: Viking, 2001.
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Royall Tyler (2001):
- Murasaki Shikibu. The Tale of Genji. Trans. Royall Tyler. 2 vols. New York: Viking, 2001.
- Murasaki Shikibu. The Tale of Genji. Trans. Royall Tyler. 2001. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003.
- Royall Tyler. A Reading of The Tale of Genji. NSW: Blue-Tongue Books, 2016.
I certainly approve in principle of most of Royall Tyler's translation strategies for the Genji. I just wish that the result read more like a novel and less like an annotated crib. Anyone seriously interested in the subject, though, cannot possibly ignore the massive rethinking of the whole subject contributed by this version and its attendant commentaries.
Expertise in medieval Japanese language and culture is seldom accompanied by supreme literary talent, unfortunately. Waley and (to some extent) Seidensticker made up for this fact with the breadth of their cultural sympathies - as evidenced by the latter's charming (though, at time, somewhat irascible) translator's diary, Genji Days (1977).
Royall Tyler has translated Japanese Nō Plays, folktales and a range of other texts, together with The Tale of the Heike. He's certainly a very accomplished writer. And yet, perhaps, in the final analysis, it takes a poet to translate the Genji convincingly. We may still be waiting for that version.
Murasaki Shikibu. The Tale of Genji. Trans. Dennis Washburn. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2015.
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Dennis Washburn (2015):
- Murasaki Shikibu. The Tale of Genji. Trans. Dennis Washburn. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2015.
- Murasaki Shikibu. The Tale of Genji. Trans. & abridged Dennis Washburn. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2016.
Interestingly enough, this, the most recent of the four translations - note the diminishing gaps of time between them:
1933-1976: 43 years between Waley & Seidensticker- got the biggest drubbing to date from reviewers.
1976-2001: 25 years between Seidensticker & Tyler
2001-2015: 14 years between Tyler & Washburn
Lucy Day W summarises their strictures as follows:
It is considered verbose as explanations are typically inserted into the text. You can see the difference in the length of [my] extract from Chapter 1 (according to my count, Washburn uses 569 words, Tyler uses 347).She concludes:
If you feel strongly that a translation should be as literal as possible within the constraints of the grammar and vocabulary of the target language, you will be horrified at the extent to which Washburn departs from the source material, and you shouldn’t read Waley either. Waley made the text sound archaically Western; Washburn makes it sound too modern.I can't really comment myself as I haven't (yet) made much progress in reading his version. After a chapter or two, I found the anachronistic nature of his style a bit too much to swallow when rereading a book which has meant so much to me over the years.
Arguably, though, whatever the text loses in terms of subtle style, it gains in readability in Washburn’s hands. If you want to pretend that you are reading a contemporary novel, and not a book painstakingly handed down through the ages and presented to you by scholars eager to signpost all their research, knowledge, and guesswork, this is the translation for you.
I don't despair of it, though. That's my main reason for buying Washburn's Norton Critical Edition of the novel, with its apparatus of notes and other critical materials. I mustn't let my sneaking love of Japonaiserie overcome my desire to experience as many approaches to Murasaki's great original as possible (for a non-Japanese speaker, that is).
So how should I conclude? In many ways The Tale of Genji has now to be seen as more of a world than a novel: I haven't yet tried the manga, but I have read the fictional version of its author's life in Liza Dalby's weirdly compelling, though somewhat mawkish, Tale of Murasaki.
There's a poem-sequence based on the Genji by expatriate New Zealand writer Mark Young; there are commentaries, and chapter-by-chapter summaries - not to mention editions of her other great work, the Diary.
As well as that, there's an ever-growing library of translations of other classic works of Heian Japanese literature - whether one approaches them as illustrative of the Genji, or as masterpieces in their own right.
In short, the picture looks far more rosy now than it did forty years ago, when I first started reading the novel ... for Genjiomanes, at least. Long may this - hopefully life-enhancing rather than cliché-affirming - cultural exchange continue!
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Suzuki Harunobu: Five Cardinal Virtues: Murasaki Shikibu as 'Fidelity' (c.1767)Murasaki Shikibu [Lady Murasaki]
(c.973-c.1014/25)
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Diary:
- Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan: The Sarashina Diary; Diary of Murasaki Shikibu & Diary of Izumi Shikibu. Trans. Annie Shepley Omori & Kochi Doi. Introduction by Amy Lowell. 1935. Tokyo: Kenkyushu Ltd., 1961.
- Bowring, Richard, trans. The Diary of Lady Murasaki. 1982. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.
- Bowring, Richard. Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji. Landmarks of World Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
- Dalby, Liza. The Tale of Murasaki. 2000. London: Vintage, 2001.
- Harper, Thomas, & Haruo Shirane, ed. Reading The Tale of Genji: Sources from the First Millennium. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.
- Carpenter, John, & Melissa McCormick. The Tale of Genji: A Japanese Classic Illuminated. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2019.
- McCormick, Melissa. The Tale of Genji: A Visual Companion. 1510. Princeton & London: Princeton University Press, 2018.
- Morris, Ivan. The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan. 1964. Peregrine Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
- Morris, Ivan, trans. The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon: Introduction & Translation. vol. 1 of 2. London: Oxford University Press, 1967.
- Morris, Ivan, trans. The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon: A Companion Volume. vol. 2 of 2. London: Oxford University Press, 1967.
- Morris, Ivan, trans. As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams: Recollections of a Woman in Eleventh Century Japan. 1971. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.
- Young, Mark. Genji Monogatari. Rockhampton, Queensland: Otoliths, 2010.
Secondary & Miscellaneous:
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- category - Japanese Literature: Prose: Classical
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