Spectrum - Arts & Entertainment
By John Mcdonald
10 January 2009
The Sydney Morning Herald
VISUAL ART
Genji: The World Of The Shining Prince
Art Gallery of NSW, until February 15
GENJI MONOGATARI, or The Tale Of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu has a unique status in world literature. The earliest date that we know the book was being read is 1008AD, allowing scholars to nominate 2008 as its thousandth anniversary. Genji is sometimes hailed as the world's first novel, but because it is no easier to identify the first novel than, say, the first oil painting, it is a title subject to endless qualifications. It is not unusual to read that Genji is the world's first "full-length" novel, the first "psychological" novel or the first novel to be considered "a classic".
No matter how one looks at it, Genji remains one of the most extraordinary works of fiction ever written. At a little under 1200 pages in the Edward G. Seidensticker translation that I've been reading, there is no disputing its "full-length" credentials. It is very far from what we would call a conventional novel because there is no plot, per se, only a series of episodes in the life of Genji, "the shining prince", whose beauty and ability are beyond comparison. Threads are carried over from one chapter to the next in a way that gradually deepens our understanding of the protagonists. There are, however, more than 400 characters in the book, many of them making the most fleeting appearance.
Neither is there a conventional ending. Even though Genji has disappeared from the story before the last chapters, the book finishes in a way that suggests it could have gone on forever. Perhaps only the indisposition of the writer called a halt to its progress.
Among the mysteries of Genji, one of the foremost is the identity of its author. "Murasaki Shikibu" is a mixture of nickname and title, as we have no inkling of the author's real name. We know she was a middle-ranking lady at the court of the Heian emperor in Kyoto. She was born in 973 or 975, while the date of her death is given as early as 1014 and as late as 1025. The mystery of Murasaki's identity has led modern authors to write novels about her, filling in the gaps with fictional speculation.
If we assume the book was largely finished by 1008, this reveals Murasaki as a prodigious talent. The worldliness and psychological acuity of the story suggest a maturity that can hardly be reconciled with an author in her 20s and early 30s. In English-language translation the book comes across as astonishingly modern. For although most of the action concerns courtly love and the incorrigible Genji's adventures with women young and old, rich and poor, these intrigues are depicted with a subtlety that brings the characters to life as thinking, feeling human beings.
When we consider that the greatest landmark of Anglo-Saxon literature at this period was Beowulf, the refinement and complexity of Genji is breathtaking. It is no wonder, in the words of Khanh Trinh, curator of the Art Gallery of NSW's exhibition, Genji: The World Of The Shining Prince, that Genji has become "a symbol of Japanese cultural identity itself".
This compact but attractive show is the AGNSW's contribution to the worldwide celebrations of Genji's millennial anniversary. The major Genji exhibition was probably the one hosted by the Yokohama Museum of Art from August to November last year but there is such a wealth of imagery relating to the tale that Sydney's homage to Murasaki cannot be taken lightly.
The show brings together works from public and private collections, mostly within Australia, that testify to the influence the story has exerted on Japanese artists over the centuries. The earliest pieces on display are decorated screens and works on paper from the early to mid-1600s; the most recent are manga comics. The truly dazzling part of the show is a selection of ukiyo-e prints by famous artists such as Harunobu, Kunisada, Kuniyoshi, Hiroshige and Yoshitoshi.
It would be tedious to discuss the background to these works or analyse their formal aspects. This is a matter for connoisseurs who can make the finest distinctions concerning the style and quality of a screen or a print. What the average viewer will see is a collection of images that chart the progress of Genji, from being the treasured possession of a rich and cultured elite to its current status as a tale beloved by all strata of Japanese society and arguably the world.
The elaborate folding screens of the early Edo period were no less luxury items in the 17th century than they are today. Sumptuous in their use of gold leaf, they feature episodes from the story painted by skilled artists who followed in the footsteps of earlier masters, or consulted instruction manuals detailing the proper manner of depicting each chapter. In the catalogue we learn that such manuals were probably in circulation as early as the 12th century.
This exaggerated respect for the past and a love of fine detail are such intrinsic components of Japanese culture that one can feel a little stultified by such works. Their beauty has a formulaic aspect, while the concentration on specific events in the story will confuse viewers who are not familiar with the tale. Even when one recognises certain episodes, they seem much less vivid in these screen paintings than they do in the novel itself.
The faculty of imagination, unique to every person and continuously self-renewing, provides a more effective window onto Genji's world than these codified, hieratic figures.
The universal resonance of the tale becomes more obvious with the beginning of popular printmaking in the 17th century. The golden age of Japanese woodblock printing arrived in the Edo period (1603-1868), when cheap, accessible images of exceptional quality became widely available.
In a manner that is uncannily similar to the Australian Government's efforts to regulate the internet, the new technology of printing was accompanied by a heavy-handed attempt to police the circulation of images. Indeed, this may be a general law: the more easily images can be produced and circulated, the more draconian and paranoid will be the response of the state.
The Kansei reforms, which were instituted in 1787, led to a crackdown on artists and writers whose works were judged to corrupt public morals. The great printmaker, Utamaro, was the most notorious victim of these laws, having his hands placed in chains for 50 days. To get around the new strictures, artists turned to classical tales such as Genji to provide a cover. So while it was forbidden to produce portraits of famous actors - the pop stars of their day - it was a simple matter to portray these actors as the shining prince and other characters from the novel.
Genji became a craze in the Edo period, giving rise to parody novels and imitations, kabuki adaptations, and a spectrum of imagery that went from the cheapest of prints to luxury editions. A range of new fashions and hairstyles grew out of artists' inventions. It seemed that the story provided an inexhaustible source of inspiration for treatments of courtly love, sex, violence, honour, intrigue, landscape, formal beauty and manifestations of the supernatural. Yoshitoshi, who was famous for his pictures of ghosts, has a particularly delicate example in this show. The Twilight Beauty (1886) portrays the melancholy shade of one of Genji's lovers who died suddenly during a night the couple passed in a gloomy, rundown house.
The final items in the show are manga comics, which translate Genji into the visual language of contemporary pop culture. The catalogue tells us there are more than 30 manga editions of Genji in print, including "educational" versions for students; romanticised versions for "young girls" and "ladies"; and "adult erotic" editions that detail Genji's affairs in explicit fashion. Despite the great claims made for manga by its devotees, these comic strip images seem pedestrian when shown next to ukiyo-e prints.
Ultimately, it is not the sheer variety of Genji items that impresses but the fact that the story has held a special meaning for the Japanese for up to 1000 years. It is a record that can only generate envy in a country such as Australia, which has spent so much time in the years following colonisation trying to find a set of national values to call its own. It is a process that seems to throw up ever more embarrassing by-products. For instance, it is a great relief to think that 1000 years from today we will not be celebrating Baz Luhrmann's Australia as a defining statement of cultural identity. If even the portrayals of Genji grow more superficial as they approach the present, those things that start out as proudly, transcendently shallow are in no danger of longevity.
http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2009/01/09/1231004267415.html
sending thanks yous
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