Genji monogatari: reception and translation

Abstract

After much pleading and praying, a young woman newly arrived in the Capital is finally presented with a box containing the "fifty-some" scrolls of the Genji monogatari. She reads the text day and night until she knows passages by heart, dreaming of growing up to be as beautiful as Yûgao or Ukifune. This famous passage of the Sarashina nikki is an early example of its reception, ca. 1020, bearing witness to the fascination that Murasaki Shikibu's work has continued to exert on readers across the centuries. This panel will look at four episodes in the complex reception of the work. Michael Jamentz presents new find- ings about a twelfth-century Buddhist invocation to Genji monogatari. Lawrence Marceau examines how the eighteenth- century scholar Motoori Norinaga "filled in a gap" in the Genji by writing his own account, called Tamakura, of the love affair between the young Genji and Rokujô. Reception through modern Japanese and foreign language translation is the topic of the papers by Machiko Midorikawa and Charles DeWolf. Both address issues raised by the new complete translation by Royall Tyler (2001).