Marking off the playing field

Posted on March 16th, 2008 in Tale of Genji by benmc

Croquet in the backyard — a favorite memory from my family’s annual trips to Iowa in the heat of summer.

Within an hour or two after piling out of the van, and after we’d had iced tea and cookies in Grandma’s kitchen, we’d tromp out back to set up the croquet with all the hoops and stakes, wooden balls and mallets.

My grandpa would mark off the playing field, his long strides measuring the distance from one hoop to the next.

Then, TOCCKK!, the first ball is struck and the game begins.

Something like this is going on in the second chapter of Tale of Genji. After a fast-paced opener, this chapter settles down and we begin to see how the game is to be played. Genji is now 17 years old and a young captain in the palace guards. He and the other palace residents are confined indoors during early summer rains.

So young Genji ends up holding court with his close friend and two older men. The four of them start talking about women — the ideal woman, women of rank they’ve observed, and women they’ve known.

I get the impression that the narrator is pacing off the course that will be run through the next 52 chapters — rehearsing what traits are attractive in a woman, which ones are dangerous, and what’s expected of a wife. And although Genji should be paying attention, the narrator points out that he’s found dozing off at intervals while the older men are spouting off conventional wisdom and sharing personal missteps.

As they talk about the ideal woman, we get an idea of how hard it is (impossible, even?) for a real woman to meet the criteria of the day.

For example, it’s the woman’s responsibility to keep her husband faithful — and if he isn’t, she’s the one who needs to fix it. As one of the older gentlemen says, “Most of the time it is the wife’s attitude that helps her husband’s fancies to pass.”

Like croquet, there are definite rules and an order to things that must be followed. Break the rules, and you’re out of luck — back to the starter’s stake. Go through the hoops, and you get to advance.

But I have a feeling that Genji will be one of those players who doesn’t like to play by the rules.

Genji starts with a bang

Posted on March 9th, 2008 in Tale of Genji by benmc

The Tale of Genji wastes no time getting underway — in the opening pages, I’ve already heard the story of a controversial love that rocks the emperor’s court and that ends in the untimely death of a beloved mother and wife.

It seems that Alan Ball and his Six Feet Under writers were borrowing from a formula developed at least 1,000 years earlier.

And although Murasaki Shikibu, author of The Tale of Genji, wasn’t the first to use this narrative technique, she’s a master at it.

It reminds me of Six Feet Under, the HBO series about a family of undertakers that started each episode with a death — usually an accidental and quite creative death. The rest of that episode would weave in the story of that person’s funeral, and often the events leading up to their death.

So as Genji’s mother is laying on her deathbed, she composes a poem in response to the emperor’s desperate command for her to stay with him. She “was so touched that she managed to breathe:

Now the end has come, and I am filled with sorrow that our ways must part:
the path I would rather take is the one that leads to life.”

This is the first of some 795 poems in the volume (according to translator Royall Tyler’s introduction). It’s a good one to start with — talk about cutting to the quick. This little poem, which sounds to me a bit like Robert Frost’s “road less traveled,” carries a truckload of sadness.

Her death plunges the court into intrigue, and we start to find out more about her 3-year-old son, Genji. He’s much beloved by the emperor, he’s incredibly good looking, and he’s limited by his mother’s lower status that prevents him from becoming an acceptable heir to the throne.

Death in the opening act. Sounds like as good a place as any to begin. I’m ready for more…