The Diary of Lady Murasaki Read online

  LANGUAGE AND STYLE

  The impact of Chinese civilization was felt everywhere in ninth-century Japan but perhaps nowhere more strongly than in matters of language. The Japanese had no writing system of their own prior to their contact with China, so literature itself was a concept learned from Chinese example. By Murasaki’s time, written Chinese had been the main vehicle for the bureaucracy for some centuries. By the mid ninth century a syllabary had been developed from a set of Chinese characters used solely for their phonetic value, and this finally led to the growth of written Japanese. In the early stages this was restricted to private correspondence and native poetry. We know from a famous passage in Murasaki’s diary that it was still considered unbecoming for a woman to know Chinese, a useful fiction if the intention was to keep the language of bureaucracy in male hands. What this did, however, was to encourage the women to develop written Japanese for their own ends, and in particular for self-expression. So it is that Heian Japan offers us some of the earliest examples of an attempt by women to define the self in textual terms.

  Part of the importance of women such as Murasaki is, therefore, their role in the development of Japanese prose. It is sometimes forgotten how difficult a process it is to forge a flexible written style out of a language that has only previously existed in a spoken form. Spoken language assumes another immediate presence and hence can leave things unsaid. Gestures, eye contact, shared experiences and particular relationships all provide a background which allows speech to be at times fragmentary, allusive and even ungrammatical. Written language on the other hand must assume an immediate absence. In order for communication to take place the writer must develop strategies to overcome this absence, this gap between the producer and receiver of the message. The formidable difficulties that most of these texts still present to the modern reader are in large measure attributable not to obscure references (although there are some, of course), nor to deliberate archaisms or what we commonly refer to as ‘flowery language’, but rather to the fact that the prose has still not entirely managed to break free from its spoken origins.

  Murasaki’s diary can be read as a kind of testing ground for different styles – three styles, to be exact: first, the kind of factual record one might expect from someone practising to be a chronicler of the time; second, the kind of self-analytical reflection that one might expect of a writer of fiction; and third, a letter to a friend or relative.

  We may find the record sections of the diary somewhat tedious, but it is important to remember that such a style and such a subject was still fairly new; records were usually written by men in Sino-Japanese, a hybrid form of writing that was, in a sense, designed for this specific purpose and was certainly far removed from the spoken form of either language. Murasaki was by no means the first to attempt this kind of impersonal, decentred writing in Japanese, but there can be no doubt that it was still in the process of being formed. It was something that had to be practised, something that an aspiring writer in her own native language would have to be able to handle without difficulty. It thus holds an interest and a stylistic importance that is difficult for us to re-create today, especially in translation.

  The second style is, if anything, even more important, because without it Murasaki’s work would not have the kind of strong appeal it does. Sino-Japanese was so artificial and inflexible a medium that it is difficult to imagine a Japanese of the time being able to use it to express innermost thoughts. Perhaps Fujiwara no Sanesuke (957–1046) in his diary Shōyūki comes closest, but still the gap between what he finds himself revealing and what Murasaki can reveal is vast. In this sense, then, Murasaki’s diary was another major step, not only for women, but for the language as a whole.

  Lastly, whether or not one believes the ‘letter’ section of the diary to be a real letter or a fictional one, it shows the author dealing with yet another problem: how to maintain a fairly recently developed literary style in a context which closely approached the spoken. This is perhaps the most difficult of the three experiments. Near the end of the letter there are in fact signs that the style is breaking down, degenerating into precisely those disjointed rhythms that are characteristic of speech.

  POETRY

  Here and there in the diary, the reader will come across the odd poem or exchange of poems. To an English reader they may seem cryptic in the extreme and somewhat puzzling. A Japanese poem appears at first sight to be little more than a statement thirty-one syllables long. There is no rhyme and no word stress to form the basis of a prosody, so the basic rhythm is provided by an alternating current of 5/7 or 7/5 syllables. The form that we find in the diary, so-called tanka or ‘short poems’, is made up of five such measures: 5/7/5/7/7. There is often a caesura before the final 7/7 but not always. These measures are phrases but not really lines as the term is usually understood, and most Japanese poetry is in fact found written in a single vertical line. It is for this reason that the usual poetic techniques in English cannot be brought into play when attempting a translation. Add to this the fact that much use is made of various kinds of wordplay, intertextual reference, inversion and the like, and it should be obvious why translation is an extremely hazardous affair. Japanese poetry may be short but the result is often a complex weave of words: the texture is the poem.

  Poems as short as this do not survive well on their own. Clever statements usually call for some kind of response, otherwise they simply hang there in mid-air. Hardly surprising then to find that poems like these often occur in pairs, their natural habitat being dialogue. They are thus ideally suited to flirtatious banter, used as one of the most important weapons in what we might call a Japanese version of the ‘battle of the sexes’. But that is not all. It would appear that the ability to toss off an appropriate poem on any occasion was a sine qua non of court life. The number of good poets was probably as limited as it always is, and much of the poetry was certainly mediocre, but it is a commonplace of court societies everywhere that the most ordinary and obvious of activities becomes wrapped in ritual and technique so that essential difference may be preserved and highlighted. Legitimacy, and indeed raison d’être, lies within such difference, and what could be more exclusive than the habit of conversing in pairs of cryptic 31-syllable statements? It amounted to a special, artificial dialect. The problem with artificiality of this kind, however, is that it becomes extremely difficult to identify a personal voice behind the strict conventions that grow up around such poetry. Given that much of it was, in any case, meant to be indirect, allusive, and ironic in tone, perhaps it is best to assume that to look for a personal voice is a fool’s errand.

  RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND

  Although it is extremely doubtful whether Murasaki would have had a concept of ‘religion’ as a definable area of human experience, she would have certainly recognized the difference between sacred and profane. She would not, however, have seen ‘Shintō’ and Buddhism as being traditions in any way commensurate. Indeed they managed to coexist precisely because they fulfilled very different needs and so came into conflict but rarely. The use of a term such as ‘Shintō’ (‘Way of the gods’) in such a context is in fact anachronistic, because during this period it was neither an organized religion nor a recognizable ‘way’ to be followed by an individual. The attempt to create a doctrine and so to provide a viable alternative to Buddhism came much later in Japanese history. Shintō was not an intellectual system in any sense. It was rather the practice of certain rituals connected with fertility, avoidance of pollution, and pacification of the spirits of a myriad gods. At the individual level this was not far removed from simple animism, an activity governed by superstition and the need to pacify whatever was unknown, unseen and dangerous. At the level of court and state, however, we find something more formalized, a collection of cults connected to aristocratic families and centred on certain important sites and shrines. Although there did exist formal institutional links between these shrines, in the sense that the government made attempts to put the
m under some measure of bureaucratic control, they were essentially discrete cults; we cannot, therefore, treat ‘Shintō’ as a true system. The Fujiwara clan, for example, had its cult centre with its shrine at Kasuga in the Yamato region. This was not linked in any meaningful sense to the shrines at Ise, where the cult centre of the Imperial Family was situated. The Imperial Family sought legitimacy for its rule via the foundation myths propagated in the Kojiki (‘Record of ancient matters’) of 712, but from a Western perspective it is important to understand that this text was mytho-historical in nature, not sacred in the sense of having been ‘revealed’. It was not itself of divine origin. It merely explained the origins of Japan and its gods and justified the rule of the Emperor by the simple expedient of linking him directly to these gods. Few could have questioned the story it told; but by the same token it was nothing more than a record of the country’s past. The concept of a sacred text does not exist apart from prayers and incantations.

  Cult Shintō, if we can call it that without suggesting too much of a system, was therefore linked to matters of public, state and clan ritual rather than private concerns. Of the many centres in Japan, it was those at Ise and at Kamo, just north of the capital, that loomed largest in the consciousness of women such as Murasaki. Both these shrines were central to the legitimacy of the imperial house. There were, of course, others; but these were the most prominent. Ise was by the far the oldest but was also far removed from the capital, linked only by the presence there of the High Priestess of the Ise Shrines, usually a young girl of imperial lineage sent as imperial representative. Few courtiers would have ever been to Ise and most would have had only a very hazy idea of where it lay. Kamo, however, was just north of the capital and within fairly easy access. The institution of High Priestess of the Kamo Shrines was in fact only a fairly recent one, begun in the reign of Emperor Saga in 810. The capital had moved from Nara in 794 and the Imperial Family must have decided that there was a need to create a shrine in the vicinity of the new city. As was the case with Ise, a young girl was chosen to represent the Emperor at the shrine, to ensure the correct rituals were carried out and to maintain ritual purity. Although the intention had been to choose a new girl for every new reign, by Murasaki’s time one person, Senshi (964–1035), a daughter of Emperor Murakami, had become a permanent occupant of this post. She held it continuously from 975–1031.

  We know from Murasaki’s diary, as well as other sources, that Princess Senshi had a formidable reputation as a poet and that she ‘held court’ at her home near the Kamo shrines. Although Murasaki betrays a certain prickliness at the way this reputation was spread abroad, she nevertheless recognizes Senshi’s worth as the leader of a kind of rival literary coterie. We therefore have the somewhat odd spectacle of someone who was supposed to be living in purity and seclusion holding court to visitors of a distinctly secular cast, male as well as female. Perhaps it was for this reason that Sei Shōnagon in her Pillow Book considered Kamo to be ‘deep in bad karma’.

  It happens that not only is Princess Senshi central to one of the main passages in Murasaki’s diary but also she provides a good example of the kind of tensions that could exist between Cult Shintō and Buddhism. These traditions are normally thought of as being in total harmony in this period, fulfilling complementary roles. This may well have been the case in many shrine-temple complexes where gods were simply seen as the other side of the Buddhist coin, where every shrine had some sort of Buddhist temple and every temple its protective shrine, but in the restricted world of a place like the Kamo shrines and at Ise, the demands of the two traditions certainly did clash. We know from the collection of Senshi’s poetry Hosshin wakashū (‘Collection of poems for the awakening of faith’) that she was constantly torn between the demands of ritual purity, which forced her to avoid contact with all forms of pollution including Buddhism, and her own deeply felt need to find salvation. She was a firm believer in the message of the Lotus Sūtra and in Amida as saviour.

  Cult Shintō, then, seems tohave offered no personal creed, not even for one of its High Priestesses. The impression we get from the literature of the time is that these shrines were not places where an individual would go to pray. Access was usually strictly limited and in most cases remained the prerogative of priests alone. They were sacred sites, where the gods revealed their presence. Once or twice a year public rituals were held, which often took the form of festivals, but the shrines themselves were remote, places of ritual purity whose careful maintenance was essential for natural good order and to ensure future prosperity. It is clear from the case of Princess Senshi that only Buddhism could provide the kind of personal consolation that she needed.1

  So what of Buddhism at this time? By the tenth century, this import from India and China was firmly entrenched in Japanese court society. It will be noticed, for example, that the majority of the rituals that surround the events in the diary are Buddhist. But there are many forms of Buddhism and the ritual side that we see here is largely tantric in nature. The priests mentioned in the text came from the two major Heian sects, Tendai and Shingon, both of which wielded considerable power. To someone like Murasaki, this is superb, awe-inspiring spectacle with the chanting of sūtras, the burning of incense and quite violent rites of exorcism. It is this kind of ritualized Buddhism that became linked to the native cults via a series of ‘identifications’ of certain gods with certain Buddhas.

  We can tell from Murasaki’s diary, however, that there was another kind of Buddhism, the worship of Amida (Amitābha) Buddha. This seemed to answer a more personal need for salvation. Princess Senshi felt the same urge and, despite the tremendous obstacles in her way, chose the same path. Murasaki herself must have been well aware that the Buddhist rituals she saw at court and the path of personal salvation through the worship of Amida were at root connected, but nevertheless one senses a divide. Although we have not yet reached the stage when Amidism becomes to all intents and purposes a monotheistic religion, there can be no doubt that it, and not tantrism, provided the major source of personal solace for these women.

  ARCHITECTURE

  Much of the ‘vagueness’ for which Heian literature is supposedly famous stems in large part from a natural assumption of prior knowledge. Take, for example, the word ‘palace’ as used by Murasaki in this diary. One might expect this to refer to the imposing structure which dominates all formalized maps of the capital, but in fact it refers to a mansion that Emperor Ichijō was forced to use as a substitute because the buildings formally designated as his proper palace had burned down. Ichijō had already been forced to live in a substitute residence twice before, but this was to be the last and the longest of his absences. The main Imperial Palace burned down on Kankō 2 (1005).11.15. He then moved to a number of different buildings before finally settling at the Ichijō mansion on Kankō 3 (1006).3.4. He was to stay here until his abdication and death in 1011, with the exception of the period from Kankō 6 (1009).10.4 to Kankō 7 (1010).11.28, when the Ichijō mansion itself burned down and he had to move to the Biwa mansion. It is this mansion that in fact forms the backdrop for the very last section of Murasaki’s diary.

  It is useful to remember that for a good portion of his reign, then, Ichijō had to rely mainly on Fujiwara largesse and did not have a proper home base for his activities. The Ichijō mansion was very close to the main palace grounds, near the north-east corner, and belonged to his mother Senshi. His posthumous name came from his association with this mansion, and he may have felt fairly much at home there; but the fact remains that it was a Fujiwara possession. The move to the Biwa mansion – so named after the loquat trees (biwa) in the gardens – must have been even more restricting; this residence was much further to the east in what can only be called the ‘Fujiwara quarter’ of the city, and it had come into Michinaga’s possession in 1002. During this period, then, the Emperor was living under his father-in-law’s roof.

  The diary opens with an autumn scene at the Tsuchimikado mansion. This belonged
to Michinaga’s wife Rinshi, but Michinaga himself started to use it as his principal residence from around 991. It did not become his property as such until much later, when in 1016–17 he paid for its reconstruction after yet another disastrous fire. It occupied a large area (two ‘blocks’, 2493 × 1187 metres) in the far north-east corner of the capital. It was here that Michinaga’s daughter, Empress Shōshi, came to give birth. Partly this was to avoid the strict taboo on the shedding of blood in the precincts of the Imperial Palace (or what stood for them), but it must have also presented Michinaga with a marvellous opportunity to show off his wealth and power. Murasaki’s description of the occasion of the Imperial visit to the mansion to see Shoōshi and the new baby, when hewas hardly given any time together with her (‘The Emperor went in to see Her Majesty, but it was not long before there were shouts that it was getting late and that the palanquin was ready to leave’), shows just how much Ichijō was at the mercy of protocol and bereft of any say in his own activities.

  Domestic architecture of the period was very distinctive, and it is important for the reader of Murasaki’s diary to be aware of its main features. To understand a particular action, or indeed a particular emotional reaction, one must know where people are sitting, what the building looks like, and what the people are looking at. The mansions themselves were only rarely more than one storey high but they covered a large area; a series of rectangular buildings linked by covered walkways, the central structure being by far the largest. The whole residence would be enclosed by walls with entrance gates on at least three sides. The main buildings would lie to the north with wings east and west extending out into the gardens, which lay to the south. All construction was of wood, with bark rather than tiled roofs. The base was raised on thick stilts about one or two feet high to provide as much airflow as possible during the semi-tropical summer months and because of the generally damp atmosphere of Japan. The architecture was open, numerous pillars supporting a large expanse of roof on elaborate trusses. The roof line would sweep down well beyond the pillars so forming an extra protected area skirting the building. Outside that there would be a veranda. Inner space was divided from outer sometimes by wooden walls but for the most part by a series of removable screens. These were designed so that the top half could be swung up; the bottom half needed more effort because it had to be removed in its entirety. Behind this there would be a layer of blinds and perhaps curtains. The core characteristic of these buildings was that the