Who was Murasaki Shikibu?
I created this page because few people know who Murasaki Shikibu was. It's not meant to be a comprehensive biography, although it may become one. The information here is just what I remember from reading about her. Any errors here are unintentional and the fault of my poor memory.
Murasaki Shikibu is one of my personal heroines, although she's been dead for nearly a thousand years. Some scholars regard her as the first female author, or perhaps even the first author. At a time when women were uneducated and illiterate, she learned to read and write by paying attention to the lessons taught to her rather dull brother by a tutor. The word "Shikibu" is actually not a family name--it's a title, which translates to "Lady", because she served a female member of the royal family. She wrote the famous novel "Genji no monogatori" ("The Tale of Genji"). It was written in a Japanese so old that most Japanese people would have a hard time understanding the original text. Some of the customs she described in her book are unknown today, for example, a bowing ritual performed before the Emperor by a member of Court. "The Tale of Genji" relates the story of young Prince Genji, a swashbuckling Japanese Don Juan and probably a fictitious character. The objects of his affection, females of Japanese nobility, were kept inside their family's estates, like hostages, but it was partially to protect them from being kidnapped during in-fighting among the warrior elite, and because they were basically considered property. Prince Genji used the ladies' servants as messengers to deliver his messages of love and arrange his numerous liaisons. The book is rather long, but it's well worth the read. I haven't yet finished it, but I will, and it's easier to follow than most novels, since it's more like a group of separate "books" within a book. Anyone interested in Japan, literature, or anthropology will find this to be a great book by a remarkable woman. |