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The Diary of Lady Murasaki
What Do The Two Years Tell You?
Date:14, Jun, 2018
Investigated and Written by Misaka Youhei
About our introductory articles


Hello, everyone. I'm very happy that you are here with me now. Today I'm talking about the Diary of Lady Murasaki. Have you ever heard Lady Murasaki? She's the author of Genji Monogatari (Tale of Genji), a popular classical long story.

However, we cannot naturally get what she was. She is a woman who'd lived about 1,000 years ago. No one can actually meet her today. She was beautiful or not? Tall or not? Soft or not? No way to know.

There's not no clue to know what she was. She left her diary (a kind of her essay), the Diary of Lady Murasaki. Fujiwara-no Michinaga invited Murasaki to the Court for a big hit of the great novel. She wrote about the two years (between 1008 and 1010) of whole in the Court life.

Now, let me talk about my opinion, just one man's opinion, for a while. The diary includes some that I can seldom accept as a real thing.

She, for instance, deeply castigated Sei-shonagon who wrote Makura-no Soshi in the Diary of Lady Murasaki. Mysteriously, she had never met Sei actually. Sei retired from the Court in 1001. Murasaki was invited to the Court as a teacher of Fujiwara-no Shoshi, daughter of Michinaga, in 1006. No logic shows she could meet Sei-shonagon.

Some researchers say that Lady Murasaki was truly invited to the Court as an attendant of Minamoto-no Rinshi, a wife of Michinaga, in 987. So she had met Sei. No evidence, however. The hypothesis cannot show why Murasaki could get into the Court because she hadn't written the Tale of Genji at the time. It's said that she began to write the story by a moment of her husband's death in 1001.

My conclusion, just one man's opinion, says that it includes some based on political correctness. We might need to read "what is not written," not just what's written. Of course, you can simply read as an essay. You will be softly smiled at by Lady Murasaki there.


About the Diary of Lady Murasaki

・Written by Lady Murasaki
・Established in 1010 (about)





 

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