Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to demonstrate and trace the quiet revolution that took place in interpretations of the Tale of Genji during the late medieval period, when an interest in Murasaki Shikibu's fictional characters for their own sake becomes an explicit feature of commentary and lectures on the work.

Paper long abstract:

There are many reasons to think that interpretation by character psychology, so central to modern reception of the Tale of Genji, both among specialists and among the general reading public, has a history as old as the Tale itself. There is substantial early evidence of such an interest, not only in passages of documented "reader response" such as found in Sarashina nikki, but also in early critical texts, above all in the effusive evaluations of the Mumyō zōshi. Indeed, similar passages of interpretation can be found within the Genji itself, most obviously in the famous "Rainy Night's Dialogue." Not for nothing is the daughter of Fujiwara no Tametoki known to us under a sobriquet taken from her own dramatis personae.

Yet even recognizing here a certain continuity, this paper argues that in the Tale of Genji's interpretive history, a sharp distinction can be drawn between earlier and later treatments of character. This is not the watershed usually posited, which turns on intellectual history, emphasizing incommensurate theories of mind. Far less speculatively, plentifully evident in newer Genji commentary of the 15th-16th centuries, this paper finds a growing concern that understanding its fictional characters constitutes an aspect of the Genji that must be taught, perhaps authoritatively. It is possible that the salient terminological lack of "psychology" has a reader-level significance just as salient. Surely, however, it is far less salient than the time and ink apparently spent by in-demand Genji lecturers like rengashi Sōgi or the nobleman Sanjōnishi Sanetaka to teach students, high and low, a proper nuanced appreciation of Hikaru Genji's feelings one mournful morning in the snow.

This paper seeks to demonstrate and trace the quiet revolution that took place in Genji interpretation during the medieval period, when an interest in Murasaki's fictional characters becomes an explicit feature of commentary and lectures on the work. Concentrating in particular on treatments of the relationship between Hikaru Genji and Lady Murasaki, it seeks to understand why, where earlier commentators were willing to leave readers as free to their response as Takasue's Daughter, from a certain point medieval Genji scholars were not.