Narrativas de Genji no período Meiji (1868-1912): do ponto de vista da relação literatura e estado

Abstract

We pick up three people’s works from Meiji era concerned with The Tale of Genji, written in the 11thcentury. The first one, a translation of The Tale of Genji done by a young diplomat established in the UK in order to show to the great powers of that country how much the Japanese culture was a high-level one. The next one, a novel by Ichiyo Higuchi, influenced by The Tale of Genji, is about a young girl who is sold by her own parents to prostitution. The novel’s name refers to the impossibility of the Japanese nation-state to deal with common people and children. The last one, a poem by Akiko Yosano cries out against the Russo-Japanese war. The reason why is that Akiko accepted various human feelings that appear in The Tale of Genji: delight, sadness and heartbreaking. For Akiko, such human feelings are more important than the war by the nation-state. So she criticizes even the Emperor Meiji as the top of the command hierarchy. Ichiyo does not cry against the contradiction of Japanese state and makes it clearly by writing the heroin’s behavior and mentality in a lively way. For these two women, Ichiyo and Akiko, The Tale of Genji is not only the classical literature, but works as the encouraging recognition of reality.