The Tale of Genji and Its Chinese Precursors: Beyond the Boundaries of Nation, Class, and Gender by Jindan Ni

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Tale of Genji and Its Chinese Precursors: Beyond the Boundaries of Nation, Class, and Gender by Jindan Ni Nicholas Morrow Williams (bio) The Tale of Genji and Its Chinese Precursors: Beyond the Boundaries of Nation, Class, and Gender . By Jindan Ni. Lexington Books, 2020. vii, 209 pages. $111.00, cloth; $45.00, E-book. Genji monogatari (Tale of Genji) might seem to be as familiar and well understood as anything in Japan studies, but the volume under review confirms how much within the novel remains opaque and open to further interpretation. Jindan Ni's wide-ranging study offers a fresh appreciation of the novel's bold and even "transgressive" (p. 109) qualities. While the introduction places the study appropriately in the context of previous scholarship on the Genji itself, it already raises the broader perspective of "world literature" in the vein of scholars such as David Damrosch and Wiebke Denecke. Asserting the need for "a shift away from focusing on Japanology to a perspective on comparative literature" (p. 7), Ni promises to examine the novel in relation to a number of comparative issues, such as the restrictions of class or gender on personal identity. Though this compact study may not resolve any of these issues, it demonstrates their pertinence to parallel concerns of modern theorists and within contemporary pop culture, showing the perennial and cross-cultural significance of the novel's themes. The first three of the study's six chapters deal more directly with the "Chinese precursors" of the title. Ni's first chapter compares the use of the moon as the representation of an ideal, alternative world in Taketori monogatari, Genji, and also the poetry of Bai Juyi (772–846). The diffuse argument has to do with the way that each of these uses the moon to represent longing for different modes of existence; the chapter's larger significance lies in how it establishes the framework of Ni's research, examining Murasaki Shikibu and her work in light of concerns beyond the situation of Heian Japan. The second chapter examines the "living phantom" of Lady Rokujō which wreaks such havoc in the novel, comparing its function to the Chinese story of Huo Xiaoyu, whose vengeful ghost haunts her disloyal lover. Unfortunately, Ni fails in this chapter to engage with the well-known monograph on this subject by Doris Bargen. 1 The third chapter is somewhat similar in addressing the issue of "class" in the novel, particularly in relation to the hopes of lower-ranked women to raise their status via marriage [End Page 225] to Genji. Ni shows how these hopes are frustrated and compares these women's fate to several characters in the poetry of Bai Juyi. In the second half of the monograph, Ni expands her scope. The fourth and fifth chapters rely on psychoanalytic concepts of transgression and repetition, respectively, to analyze broader structures in Genji. At the beginning of chapter 4, "Rethinking the Narratives of Fallen Women," Ni mentions AKB48 idol Minegishi Minami, who shaved her head in 2013 to demonstrate her repentance after violating her pledge not to have sexual relationships with men, and uses this contemporary example to lead into a discussion of numerous acts of transgression in the novel, ranging from the acts of kaimami to Genji's clandestine relation with Fujitsubo. Ni also cites poems by Fujitsubo (p. 122) and later the Third Princess (p. 130) that illustrate their conflicted impulses to abandon the world of suffering and remarks: "In Buddhism, every form of attachment to the human world is regarded as an obstacle to reaching peace; therefore, even the bonds of lifelong duty and affection between parents and children are also considered transgressive" (p. 123). It would be valuable to pursue this line of inquiry further and to consider the symmetrical relation between transgressions against the sociopolitical order, on the one hand, and against the ideals of Buddhist emancipation on the other, but of course to do so one would have to compare the original Japanese terms that are used for these concepts, rather than identifying them with the capacious English "transgression." Chapter 5, "Repetition, Substitution, and Tragedy," confronts directly one of the signal narratological features...