x

Women of the Japanese court in the Heian period played a large role in the development of the literature of the time, which was an even more impressive feat considering the state of the rest of the world’s culture and the role and rights of women in the rest of the world at the time. Europe was still in the Dark Ages when Lady Murasaki Shikibu wrote the world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji. The majority of other authors in Murasaki’s time were women as well; the most famous of these women include Ono no Komachi, Sei Shonagon, Izumi Shikibu, and Lady Sarashina, who were poets, diarists, and writers. Many theories have been suggested as to why women dominated literature from the Heian period, although historians usually do agree that one important factor is the difference in languages in which men and women generally wrote: the Chinese language or a Chinese-Japanese hybrid versus kana, a phonetic script. The court women of the Japanese Heian period were also well educated and had surprisingly many rights for their time. They excelled at both the writing of poetry and other forms of literature, such as diaries and romances.

The Heian period lasted from 794- 1192 CE and took its name from the capital city of the Japanese empire at the time, which is now modern day Kyoto (Morris 2). The capital itself was then called "Heian Kyo, the City of Peace and Tranquillity. Apart from having an auspicious ring (the latter part of the eighth century had witnessed a great deal of political strife and bloodshed), the name combined the first and last syllables of Heijo, Japan’s earliest real city, and Ch’ang-an, the great T’ang metropolis on which Heian, like the former capitals, was modelled" (Morris 2). At this point in time in Japan’s history, the government was headed by the Tenno, "Divine Emperor" (Hooker). The Fujiwara family, of which Murasaki was a member, was the first family to gain power in the central government. The Fujiwara family was not on the imperial throne itself, but rather each emperor would marry a Fujiwara woman, and thus "the head of their family was almost invariably the father-in-law or grandfather (or sometimes both) of the reigning sovereign" (Morris 48). They were in control from the mid-800s to the mid-1100s. This period in Japanese history was a golden age: a time of peace and national security and a time of a flourishing culture. The Japanese were finally becoming independent culturally from China with the development of their own system of writing and court culture. The groups largely responsible for the creation of this blooming culture were the communities of women in the court (Hooker).

Buddhism also played a large cultural role at the time. During the Heian period Buddhism became the state religion, and its influence is evident in their architecture, sculpture, and painting (Morris 7). The influence of Buddhism on Murasaki is reflected in the themes of her novel and her attitudes towards life. "Her writing shows that she knew a great deal about the intricate Buddhist ceremonial, its hierarchy, and its monastic orders; and we have evidence that she was familiar, not only with the official writings of Tendai (the sect with which she was mainly associated), but with the names, and to some extent the contents, of the other principal scriptures that were known in Japan. Above all, she shows herself to have been imbued with the underlying spirit of Buddhism common to all the sects— the sense of universal impermanence" (Morris 258).

Poetry was an important aspect of Japanese life in the Heian period and still is today. "Poetry in Japan is esteemed as in no other country in the world" (Janeira 28). "In view of its extraordinarily wide use, the ability to compose poetry was a sine qua non for any self-respecting gentleman or lady. A skilful [sic] verse was often the best way to win a woman’s favours or, equally, to obtain a promotion" (Morris 180). Both men and women wrote poetry to communicate with friends and family on a daily basis and for contests (Shaffer). Poetry contests were especially popular during the tenth century, and although these types of contests did not result in fresh or original verse, they helped keep poetry in mainstream culture (Morris 152). One of the emperor’s duties was to "preside at the Kosho Hajime, New Year’s poetry contest, which takes place in the Imperial Palace. Every year the emperor chooses a theme and a word for the poets competing." Poetry enthusiasts erected large stones (kahi) with their favorite poems carved on them, and twenty-one poetry "anthologies were made by imperial command between the tenth and the fifteenth centuries" (Janeira 30). The first and greatest anthology of Japanese poetry was the Manyoshu (Collection of Myriad Leaves), compiled in the late eighth century. It includes 4,516 poems from the fourth to the eighth centuries, but most specifically the seventh and eighth centuries. Seventy of the 450 poets of the Manyoshu were women, and most likely all of the women writers who wrote in the Heian period were also poets (Janeira 30). Another early anthology was the Kokinshu (Collection of Poems, Ancient and Modern), which was the first anthology compiled by order of the emperor. It was produced in about 905 and had 1,111 poems (Janeira 30).

In Murasaki’s novel, the characters often speak in verse. "The Tale of Genji, for example, contains some eight hundred original poems, apart from innumerable quotations. For Murasaki and her fellow writers in prose fiction this verse was no casual embellishment but a fundamental aspect of literary style as well as an essential ingredient of any work attempting to describe daily life among the aristocracy" (Morris 177).

Four main types of poetry have developed in Japan: the choka, the haiku, the renga, and the waka (Shaffer). The choka was a long narrative poem that alternated lines of five and seven syllables but never was longer than 150 lines. This form "was not continued after the eighth century" (Janeira 29). Haiku were seventeen syllables all together and usually a line of five syllables, a line of seven, and another line of five. This form of poetry was revolutionized and first mastered by Basho Matsuo, who lived from 1644 to 1694 CE and is commonly considered the greatest Japanese haiku poet (Janeira 35). Haiku continue to be written today. The renga was linked verse, usually written by more than one poet. It had alternating verses of seven, five, seven, seven and seven, seven syllables (Shaffer). The waka, the most common form of which was the tanka, was thirty-one syllables in lines of five, seven, five, seven, seven (Shaffer). The most common subjects of classic poetry were "lyricism animated by the pleasure of contemplating the beauty of nature, the joys and sorrows of love, parting and death, and the melancholy towards the passing of time" (Janeira 32). "The tone is nearly always emotional, and melancholy is its prominent note" (Janeira 32).

Besides poetry, there were other forms of literature written at the time: nikki (diaries), kiko (travel accounts), zuihitsu (essays), and monogatari (tales, romances). Heian diaries were not conventional diaries by any means. Richard Hooker explains:

One of the more famous nikki is The Gossamer Years, written by a woman of the court about her unhappy marriage. "The diary chronicles the sheer loneliness of an upper class woman in a standard marriage. The Mother of Michitsuna is well aware of romances and love stories circulating in the court and chronicles how the fiction of the time does not correspond to the reality" (Hooker). Another nikki is The Poems of the Mother of the Ajari Jojin, written by an eighty-year-old woman in the last years of her life. The woman was "the great-granddaughter of the Emperor Daigo, which makes the author the highest ranking Heian woman writer" that we know (Hooker). She writes of her "suffering wrought by an ungrateful son" (Hooker). However, not all diaries of the time were complaining or unhappy. Izumi Shikibu’s diary has a completely different tone, chronicling her romance with the Prince Atsumichi. Lady Sarashina’s diary, which spans her life from age twelve to middle age, has a different tone from all of the previous mentioned diaries, consisting largely of dreams and romances.

The tales or romances known as monogatari were one of the most popular types of literature (with the exception of poetry, of course), especially among women. Ivan Morris writes, "Girls of the Heian upper class delved into their monogatari with the same excitement and with much the same motives that inspired the daughters of strict Victorian families when they read the novels of the Bronte sisters" (209).

These four forms (diaries, travel accounts, essays, romances) were pioneered by women and written in the hiragana phonetic or onnade script, "women’s writing," in which a symbol represented a syllable, making it easier and quicker to write (Delacour). Chinese was considered the language of scholars at the time, and women were not supposed to read or write Chinese (Delacour). Indeed, when Murasaki’s servants found her reading in Chinese, they were quite disapproving. "Murasaki mentions that she would occasionally read some of the volumes to while away the long days when she was on leave from court and living at her father’s house. Since Chinese studies were socially taboo for her sex, Murasaki’s maids expressed dismay, mingled with dire forebodings, when they observed their mistress at this unorthodox pastime" (Morris 257). However, since Chinese and the Chinese-Japanese hybrid language (kambun) were intended for official records, they were not conducive to writing prose. On the other hand, the kana script allowed women to write freely in vernacular Japanese, so it was the women who wrote in these genres and made the greatest contributions to literature in Heian period (Morris 200).

Another suggested reason to explain the large proportion of women fiction writers in the Heian period is that women had more free time to write. However, men had a good deal of leisure time as well and wrote nonetheless. Women dominated the genre of fiction; while men did write fiction, rarely was their fiction as realistic as that of the women. Donald Keene writes in his essay on the subject, "They brooded over their lives . . .worried about other peoples’ feelings and motives; they imagined men . . . more considerate than the ones that actually visited them. Fiction was for them an extension of their lives, and not an excursion into fantasy, as it was for the men." Yet another explanation for the "upsurge of literary genius in the women of the Heian period" is "the fact that the aristocracy had lost its role as intelligentsia, this role having passed into the hands of women" (Janeira 57).

The women of the Heian court had surprisingly many rights, especially considering the time period. In fact, Ivan Morris writes that "women were remarkably well off, and it is only since the Second World War that the position of Japanese women has become better than that of their ancestors a thousand years ago" (Morris 209). Women could own and inherit property, and some even had economic independence (Morris 206). Daughters were more valued than sons (for the only time in Japanese history) because of "marriage politics;" women could marry above their rank, which would be good for their family, but men remained whatever status they were born with (Morris 207-8). For example, a woman from a low-ranking family could become a concubine to the emperor and possibly become empress, and if she bore a son, when he became emperor, she would be Imperial matriarch, a position of much power. Women were protected legally from any physical violence their husbands might commit. Laws specifically said a husband could not beat his wife, and he could only kill her if he caught her having sex with another man (Morris 206-7).

Women of the Heian court were well educated and literate, which enabled them to make the great contributions to Japanese literature that they made. Their education had a particular emphasis on culture: calligraphy, music, and poetry were the basic components of their education. A tenth-century father commanded his daughter: "First you must study penmanship. Next you must learn to play the seven-string zither better than anyone else. And also you must memorize all the poems in the twenty books of the Kokin Shu" (Morris 209). Many women were especially interested in reading monogatari (tales and romances), although those were not essential parts of their education. Women of the court had a great deal of free time, so the monogatari helped keep them occupied for part of that time as well as gave them a view of the outside world, which sheltered Heian women rarely got to see (Morris 209). "Many Heian ladies also took an interest in sewing and dyeing materials—or at least in supervising this work; in Murasaki’s time dyeing demanded a particularly high degree of skill and artistic sensitivity" (Morris 212).

Murasaki Shikibu was probably the most famous woman of her time. Born in the 970s (about 978 CE) to a branch of the Fujiwara family, the writer was not really named Murasaki Shikibu. Because her real name is unknown, she is called Murasaki for one of the female characters in her novel and Shikibu from her father’s position at court. Her father, Tametoki, was a government official who started his career as a student of literature (Morris 253). When she was little, she learned Chinese with her brother and in fact was more proficient than him, and her father is quoted as saying, "If only you were a boy how proud and happy I should be" (Waley V). She was familiar with Chinese as Buddhist classics as well as Japanese literature (Morris 257). "Between 994 and 998 Murasaki married her kinsman Fujiwara no Nobutaka, a lieutenant in the Imperial Guard" (Waley V). Her husband died in 1001 and for five years after his death she lived at home (Morris 254). It is commonly accepted that she began working on The Tale of Genji at this point. In 1004 her father arranged for Murasaki to enter the service of Empress Akiko, who was somewhere in her late teens at the time (Waley says sixteen, Morris says nineteen). Murasaki began her diary in 1008 and kept it for about two years, but while it provides insight into her daily life, it is not useful chronologically as Heian diaries were more literature than records of events (Morris 255). Nothing much is known about Murasaki’s life after she stopped writing her diary because historians have no other sources on her life (Morris 255). One theory is that she became a nun in 1015 and died in 1031, but Morris writes that there is "little factual basis" for this and Murasaki probably (though no certainly) "either died or retired into the seclusion of a convent at some time between 1025 and 1031 at the age of about 50" (255).

Murasaki’s novel, The Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari), is considered the first great novel. It is also one of the world’s longest novels ever written, originally fifty-four books or chapters, which were separately bound. Arthur Waley’s translation is 630,000 words and is missing a book, which makes The Tale of Genji twice as long as Don Quixote, War and Peace, and The Brothers Karamzov (Morris 265). The novel itself spans over three generations, seventy-five years, and four hundred characters. It "is about the love adventures of Shining Prince Genji, son of the emperor and a concubine. The story continues with Genji’s children and grandchildren" (Janeira 56). The character of Genji is idealized, but the setting is described realistically. "This combination of idealism and truth gives great enchantment to the novel. The tale is indeed remarkable for its vivid description of the social milieu, for the psychological character studies drawn with subtlety and deep insight" (Janeira 56). Morris writes, "one device Murasaki uses with particular effect is anticipation or build-up. Frequently she will hint at the existence of some character long before that person enters the action of the novel, or she will adumbrate some sequence of events that is to take place many years in the future. . . another aspect of Murasaki’s style that serves to tighten the structure of her narrative is the deliberate repetition of situations, settings, and relationships between characters" (267-8). Though The Tale of Genji was written long ago, it is considered a masterpiece by the standards of today. In the novel Murasaki writes:

Murasaki was by no means the only woman writer of her period. Janeira writes, "we find in the same epoch some remarkable diaries whose authors were women. Women were the only notable writers for a period of about one hundred years. To Ono no Komachi is due a reputation of ardent love and passion which is continued by Lady Ise, Izumi Shikibu, Sei Shonagon, and Akiko Yosano, all of whom have shown their superiority over men in a country where men have at times enjoyed a social superiority as probably in no other civilized country" (57). Morris agrees that "during the period of about one hundred years that spans the world of The Tale of Genji, almost every noteworthy author who wrote in Japanese was a woman. Such overwhelming literary predominance of women is a rare, if not unique, phenomenon in cultural history; and it is doubly surprising that it should occur in a part of the world where women have traditionally been condemned to a position of irremediable inferiority" (199).

Sei Shonagon was one of Murasaki Shikibu’s peers and rivals who authored Makura no Soshi (The Pillow Book), considered "the second great work of Japanese literature" (Hooker). Murasaki wrote of her:

However, Murasaki’s view of her was tinged with envy and bitterness. Janeira writes that Sei was "one of the most remarkable of the Japanese diarists . . . Sei Shonagon unveils in her extraordinary book a spontaneous, witty, daring, and at times even impudent vein which for centuries did not show up again in Japanese literature. The sharp spirit of this most lucid woman was mature with wisdom, refined with cynicism. Her spirit, ardently loving love and enjoying the delicate beauty of fine things, again puts Japan ahead of everything that had until that time been written in this genre" (78). He goes on to praise her style and understanding and calls her a genius. Morris writes, "Sei was the opposite of timid and gentle. Her greatest pleasure, except for writing, was the exchange of repartee, especially when this allowed her to display her scattered erudition or to discomfit some unfortunate courtier who had allowed himself to become the butt of her sarcastic wit" (252). Sei seemed to have a more vibrant personality than Murasaki: "The Japanese compare Murasaki to the immaculate plum blossom, Sei to the more colourful, yet less pure, cherry" (Morris 251). Hooker writes, "together these two works, the Genji monogatari and the Pillow Book, which developed out of strong women's communities and cultural practices, became the defining literary models for the aesthetics of Japanese literature in the remainder of Japanese history."

Ono no Komachi was a poet who lived c. 850 CE. Legend depicts her as a beautiful but haughty young woman who broke many hearts but became a poor, ugly hag in her old age. "She is one of the best known, and most frequently quoted, poets of the Kokinshu, the first of a series of poetry anthologies compiled by Imperial order in 905" ("Three Heian Women"). All of her poems were written in tanka, which was almost the only form used in Japan until the haiku was created. Her poetry is noted for its metaphors, multiple entendres, and emotional intensity.

Thinking about him

Izumi Shikibu was a notable poet and diarist, who was born to a Japanese provincial governor (Disse). She joined the court in her early teens, was married to the governor of Izumi in 995, and had a daughter in 997. One of her most popular poems is "I go out of the darkness."

In 1000 Izumi began an affair with Prince Tametaki, and her husband consequently divorced her. Tametaki died not long after, and then Izumi began an affair with his brother, Prince Atsumichi. Their affair continued until Atsumichi’s death in 1007 (Disse). Many of Izumi’s poems come from this period of her life.

Another female writer is Lady Sarashina, whose real name is unknown, as is the case of the majority of women writers from this time period. Like Izumi Shikibu, Lady Sarashina was a poet and diarist. Slantchev says of Sarashina Nikki, Sarashina’s diary, "The tone of the work, in marked contrast with the ebullient and somewhat conceited style of Sei Shonagon, may appear whining and dreamy to an unreal extent. Lady Sarashina is overly sensitive, even by Heian standards, for she cries often and at the slightest provocation." However, he says, when she was young, her "seemingly profound grief" was easily dispelled and as she matured there was a "noticeable decline in weeping," especially after her marriage. In the diary, Sarashina also wrote of how she dreamed of Prince Genji of Murasaki’s novel. "The only thing that I could think of was the Shining Prince who would some day come to me, as noble and beautiful as in the romance" (Janeira 55).

Because men wrote mostly in Chinese, the language of scholars, and the women wrote in a script that could convey vernacular Japanese, the majority of writers in the Heian period were women. The women dominated the men in writing poetry, diaries, monogatari, and other forms of literature. These women of the court, Murasaki Shikibu, Sei Shonagon, Ono no Komachi, Izumi Shikibu, and Lady Sarashina, to mention a few, were literate, cultured, well educated, and responsible for contributing greatly to the development of Japanese prose.

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Shikibu, Izumi. "I go out of the darkness." Sacred Places. 11 Dec. 2002. <http://home.earthlink.net/~folia/sacred.html>

Slantchev, Branislav L. Rev. of As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams by Lady Sarashina, trans. Arthur Waley. Aug. 2001. <http://www.gotterdammerung.org/books/reviews/morris-bridge-of-dreams.html>

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