The Odyssey and The Tale of Genji: on human nature, customs, and literary tradition

In an earlier blog post, I wrote “I actually had more trouble trying to understand the characters in The Tale of Genji (about 1,000 years old) than the ones in the Odyssey (about 2,700 years old).” My friend Susan asked why that was, so perhaps I’ll write a bit about the subject.

The Odyssey is—if we have to boil it down to one word—about homecoming. The only thing strange about is the concept of xenia—hospitality and guest-friendship—because why does Odysseus’s household have to keep feeding the suitors and allowing them to eat up the estate in his absence? Athena’s involvement is perhaps also a bit strange, but not that strange if you think of her as a character—the gods are like human beings, just with power—and if you’re used to the depiction of the gods’ interferences in Greek tragedy. Everything else is familiar: Odysseus’s urge to go home and his companions’ unthinking recklessness and Poseidon’s anger and Telemakhos’s hatred of the suitors and Odysseus’s caution upon his return and Penelope’s suffering and so on are all familiar.

The Tale of Genji is closer to us in time, but more alien. It requires us to adjust to that world, but many things remain baffling and incomprehensible, if not downright reprehensible: on the one hand, men and women at the Heian court who aren’t married to each other can’t even have a conversation except through servants, and upon further acquaintance, behind screens; but on the other hand, someone like Genji has sex with everyone and nothing seems out of bounds, as he has sex with (or even forces himself on) his first cousin and his best friend’s lover and his own stepmother and other relatives, and he even abducts an eight-year-old and raises her to be his perfect wife.  

Not only so, the characters don’t have names! As the narrator is a lady-in-waiting, like Murasaki Shikibu, she has to refer to them by titles or nicknames or some other ways—we have to keep track of hundreds of characters without names (unless you take the easy way and read another translation instead of Royall Tyler’s). 

That doesn’t mean that The Tale of Genji can’t be appreciated, or even loved, by readers used to Western culture and tradition. It is among my Top 10 novels (or at least was, when I last made the list over a year ago). Once you (manage to) get past the weird stuff in The Tale of Genji, many experiences and feelings are—to use a word lots of readers seem to like—relatable: love and jealousy and heartbreak and suffocation and disappointment and envy and loneliness and fear and grief, etc. Murasaki is especially good at writing about death, grief, women’s suffering, and the impermanence of everything. Her novel simply requires more efforts from the reader. 

But it’s not just that 11th century novel, I also had a hard time when I was exploring 20th century Japanese novels. It’s a different tradition, with different styles and expectations. The only Japanese writer I wholeheartedly embrace is Akutagawa (at least the 18 short stories I’ve read). With all others, there are barriers and the novels often seem blurry to me, as someone interested in characters, details, and metaphors: the characters often seem blurry, without the vividness and complexity of characters in Western novels (except for the main characters in Kokoro and Botchan); descriptions tend to be impressionistic; metaphors are generally rare (Mishima and Abe Kobo excepted); but above all, I’m baffled by the (lack of) sense of pacing and tension, either because it has an odd structure and ends so abruptly (such as Kokoro), or because of its evenness of tone and lack of emphasis (like some novels of Kawabata and Tanizaki). I love Japanese cinema, which I know the best after American and British cinema, but Japanese literature remains for me a challenge. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out I have more difficulty with Japanese plays than with the ancient Greek plays.

It is perhaps for the same reasons—different tradition, different styles and expectations—that I took quite a while to get into Hong lou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber) from 18th century China, even though I’m familiar with Chinese culture, whereas I took to the 17th century Don Quixote immediately. Descriptions in Don Quixote may be crude—to use Nabokov’s word—but descriptions in Hong lou meng are all catalogues, awkwardly listing qualities or different aspects of someone or something like items. More importantly, Cao Xueqin often doesn’t go very far in depicting characters’ thoughts: sometimes he writes down some thoughts and one expects him to go further, but he doesn’t. Reading Hong lou meng, I had to make an effort and readjust my expectations. 

Where am I going with all this? My point is that it’s important to think of works of literature as part of a tradition. This is why I didn’t randomly pick up a single play from ancient Greece and stop, I read Aeschylus and Sophocles and Euripides and Aristophanes. This is why, with my interest in Western literature, I’m now going back to its foundation. This is why I advocate for teaching Shakespeare and the Western canon in school. This is why, when I explore literature outside the West (especially before the 20th century), I keep in mind that it’s a different tradition and try to explore multiple works and multiple writers. 

All that said, isn’t it amazing that the Odyssey is so relatable—to use again a word I don’t particularly like—after something like 2,700 years? 

PS: I recently read Cyclops by Euripides but didn’t blog about it, as I had nothing to say. 

East Asian literature 2020

2020 somehow became my year of East Asian literature and I’ve just realised that I forgot to put up a list of the works I read. Here it is: 

Vietnamese (included because Vietnam is culturally East Asian even though it is geographically Southeast Asian): 

- Nguyễn Du: Văn tế thập loại chúng sinh (Văn chiêu hồn), Truyện Kiều. 

- Đoàn Thị Điểm/ Phan Huy Ích: Chinh phụ ngâm (translated into verse in chữ Nôm from the original in chữ Hán by Đặng Trần Côn). 

- Nguyễn Gia Thiều: Cung oán ngâm khúc. 

Japanese: 

- Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji (trans. Royall Tyler), The Diary of Lady Murasaki (trans. Richard Bowring).

- Sei Shonagon: The Pillow Book (trans. Meredith McKinney). 

- The daughter of Sugawara Takasue, also known as Lady Sarashina: Sarashina Nikki (retitled As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams, trans. Ivan Morris).

- Natsume Soseki: Kokoro (trans. Meredith McKinney), Kusamakura (retitled The Three-Cornered World, trans. Alan Turney).

- Kawabata Yasunari: The Sound of the Mountain (trans. Edward. G. Seidensticker), Snow Country (trans. Edward. G. Seidensticker).

- Tanizaki Junichiro: Some Prefer Nettles (trans. Edward. G. Seidensticker), Naomi (trans. Anthony H. Chambers). 

- Akutagawa Ryunosuke : Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories (trans. Jay Rubin).

- Abe Kobo: The Woman in the Dunes (trans. E. L. Saunders). 

Chinese: 

- Cao Xueqin: Hong lou meng, also known as Dream of the Red Chamber, A Dream of Red Mansions, or The Story of the Stone, and Hồng lâu mộng in Vietnamese (trans. Vũ Bội Hoàng group). 

In total: 4 long poems, a collection of short stories, 10 thin or average-sized books (not including the collection and Truyện Kiều), and 2 doorstoppers. 

All were newly discovered authors except for Nguyễn Du (because what Vietnamese person doesn’t grow up with Nguyễn Du?). 

Favourites: 

Hong lou meng

The Tale of Genji

Truyện Kiều 

Kokoro 

Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories

The Pillow Book 

The Woman in the Dunes: themes

1/ In the previous blog post, I wrote about a rough sex scene in The Woman in the Dunes. 

Near the end of the novel, there’s a rape attempt that I’m not going to quote here. 

Unpleasantness aside, I note that the first time Kobo Abe describes Niki Jumpei and the woman having sex, he goes on a long rant about spiritual rape and psychological venereal disease and the Mobius man and all such theoretical gibberish; the second time it’s rough, aggressive sex that is cut off because the woman’s in pain; and the third time it’s not sex but a rape attempt in front of an audience. No affection, no passion. The sex is always devoid of pleasure.

The teacher also becomes worse and worse over time—more selfish, more irrational and thoughtless, more violent and brutal, and more like an animal. His life is gradually reduced to basic needs, and he slowly turns into an animal. 

Look at this moment when he’s caught by the villagers because he sinks in the sand and has to yell for help: 

“His dreams, desperation, shame, concern with appearances—all were buried in the sand. And so, he was completely unmoved when their hands touched his shoulders. If they had ordered him to, he would have dropped his trousers and defecated before their very eyes.” (Ch.26) 

That is intense. 

It’s not surprising that a few chapters later, he’s so desperate to be allowed to go out of the hole and breathe some fresh air that he’s willing to have sex with the woman in front of the villagers, and when she doesn’t want to do so, he forces himself on her. After several months at the bottom of the sand dune, he no longer has any sense of privacy, any sense of dignity and shame. 

2/ People generally talk about existentialist themes in The Woman in the Dunes, and in a way I can see why. Take this passage, when Niki Jumpei’s looking at a newspaper: 

“There wasn’t a single item of importance. A tower of illusion, all of it, made of illusory bricks and full of holes. If life were made up only of important things, it really would be a dangerous house of glass, scarcely to be handled carelessly. But every day was exactly like the headlines. And so everybody, knowing the meaninglessness of existence, sets the center of his compass at his own home.” (Ch.13) 

His life in the dunes is repetitive and meaningless, but wasn’t his life repetitive and meaningless before, as a teacher? Weekend every 7 days, exams every few months, and so on and so forth.

The novel also explores ideas such as existentialist angst, alienation, identity, despair, etc. 

What I find a lot more interesting is the theme of bondage and exploitation, and the relationship between him and the village, or rather, the complete control the village has over him—they’re always watching, they always have the advantage, and they always win. This is a job that he has never chosen, which turns into lifelong servitude, a job that yields nothing useful, nothing beneficial for society. 

3/ Look at this scene, after Niki Jumpei’s attempt to escape. The woman is outside shovelling sand, he is in the house watching a spider near the lamp, which he doesn’t understand—why would a spider be drawn to a lamp? Then a moth appears, attracted to the light, and Niki Jumpei, like the jerk that he is, burns it with his cigarette and the spider happily grabs the moth. 

“He had not known there were spiders like this. How clever to use the lamp in place of a web. In a web it could only wait passively, but with the lamp it could engage its prey. However, a suitable light was the prerequisite of the method. It was impossible to get such a light naturally. […] Could this be a new species of spider, then, that had developed its instincts by evolving with man? […] But, in that case, how could you explain the attraction of a moth for light?” (Ch.27) 

He then goes on: 

“If a law appeared without reason, like this, what could one believe in?” (ibid.) 

4/ In the end, the water trap gives Niki Jumpei power, or rather, the illusion of power. It gives him an occupation, a distraction, a sense of purpose. 

Why then does he return to the hole? Habit perhaps. Like the woman, he’s now used to the life at the bottom of the sand dune. He gets out for a walk but the sea air that he has long yearned for isn’t as nice as he imagined. He has changed, and would have to “start from the beginning” if coming back to his old life and seeing the other woman and his former colleagues. 

“The change in the sand corresponded to a change in himself. Perhaps, along with the water in the sand, he had found a new self.” (Ch.31) 

But the main thing is the water trap. It gives him the illusion of power, the illusion of choice and freedom. 

“There was no particular need to hurry about escaping. On the two-way ticket he held in his hand now, the destination and time of departure were blanks for him to fill in as he wished.” (ibid.) 

In his life as a teacher, did he have the two-way ticket? Did he have the freedom to get out? He has longed to get out, only to fall into another trap, a more repetitive life, but now he thinks he has the choice—he accepts a life of servitude because of the illusion of choice, he just never chooses escape. 

The Woman in the Dunes: ideas, style, dialogue, troubling aspects

1/ Niki Jumpei is held captive by the villagers and stuck in a ramshackle house at the bottom of a sand dune, with a woman. See what he thinks about her: 

“Her charms were like some meat-eating plant, purposely equipped with the smell of sweet honey. First she would sow the seeds of scandal by bringing him to the act of passion, and then the chains of blackmail would bind him hand and foot.” (Ch.12) 

The Woman in the Dunes is a terrifying, nightmarish, and claustrophobic novel, but at the same time it’s also erotic. There’s lots of sexual tension in it.  

“The woman sidled up to him. Her knees pressed against his hips. A stagnant smell of sun-heated water, coming from her mouth, nose, ears, armpits, her whole body, began to pervade the room around him. Slowly, hesitantly, she began to run her searing fingers up and down his spine. His body stiffened.” (ibid.) 

I won’t tell you what happens next, you have to find out for yourself. 

2/ Both he and the woman slave away for the village—for what? Food? Does she not want to go out, and perhaps take a walk? Does she not want a different life? How can she accept such a life, away from civilisation, shovelling sand all night every night and living like an animal? He asks but she doesn’t seem to understand—she has accepted it all. 

He doesn’t. 

3/ So far from 20th century Japan, I’ve read Soseki, Akutagawa, Kawabata, Tanizaki, and now Abe (not including the ones I read over 10 years ago), and Abe and Soseki are the writers with the most interesting metaphors and similes. 

I mean, look:  

 “It was hard to wait. Time was folded in endless, deep, bellow-like pleats. If he did not pause at each fold he could not go ahead. And in every fold there were all kind of suspicions, each clutching its own weapon. It took a terrible effort to go ahead, disputing or ignoring these doubts or casting them aside.” (Ch.18) 

This is when the teacher holds the woman hostage and tries to negotiate with the villagers. He refuses to work, thinking he holds the trump card because they wouldn’t want the whole village to be swallowed up by sand, not realising that he’s the one at a disadvantage because he’s at the bottom of a sand dune, unable to get out, and the villagers are the ones bringing them water and food. He’s not very good at negotiating—he threatens the villagers, but why should they care when he’s there and nobody outside knows it?  

“The morning, pressing its face, like the belly of a snail, against the windowpane, was laughing at him.” (ibid.) 

That’s an interesting, unusual simile. And it’s the morning, not the villagers or the whole situation, that laughs at him. 

The Woman in the Dunes is full of striking images. 

“The sand, clinging to the perspiration, was like a soggy wheat cake in texture and color.” (ibid.) 

Not everything looks good either. Look at the woman, being tied up to a chair. 

“The towel was as heavy as a dead rat with her saliva and foul breath. It had bitten into her flesh, leaving freckled spots, which did not seem about to go away. The stiffness in her cheeks, which had become like the skin of dried fish, began to relax as she repeatedly moved her lower jaw.” (Ch.16)

4/ I don’t think dialogue is Kobe Abe’s strength. Same with Kafka. It may be funny that the novel is not meant to be realistic and could be read as an allegory but I still find the dialogue awkward and slightly contrived—even when the setting, the entire situation is absurd and like a nightmare, I would still prefer the characters to sound natural and to talk like people, rather than the author’s mouthpieces bouncing ideas off each other. 

In The Woman in the Dunes, it’s fine when there’s a short exchange, but when the conversation gets a bit longer, there’s an unnaturalness about it that I don’t really like, especially the conversation between the teacher and the woman before they have sex the first time (ch.19). For a few lines it’s not even clear who’s saying what, until later, as the woman doesn’t seem to have a distinct voice—distinct enough for me to know if a line is spoken by her or by the teacher—though perhaps the voice gets lost in translation. In such a brilliant, well-written novel, that dialogue becomes an irritating blotch. 

5/ I would have to watch Teshigahara’s film adaptation again, which I saw many years ago, to make an adequate comparison, but about halfway through the novel, I cannot help thinking that the film would be superior as everything would be turned into images and all the unnecessary ramblings would be got rid of. This novel is rich in ideas, but near the end of chapter 19 there’s a long philosophical section that goes on till about chapter 21, and I feel that The Woman in the Dunes doesn’t have the artistic purity of Kafka’s best works (such as “The Metamorphosis” or “A Hunger Artist”). The narrator goes on and on about sex and Mobius and spiritual rape and soap opera and psychological venereal disease and death and hunger and certifications and all that, only because the woman doesn’t want a condom—it all becomes frustrating and appears a bit out of place. I’m talking, I must note, as a fan of Tolstoy and Moby Dick. Maybe there’s a point: Niki Jumpei, a theoretical man, develops even madder ideas because of heat and thirst and hunger and the encroaching sand and the whole preposterous situation. 

But in chapter 21, the writing returns to normal and is good again, even before the 2 characters get water. 

This is when the characters return to work: 

“No soon did he have the shovel in his hands than his exhausted limbs collapsed like a folding tripod.” (Ch.21) 

That’s good.

“His vocal cords were shredded like strands of dried squid…” (ibid.) 

Kobo Abe doesn’t say, but the teacher is now hungry: 

“The board wall of the house was as soft as a rice cake that has not fully dried; it looked like a seedbed for mushrooms.” (ibid.) 

Look at him: 

“A frothy saliva that tasted like egg white filled his mouth.” (ibid.) 

6/ Earlier I came across a blog post that pointed out a scene from The Woman in the Dunes that she found troubling and repulsive: 

“The woman, who had been entreating him at first, manifested obvious fright at this frenzy. He was seized by a feeling of prostration, as if he had ejaculated. Again he spurred his courage, forcing himself on by a series of helter-skelter lewd fantasies, arousing his passion by biting her breasts and striking her body, which, with the soap, sweat, and sand, felt like machine oil mixed with iron filings. He had intended to let this go on for at least two hours. But finally the woman gritted her teeth, and complaining of pain, crouched away from him. He mounted her from behind like a rabbit and finished up within seconds.” (ch.23)

The blogger read it as rape. I’m not sure. Is it rape, or is it rough sex? 

This is the moment before—she’s washing him and he’s washing her back:   

“He would wash her in return. Caught between confusion and expectancy, she made a gesture of resistance, but it was not clear just what she was resisting. He quickly poured a bucket of warm water over her naked body…” (ibid.) 

Is she resisting the touching, or resisting him putting soap and water on her? 

“She cried out and, sliding down his chest, crouched level with his stomach. Undoubtedly it was a posture of expectation. […] 

The woman’s excitement naturally infected him too. […] The woman was glowing from within now, as if she were being washed by a wave of fireflies.” (ibid.) 

To me, it looks more like aggressive, affectionless sex than rape, or at least it doesn’t seem absolutely definite that it’s rape. However, I do think that Niki Jumpei is not nice either to the woman in the dunes nor to the woman he left behind (referred to as “the other woman”)—he appears patronising and self-important from the start and some of his thoughts about women here and there are rather troubling, then the philosophical sections reveal more of his views on women, which are frustrating to read.  

However, I believe the point here is that Niki Jumpei is not likeable but it doesn’t matter—it doesn’t make what happens to him acceptable. It is precisely in making Niki Jumpei a jerk that Kobo Abe makes a stronger point about slavery, about the cold deception and exploitation by the village, about the exhaustion and meaninglessness of their struggle against the sand—we may not like the teacher personally but we are still with him against the village. 

I’ve finished chapter 24. The man is at the moment out of the trap, but I know he would soon be caught.

The Woman in the Dunes: writing, images, similes

1/ The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe was published in 1962. The film adaptation by Hiroshi Teshigahara came out in 1964. 

It’s no wonder. The Woman in the Dunes is a very cinematic novel. I mean it’s the kind of novel that a filmmaker reads and thinks “that’s a film right there”. 

Look at this passage for example: 

“The wind blew ceaselessly from the sea and, far below, turbulent white waves beat against the base of the sand dunes. Where the dunes fell away to the west a slight hill crowned with bare rock jutted out into the sea. On it the sunshine lay scattered in needle-points of light.” (Ch.3) 

Or this one, when the man tries to fall asleep:

“He tried thinking of something else. When he closed his eyes, a number of long lines, flowing like sighs, came floating toward him. They were ripples of sand moving over the dunes. The dunes were probably burned onto his retina because he had been gazing steadily at them for some twelve hours.” (Ch.6) 

Such a striking image. I remember this image from the film. The translator is E. L. Saunders (I almost wrote his name as Sanders). 

Or this one, when he wakes up after the first night: 

“The sand that had accumulated on his face, head, and chest fell away with a rustling sound. Around his nose and lips sand was encrusted, hardened by perspiration. He scraped it off with the back of his hand and cautiously blinked his eyes. Tears welled up uncontrollably under his gritty, feverish eyelids. But the tears alone were not enough to wash away the sand that had become lodged in the moist corners of his eyes.” (Ch.7)

We can see the sand. We can hear its rustling sound. We can feel it, hardened by sweat and lodged in the eyes. 

2/ Here’s the story: a schoolteacher and amateur entomologist travels to a remote area of sand dunes in search of beetles. He misses the last bus back to civilisation so the villagers offer him shelter in a house at the bottom of a sand dune, to which he gets down by rope ladder. The woman in the house is in her 30s, alone, and she spends all night shovelling sand into buckets to be raised and taken away by the villagers—as the man finds out, the sand doesn’t stop falling and she has to do it every day so that the entire village doesn’t get swallowed up by the sand. The next morning he gets ready to leave, only to realise the rope ladder is gone. He is trapped. 

Sand becomes a character on its own in the novel. 

“Because winds and water currents flow over the land, the formation of sand is unavoidable. As long as the winds blew, the rivers flowed, and the seas stirred, sand would be born grain by grain from the earth, and like a living being it would creep everywhere. The sands never rested. Gently but surely they invaded and destroyed the surface of the earth.” (Ch.2) 

Sand is fascinating. Sand is destructive. 

 “This house was already half dead. Its insides were half eaten away by tentacles of ceaselessly flowing sand. Sand, which didn’t even have a form of its own—other than the mean 1/8-mm. diameter. Yet not a single thing could stand against this shapeless, destructive power. The very fact that it had no form was doubtless the highest manifestation of its strength, was it not?” (Ch.5) 

That is an interesting image—“tentacles of ceaselessly flowing sand”. 

Here Kobo Abe contrasts sand with water: 

“Never before had he been so keenly aware of the marvel of water. Water was an inorganic substance like sand, simple, transparent, inorganic substance that adapted to the body more readily than any living thing. As he let the water trickle slowly down his throat, he imagined stone-eating animals.” (Ch.7)

3/ The man goes in search of insects, and finds a woman who lives like an insect.  

4/ Other people have written about the meaninglessness of the woman’s life and the existentialist themes in The Woman in the Dunes so I’m not going to write about them. I’m more interested in the visual writing and the surreal, nightmarish qualities of the novel. 

“… from one corner of the ceiling the sand began to pour out dizzily in numerous tapelike streams. The strange quietness was in eerie contrast to the violence of the flow of sand.” (Ch.10) 

Kobo Abe first introduces sand as an interesting, ever-flowing substance, then slowly builds up and makes sand become terrifying—violent, destructive, a trap. Look at the scene where the man desperately tries to escape, in vain. Then: 

“Suddenly the flow of sand grew violent. There was a muffled sound and then a pressure against his chest. He tried to look up to see what was happening, but he no longer had any sense of direction. He was only dimly aware of a faint milky light playing over him as he lay doubled up in the black splotch of his vomit.” (ibid.) 

I can see why Kobo Abe is compared to Kafka—everything is senseless and absurd; the main character gets thrown into a nightmarish situation where everyone and everything is against him and he doesn’t know why but there’s nothing he can do to get out of it. 

5/ James Wood notes that Edmund Wilson (if I remember correctly) generally doesn’t quote from the book he’s critiquing. But why not? When the writing is good, I want to point at it—look! 

The Woman in the Dunes has more interesting metaphors and similes than in Kawabata or Tanizaki, at least the ones I’ve read. This is the main character, Niki Jumpei (his name is not introduced until ch.11), contemplating whether people miss him or put out a missing notice for him in the papers after his several days at the bottom of the sand dune with the woman. 

“Rarely will you meet anyone so jealous as a teacher. Year after year students tumble along like the waters of a river. They flow away, and only the teacher is left behind, like some deeply buried rock at the bottom of the current.” (Ch.11) 

That’s good. 

“It was doubtful whether they were sincerely worried, but at least their meddling curiosity was as overripe as an unpicked persimmon.” (ibid.) 

That’s very interesting—comparing something abstract (curiosity) to something concrete (a fruit). 

This is another: 

“No sooner had the cooling blue light slipped down from the edge of the hole than everything was reversed, and he engaged in combat with sleep that sucked at him as a sponge sucks water. As long as this vicious circle was not broken somewhere, not only his watch but time itself would be immobilized, he feared, by the grains of sand.” (Ch.13) 

This one is not a simile, but it’s a good sentence where he mixes sight with smell. 

“The colors of drawn were beginning to mingle with the fragrance of cooking rice.” (Ch.11)  

Such a brilliant novel.