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 Noh 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? 

Spring Snow: some jottings on characters

Spring Snow I think is a book that may appeal to different kinds of readers. If you’re interested in style, Mishima is a great stylist and uses striking metaphors, as my last two blog posts have demonstrated. If you’re interested in ideas, the book discusses love, dreams, tradition vs modernity, Western influence, history, reincarnation, duty, etc. (without touching on fascism or nationalism, for which the author’s notorious). If you’re interested in characters, Spring Snow also has interesting characters.

No wonder it’s often named among the greatest novels of the 20th century Japan. 

At the centre of Spring Snow is Matsugae Kiyoaki (name in Japanese order), who comes from a nouveau-riche family and who is raised among the Ayakuras, a poor aristocrat family, in order to become cultured and elegant. His good looks and elegance are reminiscent of the main character in The Tale of Genji. The love affair between Kiyoaki and Ayakura Satoko also seems to be partly inspired by one story in The Tale of Genji: Suzaku’s Third Princess (Genji’s last, neglected wife) and Kashiwagi (To no Chujo’s eldest son). 

One thing I find interesting is that Mishima mostly focuses on Kiyoaki’s perspective and sometimes gets into the minds of Honda (his best friend) and Iinuma (his tutor and retainer) but never switches to Satoko’s point of view, except a brief moment when he tells us that she’s desperately waiting and hoping for a letter from Kiyoaki. That creates the same effect as in Proust—the beloved is only seen from outside—though compared to Proust, we are here more distanced from the lover because Spring Snow is written from the third person’s point of view. 

I like what Mishima does with Kiyoaki however. I see that some people on the internet have called the characters star-crossed lovers, but they’re no Romeo and Juliet—their love story is doomed mostly because of the lovers themselves, because of their little games, especially on Kiyoaki’s side. He is spoilt and solipsistic and impulsive. He is in some ways similar to Proust’s narrator. And yet somehow Mishima gets us to feel for him and find their story tragic. 

I also like the characterisation of Count Ayakura (Satoko’s father) and Tadeshina (Satoko’s maid, an accomplice in the affair). The Count, compared to many other characters including the Marquis (Kiyoaki’s father), is barely there for most of the book, but he becomes a distinct character in the last part, and more interestingly, the reveal makes us see in a completely different light not only him but also Tadeshina, and to some extent, the Marquis. I always love it when a writer does that—it’s not easy to achieve. 

Spring Snow is part of the Sea of Fertility tetralogy, which I believe is loosely connected. I will definitely read more Mishima—he’s much more interesting than Tanizaki and Kawabata—but not yet, Runaway Horses will have to wait. 

Spring Snow: “continually changing patterns within a kaleidoscope”

I haven’t written about the characters in Spring Snow, not having much to say so far. But I’m very much enjoying Mishima’s style (translated by Michael Gallagher). 

For example, this is how he writes about a key (from the perspective of Iinuma, Kiyoaki’s retainer and tutor): 

“It lay on the palm of his thick, blunt hand, blue and metallic like a dragonfly with its wings torn off.

Afterwards Iinuma would recall this moment time and again. How torn and naked the key seemed, like a ravaged body as it lay in his palm.” (Ch.14) 

I love metaphors, I love details, and Mishima has an interesting way of seeing and describing things. 

“The small room bathed him in cozy warmth, making him feel as if he were wrapped in a huge, opaque cocoon of glowing white.” (Ch.16) 

He compares facial expressions to something concrete: 

“He had become especially adept with Kiyoaki, with whom he had daily contact and whose expressions reminded him of the whirling fragments of colored glass that settled into continually changing patterns within a kaleidoscope.” (Ch.20) 

And: 

“The Marquis and Marquise, whatever their intrigues, wore their emotions like clothes that were dyed in the vivid primary colors of the tropics. Kiyoaki’s emotions, however, were as subtly complex as the layer upon layer of color in the dresses of the court ladies; they were constantly merging—the drab brown of an autumn leaf shading into crimson, the crimson dissolving into the green of bamboo grass.” (Ch.21) 

He also compares thoughts to something concrete: 

“Those who lack imagination have no choice but to base their conclusions on the reality they see around them. But on the other hand, those who are imaginative have a tendency to build fortified castles they have designed themselves, and to seal off every window in them. And so it was with Kiyoaki.” (Ch.23) 

Spring Snow is full of visual descriptions and exquisite details: 

“In summer, when the cloud formations were at their peak, the whole thing seemed to be transformed into a huge theater, with the villa for the spectators and the smooth expanse of the bay becoming the vast stage on which the clouds performed their extravagant ballets.” (Ch.31) 

I have thought of 20th century Japanese novels as a distinct tradition, quite different from Western novels, but Mishima’s metaphors are reminiscent of Proust’s and Flaubert’s. 

I’ve noted that the thread imagery appears a few times, though probably won’t call it a motif. 

Sometimes it’s simply a description: 

“Though the sky was still bright, the slope was in deep shadow, and the heavy growth of trees and shrubbery on the ridge stood out blackly against the white glare of the sky. However, the light was breaking through here and there like silver thread skillfully woven into an otherwise dark tapestry. Behind the trees, the western sky was like a sheet of isinglass. The bright summer day had been a gaudy scroll which was tapering off into blankness.” (Ch.35) 

Other times it’s a metaphor: 

“His pride was hurt when he realized that this was all he had to rely on as the fierce pain and agony of love spun their coil. Such pain ought to be fit material for weaving a magnificent tapestry, but Kiyoaki had only a tiny domestic loom with nothing but pure white thread at his disposal.” (Ch.15) 

When Kiyoaki’s best friend Honda goes to court and watches a woman on trial: 

“The spectators stared at this small woman in fascination, as if she might perhaps have the translucent body of a silkworm that had somehow excreted a thread of inconceivable complexity and evil.” (Ch.29) 

Mishima writes another thread metaphor when a character receives a farewell letter: 

““… before I cut the slender thread that binds this wretched creature to life…”” (Ch.39) 

Stylistically Mishima is very, very good. I don’t think I’m going to like him as much as Soseki or Akutagawa, but he’s definitely better and much more interesting than Tanizaki, Kawabata, and Murakami. 

Spring Snow: Mishima and Proust

I can’t be the only person thinking of Proust whilst reading Spring Snow. 

““I can’t tell you why,” she answered, deftly dropping ink into the clear waters of Kiyoaki’s heart. She gave him no time to erect his defenses.

He glared at her. It had always been like this. Which was why he hated her. Without the slightest warning she could plunge him into nameless anxieties. And the drop of ink spread, dull and gray, clouding everything in his heart that had been pellucid only a moment ago.” (Ch.4) 

Does Kiyoaki not make you think of Proust’s narrator? 

“Kiyoaki was so capricious that he tended to exacerbate the very worries that gnawed at him. […] Perhaps this was why Satoko deliberately sowed the seeds of dark and thorny flowers, rather than brightly colored ones, knowing what an unhealthy fascination they held for Kiyoaki. Indeed he had always been fertile ground for such seeds. He indulged himself, to the exclusion of all else, in the cultivation of his anxiety.” (ibid.) 

Kiyoaki is especially reminiscent of Proust’s narrator when he writes an angry letter to Satoko. I mean: 

““… I have no doubt that your emotional whims have driven you to do this to me. There has been no gentleness in your method, obviously no affection whatever, not a trace of friendship. There are deep-seated motivations in your despicable behavior to which you are blind, but which are driving you toward a goal that is only too obvious. But decency forbids me to say anything further…”” (Ch.6) 

Then he tells her to burn the letter unread, and invites her to the theatre. 

“… she was nevertheless like fine silk disguising a sharp needle, or rich brocade that hid an abrasive underside.” (Ch.8) 

But it’s not just the obsession, the anxiety, the little games…—Kiyoaki, like Proust’s narrator, is introverted, sensitive, elegant, dreamy, and an aesthete.

Spring Snow is full of interesting images. 

“Their white faces, powdered even more meticulously than usual for the occasion, were dappled in violet, as though some exquisite shadow of death had fallen across their cheeks.” (Ch.1) 

Interesting metaphors and similes. 

“… this fleeting angle of the Princess’s face—too slight to be called a profile—made Kiyoaki feel as if he had seen a rainbow flicker for a bare instant through a prism of pure crystal.” (ibid.) 

There are more striking metaphors in Mishima than in Kawabata or Tanizaki, that’s my impression. 

“The hot sun struck the backs of their close-shaven necks. It was a peaceful, uneventful, glorious Sunday afternoon. Yet Kiyoaki remained convinced that at the bottom of this world, which was like a leather bag filled with water, there was a little hole, and it seemed to him that he could hear time leaking from it, drop by drop.” (Ch.2) 

This is the scene of the ritual on the 17/8 when Kiyoaki’s 15—a water basin is placed in the garden to catch the reflection of the moon, and the belief is that if the moon isn’t seen in it, the boy has misfortunes for the rest of his life: 

“He could not bring himself to look up into the sky at the moon itself, the origin of the image in the water. Rather he kept looking down into the basin and into the water contained by its curved sides, the reflection of his innermost self, into which the moon, like a golden shell, had sunk so deep. For at that moment he had captured the celestial. It sparkled like a golden butterfly trapped in the meshes of his soul.” (Ch.5) 

Both the sensitivity, the overthinking of the character and the simile make me think of Proust.

More than other Japanese writers I have ever read, except perhaps Abe Kobo, Mishima uses lots of unusual metaphors. For example, when he says that Kiyoaki’s parents, the Marquis and Marquise, never have crises or storms of passion, he says: 

“Their expressions blank, innocent of foreknowledge, they glided downstream like twigs hand in hand on clear waters mirroring blue sky and clouds, to take the inevitable plunge over the crest of the falls.” (ibid.) 

He compares a voice to an object:

“And her voice on this cold winter night was as warm and ripe as an apricot in June.” (Ch.6) 

He compares arrogance to a tumour: 

“This time, Satoko’s forceful methods did not wound his pride. On the contrary, he felt a sense of relief, as though her scalpel had skillfully cut out a malignant tumor of arrogance.” (Ch.11) 

This description, when Kiyoaki hangs out with Satoko, also makes me think of Proust: 

“Kiyoaki had brought a green tartan blanket that now covered their legs. Since those forgotten days of childhood, this was the first time that they had ever been so close together, but Kiyoaki was distracted by the pale light flooding through the cracks in the bonnet of the rickshaw that narrowed and widened as a stream of snow filtered through them, by the snow itself turning to water on the green blanket, by the loud rustle of the snow pelting down on the hood as if onto dry banana leaves.” (Ch.12) 

Proust would perhaps write more clauses, more complex sentences, but the sensitivity and the notice of the light wouldn’t be out of place in Proust. 

The translation is by Michael Gallagher.