The Diary of Lady Murasaki
Shorter vignettes describe interactions among imperial ladies-in-waiting and other court writers, such as Izumi Shikibu, Akazome Emon and Sei Shōnagon.
Murasaki includes her observations and opinions throughout, bringing to the work a sense of life at the early 11th century Heian court, lacking in other literature or chronicles of the era.
A Japanese picture scroll, the Murasaki Shikibu Nikki Emaki, was produced during the Kamakura period (1185–1333), and the fragments of the diary serve as the basis for three important translations to English in the 20th century.
[4] It was in the literature of the imperial court that the gradual shift toward the vernacular kana writing system was most evident, and where waka poetry became immensely popular.
As Shirane explains: "Waka became integral to the everyday life of the aristocracy, functioning as a form of elevated dialogue and the primary means of communication between the sexes, who usually were physically segregated from each other.
"Murasaki" was given to her at court, from a character in The Tale of Genji; "Shikibu" denotes her father's rank at the Ministry of Ceremonial Affairs (Shikibu-shō).
[8] The diary consists of a number of vignettes containing lengthy description of Shōshi's (known as Akiko)'s eldest son Prince Atsuhira's birth, and an epistolary section.
[17] She describes feelings of helplessness, her sense of inadequacy compared to higher-ranked Fujiwara clan relatives and courtiers, and the pervasive loneliness after her husband's death.
[18] The diary includes autobiographical snippets about Murasaki's life before she entered imperial service,[13] such as a childhood anecdote about how she learned Chinese: When my brother Nobunori [...] was a young boy learning the Chinese classics, I was in the habit of listening with him and I became unusually proficient at understanding those passages that he found too difficult to grasp and memorize.
The ideal "shining prince" Genji of her novel contrasts sharply with Michinaga and his crass nature;[22] he embarrasses his wife and daughter with his drunken behavior, and his flirtations toward Murasaki make her uncomfortable.
[22] The child's birth was of enormous importance to Michinaga, who nine years earlier brought his daughter to court as a concubine to Emperor Ichijō; Shōshi's quick ascendence to Empress and status as a mother to the heir consolidated her father's power.
[25] The child's birth and its lengthy descriptions, "marked the final tightening of Michinaga's velvet-gloved strangle-hold on imperial succession through his masterful manipulation of marriage politics.
[28] These include intricate descriptions of the ladies and their court attire: Saemon no Naishi [...] was wearing a plain yellow-green jacket, a train shading at the hem, and a sash and waistbands with raised embroidery in orange and white checked silk.
Murasaki explained that "because [Shōshi] evinced a desire to know more about such things, to keep it secret we carefully chose times when the other women would not be present, and, from the summer before last, I started giving her informal lessons on the two volumes of 'New Ballads'.
[31] She left the banquet when "Counsellor Takai [...] started pulling at Lady Hyōbu's robes and singing dreadful songs, but His Excellency said nothing.
"[32] There are anecdotes about drunken revelries and courtly scandals concerning women who, because of behavior or age, were forced to leave imperial service.
[34] Bowring explains how vulnerable the women were to men watching them: "A man standing outside in the garden looking in [...] his eyes would have been roughly level with the skirts of the woman inside.
Heian-period noble women dressed in six or seven garments, each layered over the next, some with multiple linings in differing hues and color combinations.
He believes that she needed to be aloof so as to be able to continue writing, but equally that she was intensely private, a woman who "chose not to reveal her true qualities" except to those who earned her trust and respect, as Shōshi had.
[38] The diary includes descriptions of other ladies-in-waiting who were writers, most notably Sei Shōnagon, who had been in service to Shōshi's rival and co-empress, Empress Teishi (Sadako).
[40]Murasaki is also critical of the two other women writers at Shōshi's court – poet Izumi Shikibu, and Akazome Emon who authored a monogatari.
She does have a rather unsavoury side to her character but has a talent for tossing off letters with ease and seems to make the most banal statement sound special [...] she can produce poems at will and always manages to include some clever phrase that catches the attention.
[44] Shirane believes the similarities suggest portions of Genji may have been written during the period Murasaki was in imperial service and wrote the diary.
[46] These diaries are a repository of knowledge about the Imperial Heian court, considered highly important in Japanese literature, although many have not survived in a complete state.
[22] The format typically included waka poetry,[a] meant to convey information to the readers, as seen in Murasaki's descriptions of court ceremonies.
Although it chronicles public events, the inclusion of self-reflective passages is a unique and important part of the work, adding a human aspect unavailable in official accounts.
She is unflinching in her criticism of aristocratic courtiers, seeing beyond superficial facades to their inner core, a quality Keene says is helpful for a novelist but less useful in the closed society she inhabited.
[48] He explains that the rhythms of spoken language assumes the presence of an audience, is often ungrammatical, relies on "eye contact, shared experiences and particular relationships [to] provide a background which allows speech to be at times fragmentary and even allusive".
Writing in "The House-bound Heart", Japanese scholar Penelope Mason explains that in an emakimono or emaki, a narrative reaches its full potential through the combination of the writer's and the painter's art.
[51] The illustrations in the emaki follow the late-Heian and early Kamakura period convention of Hikime kagibana ('line-eye and hook-nose') in which individual facial expressions are omitted.
