I've struggled with this issue. I even have an essay I wrote when I was reading the chapter on Utsusemi, and I didn't publish it because I didn't like thinking about it. And yet I love Genji and always have. I wonder if reading Genji is meant to be a little bit like watching Succession (i.e. filled with loathsome characters doing awful things). In other words, we're supposed to be gazing at the story, not aligning ourselves with anyone in it? I'm assuming that the readers who got their hands on it back when Murasaki (the author) was writing it were familiar with court life. Perhaps they waited eagerly for each installment, wondering if Genji was going to be caught, and wondering about the fate of Murasaki (the child). It's interesting to think about whose point of view we are hearing in Genji, and whether the original Japanese feels courtly and distant, versus intimate and personal.
I'm still trying to figure out what I love so much about the Tale of Genji!
Ok I’m so glad you brought this up because I made it halfway through The Tale of Genji and just could not continue through the misogyny. I was trying to understand the culture and the philosophy from the literature, but ultimately concluded it either wasn’t a good example of either, or that both things were bettered by time. Either way, I appreciate you wading through it and still attempting to find the gems! It’s helping me to understand it better.
Oh, my. . . so much to unpack here, and I have to start out by saying that my reading of Genji has gotten sidetracked because of other obligations. However, I am so accustomed to taking care of women (and some men) who have been sexually abused that it has become "just another day" of the week. The power grab for dominance has been with us forever; how to establish constraints that can be enforced has seemed to become reliant on appealing to individual conscience within the community's purview. Predatory behaviors and grooming -- so commonplace that I still am at square one in asking how we have become a culture in which sexual mores and the shame or glory thereof (and experience, wanted or coerced) have become so overwhelmingly central to individual identity. The differing hierarchical worth of the people sexually involved creates another level of complexity in the game of life that is mostly out of our control regardless of how we'd like to think otherwise. No, I don't take casually to misogyny and pedophilia; I'd protect a child from their harms in a minute. I do understand the aesthetic order explanation, too. There is perhaps an assumption that the ten-year-old child is teaching Genji necessary lessons for his own development. (Whether the written story devotes any clear links to those changes, I don't know.)
As for the Dalai Lama's comment, the explanation was akin to what I guessed; the folk tale source is actually "eat my tongue" (he used "suck" mistakenly) with its Tibetan origin in family in which the grandfather kids the grandchild as if to say, "you have taken everything, now all that is left is my tongue: eat my tongue." https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg5854/tibetans-explain-what-suck-my-tongue-means-dalai-lama-viral-video
I've struggled with this issue. I even have an essay I wrote when I was reading the chapter on Utsusemi, and I didn't publish it because I didn't like thinking about it. And yet I love Genji and always have. I wonder if reading Genji is meant to be a little bit like watching Succession (i.e. filled with loathsome characters doing awful things). In other words, we're supposed to be gazing at the story, not aligning ourselves with anyone in it? I'm assuming that the readers who got their hands on it back when Murasaki (the author) was writing it were familiar with court life. Perhaps they waited eagerly for each installment, wondering if Genji was going to be caught, and wondering about the fate of Murasaki (the child). It's interesting to think about whose point of view we are hearing in Genji, and whether the original Japanese feels courtly and distant, versus intimate and personal.
I'm still trying to figure out what I love so much about the Tale of Genji!
I consider myself quite well read on japan, nonetheless I learned a lot reading this, cool! 🤩
I wonder if you have read the novel about Jiraiya the gallant? I cant find a translated version anywhere? Have you maybe covered that already?
Katakiuchi Kidan Jiraiya Monogatari (報仇奇談自来也説話, "The Tale of the Gallant Jiraiya")
Ok I’m so glad you brought this up because I made it halfway through The Tale of Genji and just could not continue through the misogyny. I was trying to understand the culture and the philosophy from the literature, but ultimately concluded it either wasn’t a good example of either, or that both things were bettered by time. Either way, I appreciate you wading through it and still attempting to find the gems! It’s helping me to understand it better.
Oh, my. . . so much to unpack here, and I have to start out by saying that my reading of Genji has gotten sidetracked because of other obligations. However, I am so accustomed to taking care of women (and some men) who have been sexually abused that it has become "just another day" of the week. The power grab for dominance has been with us forever; how to establish constraints that can be enforced has seemed to become reliant on appealing to individual conscience within the community's purview. Predatory behaviors and grooming -- so commonplace that I still am at square one in asking how we have become a culture in which sexual mores and the shame or glory thereof (and experience, wanted or coerced) have become so overwhelmingly central to individual identity. The differing hierarchical worth of the people sexually involved creates another level of complexity in the game of life that is mostly out of our control regardless of how we'd like to think otherwise. No, I don't take casually to misogyny and pedophilia; I'd protect a child from their harms in a minute. I do understand the aesthetic order explanation, too. There is perhaps an assumption that the ten-year-old child is teaching Genji necessary lessons for his own development. (Whether the written story devotes any clear links to those changes, I don't know.)
As for the Dalai Lama's comment, the explanation was akin to what I guessed; the folk tale source is actually "eat my tongue" (he used "suck" mistakenly) with its Tibetan origin in family in which the grandfather kids the grandchild as if to say, "you have taken everything, now all that is left is my tongue: eat my tongue." https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg5854/tibetans-explain-what-suck-my-tongue-means-dalai-lama-viral-video