Murasaki Shikibu Plays the Biwa

An ancient Persian instrument travels down the silk road

1.

The Tale of Genji has been called a novel about the joy of music. There are countless scenes depicting Genji and the people at court enjoying beautiful dances accompanied by flutes, lutes, and zithers. Boarding pleasure boats “adorned magnificently in the “continental style” with dragons and mythical birds carved on their prows, they would drift along as though transported to an unknown land delighting in the flowering trees and beautifully shaped rocks. Young pages handed out flowers in golden vases and the men adorned their headdresses with sprigs of green willow branches.

Oh, to be a Heian period aristocrat…!

Being how important music is in the Tale of Genji, it is hardly surprising that song —and poetry, which I’ve mentioned shares the same word in Japanese 歌—is playing such a large role in the Taiga Drama. In the picture above, the young Murasaki Shikibu is facing the man who killed her mother. Unable to express her rage in words, instead she offers to play him a song on her biwa lute. And in that song is contained all her grief and frozen anger.

琵琶 Biwa is such a charming word. Derived from the Chinese word for the instrument, pipa, the instrument is one of the many treasures that traveled down the silk road in ancient times. If you think it looks like a European lute from the Renaissance, you would be right since the biwa originated in ancient Persia, from whence it was exported west into Europe and east as far away as Japan. That is maybe why when young Murasaki Shikibu picks up and plays the instrument, it is a sound immediately understandable to us all.

I have to recommend this fantastic NHK show about the instrument and its connection to the Tale of Heike. Here are the famous opening lines:

The temple bell echoes the impermanence of all things. The colors of the sala flowers express the truth that those who flourish must decay. Pride lasts but a little while, like a dream on a spring night. Before long the mighty are cast down, and they are as dust before the wind.

Like Bob Dylan:

Here’s to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind

2.

In the drama, much attention is paid to the soundscape. Again and again, I am overcome hearing sounds I will forever associate with Japan— from the wind in the pines and the rustling of the autumn leaves to the slow tolling of a temple bell and the warblers singing in the spring blossoms. I keep finding myself transported.

In classical Japanese music and poetry, nature is rarely personified. Rather, human emotion is discovered in the sounds of the world outside. It is sometimes mentioned that Japanese Buddhism is unique in not fully rejecting our emotions in the same way as other forms of Buddhism, instead seeing emotion and passion as something universal and worthy of being elevated and refined in its merging with nature and the world. So for example, instead of feeling despondent when your lover fails to show up, you write a poem about the crying autumn insects in the wet grass, as the world outside fades toward winter.

3.

I can't explain why the architecture in the Tale of Genji has always stuck out so vividly in my mind. First is the ramshackle house overgrown with flowers and tangled vines from the Yugao chapter —something even now I see in my dreams. But even more unforgettable for me has always been Genji’s Rokujo-in Mansion.

I am hoping to write a future post about this palace in the hills. Constructed of four large villas, each with its own garden separated by a fence, Rokujo-in becomes the perfect place for Genji to house the four important women of his life— Or so he thinks. The women for obvious reasons, don’t interact too much with each other, though each has a garden that she considers to be “the best” in one of the four seasons—this causing some competitiveness. In the story, the women are then referred to by the season when their gardens are at their finest.

In winter lives the Akashi Lady, who is an expert at playing the biwa; while in the summer lives Hana-chiru-sato (“the village of falling flowers”), who plays the koto. She is also sometimes referred to as the Lady of Orange Blossoms because of a poem that Genji sent her:

たちばなの香をなつかしみ郭公（ほととぎす）花散る里をたづねてぞ訪とふ

The perfume of the orange blossoms (tachibana) carrying memories of days past draws a cuckoo to visit this village of their falling flowers

Genji fell infatuated with this lady—not because of a vision of her beauty but rather from hearing the sound of her playing the koto as he passed by her house…

Have you ever first fallen in love with someone by the sound of their voice or the music they made?

Happy Hina-Matsuri!! And here is an old post about Wang Xizhi and Orchid Pavilion on the third day of the third month (蘭亭序) Today’s Asahi Shimbun Heian Period poem-writing court ceremony re-enacted