The Life of Murasaki Shikibu 光る君へ

Episode 2 Why Writing Can Save Your Life

In writing workshops in the U.S., fellow writers and mentors often demand to know the reasons why characters do this or that. They want to see causality, they say. This is something I have heard time and again. It’s as if the plot is seen as some kind of grandiose character arc. It’s the way stories work, they say. But more than in novels, I think it’s the way TV works!

And this post is talking about TV.

But I wonder: for the story to work, does Murasaki Shikibu (called Mahiro) really need to watch her mother murdered in cold blood when she is a child in order to explain why stories became so important in her life, as a means to overcome this memory and to survive? For me, what was actually written in her diary is enough to be interesting. In the Diary she explained that as a child, she sat on the sidelines eavesdropping as her scholarly father instructed her less-talented brother in the Chinese classics. And she discovered loved it!

In the fictionalized version on TV, things are way more fraught. Episode Two takes place some six years after Fujiwara Michikane has murdered Mahiro’s mother in front of her. Mahiro is understandably unable to stop thinking about it. And she has the added trauma that her father insisted they forget and never try and seek justice—for the supremely powerful Fujiwara family are the most dangerous people in the land.

So while this has no historical truth, it works to propel Mahiro into a life dedicated to art, poetry, storytelling, and books. And I do think it is safe to say that something in her early life in real life must have happened to enable her to understand sadness and jealousy and other darker negative emotions in such a way that she could channel thees emotions so incredibly into her writing. She loves story, she says. And she understands character building. That is what is being conveyed so evocatively in the second episode.

We watch Mahiro having a massive fight with her father when he tells her she is forbidden to work outside the house. She stands up to him telling him that no, she will not quit her part-time job pretending to be a man and ghostwriting love poetry for guys who need help in their love lives, because stories are places of refuge for her! AS if you couldn’t miss the point, she also tells her brother that she is not really a Chinese classics geek but just loves the stories behind those old sayings and references from ancient China.

I think this idea of story and storytelling must resonate with people today too—since in our world as well, writing stories can be both incredibly fun—and healing.

There was one more aspect of episode two that really lit up my imagination. And that is the way this drama is trying to portray the poetry itself— and how the poetry we are seeing in the show might have turned the young Mahiro into the great writer Murasaki Shikibu.

Below is one of the poems she ghostwrites for a guy losing at love. It is written on a piece of wood (paper was so valuable back then) and you can see the beautiful cursive hiragana, sometimes referred to in those days as onna-de (woman’s hand, or women’s script).

Perhaps if you come closer, you will be able to really see those flowers barely seen by twilight—--the evening glories.

In her job, she composes this wonderful poem after learning that the first time the fellow met his love the evening glories (yugao) were in bloom in her garden. The poem is a wonderful homage to a poem that appears in chapter four of the Tale of Genji, called Yugao (夕顔 / Yūgao).

心あてに　それかとぞ見る　白露の　光添へたる　夕顔の花

Royal Tyler’s translation is so beautiful:

At a guess I see that you may indeed be he: the light silver dew brings to clothe in loveliness a twilight beauty flower.

Genji is the shining prince bathed in dew, she says. And he is also a man who delights in the unexpected (I think she is saying).

To this he answers: Let me then draw near and see whether you are she, whom glimmering dusk gave me faintly to discern in twilight beauty flowers.

Sigh~~

Notes:

1. While the story of Mahiro’s mother’s murder by Michikane has no basis in reality, I did learn that there was rumor, not so long after she died in real life, that Murasaki Shikibu had been Michinaga’s lover and that he was the great love of her life.

2. The actress is left-handed in real life, and took calligraphy lessons to learn to write with brush and ink using her right hand for the part. Even now in Japan, people born left-handed can be pushed to try and overcome it and write using their right hands.

3. I haven’t read this book yet but looking forward to it: Seduced by Story: The Use and Abuse of Narrative.

4. Here is my post on chapter four and Heian-style connoisseurship 品定め.