EX 420: A Bibliography of Translations and Studies

The Tale of Genji

This is intended to be a comprehensive list and thus contains some items that I would not recommend to my students. I should be glad to remedy any errors or omissions. Except for foreign-language translations, the bibliography is restricted to publications in English and I apologize for this limitation. It is divided into the following sub-sections:

1. Translations
2. On Translators and Translations
3. Secondary Sources
4. Genji Art
5. Genji Reception
6. Film, Musical, and Manga Versions

GGR, September 2009

Download bibliography as PDF file

1. Translations (arranged in chronological order of publication)

1. Waley, Arthur (1889-1966). The Tale of Genji. 6 vols. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1925-1933. *

2. Benl, Oscar (1914-1986). Die Geschichte vom Prinzen Genji. 2 vols. Zürich: Mannese Verlag, 1966.

3. Ryū Tei 柳呈. Kenji iyagi, 2 vols. Seoul: 乙酉文化社, 1975.**

4. Seidensticker, Edward G. (1921-2007). The Tale of Genji. 2 vols. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976.

5. Lin Wen-Yueh [Rin Bungetsu] 林文月. Yüan-shih wu-yü. 2 vols. Taipei: Chung wai wen-hsüeh yüeh-kan she, 1982.

6. Sieffert, René (1923-2004). Le Dit du Genji. 2 vols. Paris: Publications Orientalistes de France, 1988. Originally published 1977-1985.

7. Sokolova-Deliusina, Tatiana. Povest o Gendzi: Gendzi-monogatari. 6 vols. Moscow: Nauka, 1991-1993.

8. Feng Zikai [Hō Shigai] 豊子凱 (1898-1975). Yuanshi wuyu. Beijing: People’s Literature Press, 1993. Originally translated 1961-1965; publication was delayed by the Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976, and the translation only began to appear in 1980.

9. Tyler, Royall. The Tale of Genji. 2 vols. New York: Viking, 2001.

10. Chon Yonsin 田溶新. Kenji iyagi, 3 vols. Seoul: Nanam Ch’ulp’an, 1999-2002.**

* Waley’s English translation is now available in a complete Japanese translation. See Samata Hideki 佐復秀樹, trans.『ウェイリー版 源氏物語』4 vols. Heibonsha Library, 2009.

** According to sources cited in Kawazoe Fusae, Genji monogatari jikūron (Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 2005), p. 330, the Korean translation by Ryū is based on Yosano Akiko’s Shin-shin’yaku Genji monogatari (1938-1939), and that by Chon on the modern Japanese translation by Abe Akio, Akiyama Ken, and Imai Gen’e in the Nihon koten bungaku zenshū edition of Genji published by Shōgakukan, 1970-1976.

2. On Translators and Translations

Abel, Jonathan E. “Translation as Community: The Opacity of Modernizations of Genji monogatari.” In Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation, ed. Sandra Bermann and Michael Wood. Princeton University Press, 2005, pp. 146-158.

Cranston, Edwin. “The Seidensticker Genji.” Journal of Japanese Studies 4.1 (1978): 1-25.

de Gruchy, John Walter. Orienting Arthur Waley: Japonism, Orientalism, and the Creation of Japanese Literature in English. University of Hawai’i Press, 2003.

McCullough, Helen Craig. “The Seidensticker Genji.” Monumenta Nipponica 32.1 (1977): 93-110.

Midorikawa, Machiko. “Coming to Terms with the Alien: Translations of Genji Monogatari.” Monumenta Nipponica 58.2 (2003): 193-222.

Miyoshi, Masao. “Translation as Interpretation.” Journal of Asian Studies 38.1 (1979): 299-302.

Seidensticker, Edward G. Genji Days. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1977.

___________. “Chiefly on Translating the Genji.” Journal of Japanese Studies 6.1 (1980): 16-47.

Ury, Marian. “The Imaginary Kingdom and the Translator’s Art: Notes on Re-reading Waley’s Genji.” Journal of Japanese Studies 2:2 (1976): 267-294.

___________. “The Complete Genji.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 37.1 (1977): 183-210.

___________. “The Tale of Genji in English.” Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 31 (1982): 62-67.

Woolf, Virginia. “The Tale of Genji: The First Volume of Mr. Arthur Waley’s Translation of a Great Japanese Novel by the Lady Murasaki.” Vogue 66.2 (Late July, 1925), pp. 53, 80.

3. Secondary Sources

Bargen, Doris G. A Woman’s Weapon: Spirit Possession in The Tale of Genji.  University of Hawai’i Press, 1997.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004.

Bowring, Richard. Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji. Landmarks of World Literature series. Cambridge University Press, 1988. 2nd ed. 2004.

→Bowring’s useful chart of characters in The Tale of Genji may be viewed/downloaded at:

http://www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/~pmjs/resources/genji/genji-chart.html

Childs, Margaret H. “The Value of Vulnerability: Sexual Coercion and the Nature of Love in Japanese Court Literature.” Journal of Asian Studies 58.4 (1999): 1059-1079.

Cranston, Edwin A. “Murasaki’s Art of Fiction.” Japan Quarterly 18.2 (1971): 207-213.

___________. “Aspects of The Tale of Genji.” Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 11.2-3 (1976): 183-199.

Dalby, Liza. “The Cultured Nature of Heian Colors.” In Kimono: Fashioning Culture. Rev. ed. University of Washington Press, 2001, pp. 217-269.

Dusenbury, Mary. “Radiance and Darkness: Color at the Heian Court.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kansas, 1999. UMI publication number: AAT9961041.

Field, Norma. The Splendor of Longing in The Tale of Genji. Princeton University Press, 1987.

Fischer, Felice. “Murasaki Shikibu: The Court Lady.” In Heroic with Grace: Legendary Women of Japan, ed. Chieko Irie Mulhern. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1991, pp. 77-128.

Fujii Sadakazu. “The Relationship Between the Romance and Religious Observances: Genji monogatari as Myth,” trans. W. Michael Kelsey. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 9:2-3 (1982): 127-146.

Gatten, Aileen. “The Secluded Forest: Textual Problems in the Genji monogatari.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1977.

___________. “A Wisp of Smoke: Scent and Character in The Tale of Genji.” Monumenta Nipponica 32:1 (1977): 35-48.

___________. “The Order of the Early Chapters in the Genji monogatari.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 41.1 (1981): 5-44.

___________. “Murasaki’s Literary Roots.” Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 17.2 (1982): 173-191.

___________. “Weird Ladies: Narrative Strategy in the Genji monogatari.” Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 20.1 (1986): 29-48.

___________, “Death and Salvation in Genji monogatari.” In New Leaves: Studies and Translations of Japanese Literature in Honor of Edward Seidensticker, ed. Aileen Gatten and Anthony Hood Chambers. Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 1993, pp. 5-27.

___________, “Monogatari as Mirror: The Outsider in Genji monogatari and Heian Society.” Asiatica Venetiana no. 4 (1999): 89-110.

Graham, Masako Nakagawa. The Yang Kuei-fei Legend in Japanese Literature. Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998.

Kamens, Edward, ed. Approaches to Teaching Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1993.

Kobayashi Yoshiko. “The Function of Music in The Tale of Genji.” Hikaku bungaku 33 (1990): 253-260.

Komashaku Kimi. “A Feminist Reinterpretation of The Tale of Genji: Genji and Murasaki,” trans. Yoda Tomiko. U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal no. 5 (1993): 28-51.

Kristeva, Tzvetana. “Does Fujitsubo Love Genji-or Not? (some morphological aspects of classical Japanese poetics).” Asiatica Venetiana no. 5 (2002): 35-58.

McCullough, William H. “Japanese Marriage Institutions in the Heian Period.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 27 (1967): 103-167.

___________. “Spirit Possession in the Heian Period.” In Studies on Japanese Culture, ed. Ōta Saburō and Fukuda Rikutarō. Tokyo: Japan PEN Club, 1973, 1: 91-98.

___________. “The Capital and its Society.” In The Cambridge History of Japan vol. 2, ed. W. H. McCullough and D. H. Shively. Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 134-142.

Morris, Ivan. The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan. Oxford University Press, 1964. Rpt. Penguin Classics, 1969.

Mostow, Joshua S. ” ‘Picturing’ in The Tale of Genji.” Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 33.1 (1999): 1-25.

___________. “Mother Tongue and Father Script: The Relationship of Sei Shōnagon and Murasaki Shikibu to their Fathers and Chinese Letters.” In The Father-Daughter Plot: Japanese Literary Women and the Law of the Father, ed. Rebecca L. Copeland and Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen. University of Hawai’i Press, 2001, pp. 115-142.

Noguchi, Takehiko. “The Substratum Constituting Monogatari: Prose Structure and Narrative in the Genji Monogatari.” In Principles of Japanese Classical Literature, ed. Earl Miner. Princeton University Press, 1985, pp. 130-150.

Okada, H. Richard. Figures of Resistance: Language, Poetry, and Narrating in The Tale of Genji and Other Mid-Heian Texts. Duke University Press, 1991.

___________. “Speaking For: Surrogates and The Tale of Genji.” In Crossing the Bridge: Comparative Essays on Medieval European and Heian Japanese Women Writers, ed. Barbara Stevenson and Cynthia Ho. New York: Palgrave, 2000, pp. 5-27.

Pandey, Rajyashree. “The Body and Erotic Desire in Genji monogatari.” In The World of The Tale of Genji Outside of Japan: Translation and Research, ed. Ii Haruki. Kazama Shobō, 2004, pp. 255-263.

Pekarik, Andrew, ed. Ukifune: Love in The Tale of Genji. Columbia University Press, 1982.

Pollack, David. “The Informing Image: ‘China’ in The Tale of Genji.” In The Fracture of Meaning. Princeton University Press, 1986, pp. 55-76.

Puette, William J. Guide to the Tale of Genji. Tokyo and Rutland, Vermont: Tuttle, 1983.

Shirane, Haruo. “The Aesthetics of Power: Politics in The Tale of Genji.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 45.2 (1985): 615-647.

___________. The Bridge of Dreams: A Poetics of The Tale of Genji. Stanford University Press, 1987.

Stinchecum, Amanda. “Who Tells the Tale? ‘Ukifune’: A Study in Narrative Voice.” Monumenta Nipponica 35:4 (1980): 375-403.

Tyler, Royall. “Lady Murasaki’s Erotic Entertainment: The Early Chapters of The Tale of Genji.” East Asian History no. 12 (1996): 65-78.

___________. “The Sea Girl and the Shepherdess.” In Currents in Japanese Culture, ed. Amy Heinrich. Columbia University Press, 1997, pp. 205-222. (A comparison between the literatures of love in medieval France and Heian Japan.)

___________. “I Am I: Genji and Murasaki,” Monumenta Nipponica 54.4 (1999): 435-480.

___________. “Marriage, Rank and Rape in The Tale of Genji.” Intersections, Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context no. 7 (March 2002). Access at the following website: http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue7/tyler.html.

___________. “Rivalry, Triumph, Folly, Revenge: A Plot Line through The Tale of Genji.” Journal of Japanese Studies 29.2 (2003): 251-287.

___________. “What is The Tale of Genji about?” Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, fourth series, vol. 18 (2004): 1-15.

___________. The Disaster of the Third Princess: Essays on The Tale of Genji. ANU E Press, 2009. Download free from: http://epress.anu.edu.au/third_princess_citation.html.

Tyler, Royall and Susan Tyler. “The Possession of Ukifune.” Asiatica Venetiana no. 5 (2000): 177-209.

Ury, Marian. “Tales of Genji.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 51.1 (1991): 263-308. (A playful review written in the style of Boccaccio’s Decameron of English scholarship on Genji.)

Yoda, Tomiko. “Fractured Dialogues: Mono no aware and Poetic Communication in The Tale of Genji.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 59.2 (1999): 523-557.

4. Genji Art

Akiyama, Terukazu. “Women Painters at the Heian Court,” translated and adapted by Maribeth Graybill. In Flowering in the Shadows: Women in the History of Chinese and Japanese Painting, ed. Marsha Weidner. University of Hawai’i Press, 1990, pp. 159-184.

Allen, Laura W. “Japanese Exemplars for a New Age: Genji Paintings from the Seventeenth-Century Tosa School.” In Critical Perspectives on Classicism in Japanese Painting, 1600-1700, ed. Elizabeth Lillehoj. University of Hawai’i Press, 2004, pp. 99-132.

Horton, H. Mack, trans. The Tale of Genji: scenes from the world’s first novel. Illustrations by Miyata Masayuki. Tokyo and New York: Kodansha International, 2001.

Lippitt, Yukio. “Figure and Facture in the Genji Scrolls: Text, Calligraphy, Paper, and Painting.” In Shirane 2008, pp. 49-80.

McCormick, Melissa. “Genji Goes West: The 1510 Genji Album and the Visualization of Court and Capital.” Art Bulletin 85.1 (2003): 54-84.

___________. “Monochromatic Genji: The Hakubyō Tradition and Female Commentarial Culture.” In Shirane 2008, pp. 101-128.

Morris, Ivan, trans. The Tale of Genji Scroll. Introduction by Yoshinobu Tokugawa. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1971.

Murase, Miyeko, ed. The Tale of Genji: Legends and Paintings. New York: Braziller, 2001.

___________. Iconography of The Tale of Genji: Genji monogatari ekotoba. New York and Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1983.

Nakamachi Keiko. “Genji Pictures from Momoyama Painting to Edo Ukiyo-e: Cultural Authority and New Horizons,” translated by Anri Yasuda. In Shirane 2008, 171-210.

5. Genji Reception

Nō Drama

Goff, Janet. Noh Drama and The Tale of Genji: The Art of Allusion in Fifteen Classical Plays. Princeton University Press, 1991.

Matheson, William H. “Madness in Literature: Reading the ‘Heartvine’ Chapter and Its Descendants.” In Kamens 1993, pp. 162-167.

Tyler, Royall. “The Nō Play Matsukaze as a Transformation of Genji monogatari.” Journal of Japanese Studies 20.2 (1994): 377-422.

Yamanaka Reiko. “The Tale of Genji and the Development of Female-Spirit Nō.” In Shirane 2008, pp. 81-100.

Nise Murasaki inaka Genji (1829-1842)

Sections translated by Chris Drake as A Country Genji by a Commoner Murasaki. In Early Modern Literature: An Anthology, 1600-1900, ed. Haruo Shirane. Columbia University Press, 2002, pp. 801-842.

Emmerich, Michael. “The Splendor of Hybridity: Image and Text in Ryūtei Tanehiko’s Inaka Genji.” In Shirane 2008, pp. 211-239.

Kondo, Eiko. “Inaka Genji Series.” In Essays on Japanese Art Presented to Jack Hillier, ed. Matthi Forrer. London: Sawers, 1982.

Marks, Andreas. “A Country Genji: Kunisada’s Single-Sheet Genji Series.” Impressions: The Journal of the Ukiyo-e Society of America, no. 27 (2005-2006): 59-79.

Markus, Andrew Lawrence. The Willow in Autumn: Ryūtei Tanehiko, 1783-1842. Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1992.

Twentieth-century responses

Yosano Akiko (1878-1942). “Genji monogatari raisan,” 1922.

Rowley, G. G. “Yosano Akiko’s Poems ‘In Praise of The Tale of Genji’.” Monumenta Nipponica 56.4 (2001): 439-486.

Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (1886-1965). “Yume no ukihashi,” 1959.

Howard Hibbett, trans. “The Bridge of Dreams.” In Seven Japanese Tales. Tokyo: Tuttle, 1965.

Yourcenar, Marguerite (1903-1987). Nouvelles Orientales, 1938.

Alberto Manguel, trans., “The Last Love of Prince Genji.” In Oriental Tales. New York: Farrar, 1983.

Enchi Fumiko (1905-1986). Onnamen, 1958; Namamiko monogatari, 1965.

Juliet Winters Carpenter, trans., Masks. New York: Vintage, 1983.

Roger K. Thomas, trans., A Tale of False Fortunes. University of Hawai’i Press, 2000.

Mishima Yukio (1925-1970), Aoi no ue, 1951.

Donald Keene, trans., “The Lady Aoi.” In Five Modern Nō Plays by Mishima Yukio. New York: Knopf, 1957. Rpt. Tokyo: Tuttle, 1967.

Dalby, Liza. The Tale of Murasaki: A Novel. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2000.

Genji Reception: Secondary Sources

Caddeau, Patrick W. Appraising Genji: Literary Criticism and Cultural Anxiety in the Age of the Last Samurai. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2006.

D’Etcheverry, Charo B. Love After The Tale of Genji: Rewriting the World of the Shining Prince. Harvard University Asia Center, 2007.

Harper, Thomas J. “Motoori Norinaga’s Criticism of the Genji monogatari: A Study of the Background and Critical Content of his Genji monogatari Tama no ogushi.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1971.

___________. “Medieval Interpretations of Murasaki Shikibu’s ‘Defense of the Art of Fiction’.” In Studies on Japanese Culture, ed. Ōta Saburō and Fukuda Rikutarō. Tokyo: Japan PEN Club, 1973, 1: 56-61.

___________. “The Tale of Genji in the eighteenth century: Keichū, Mabuchi and Norinaga.” In 18th Century Japan: Culture and Society, ed. C. Andrew Gerstle. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1989, pp. 106-123. Rpt. London: Routledge, 2000.

___________. “Genji Gossip.” In New Leaves: Studies and Translations of Japanese Literature in Honor of Edward Seidensticker, ed. Aileen Gatten and Anthony Hood Chambers. Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 1993, pp. 29-44.

___________. “More Genji Gossip.” Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 28.2 (1994): 175-182.

Kimbrough, R. Keller. “Murasaki Shikibu for Children: The Illustrated Shinpan Murasaki Shikibu of ca. 1747.” Japanese Language and Literature 40 (2006): 1-36.

Kornicki, P. F. “Unsuitable Books for Women: Genji Monogatari and Ise Monogatari in Late Seventeenth-Century Japan.” Monumenta Nipponica 60.2 (2005): 147-193.

___________. “Marketing The Tale of Genji in Seventeenth-Century Japan.” In Literary Cultures and the Material Book, ed. Simon Eliot, Andrew Nash, and Ian Willison. London: The British Library, 2007, pp. 65-75.

McMullen, James. Genji gaiden: The Origins of Kumazawa Banzan’s Commentary on The Tale of Genji. Reading: Ithaca Press, 1991.

___________. Idealism, Protest, and the Tale of Genji: The Confucianism of Kumazawa Banzan (1619-91). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.

Mostow, Joshua S. “On Becoming Ukifune: Autobiographical Heroines in Heian and Kamakura Literature.” In Crossing the Bridge: Comparative Essays on Medieval European and Heian Japanese Women Writers, ed. Barbara Stevenson and Cynthia Ho. New York: Palgrave, 2000, pp. 45-60.

Nelson-McDermott, Catherine. “Virginia Woolf and Murasaki Shikibu: A Question of Perception.” In Virginia Woolf Miscellanies: Proceedings of the First Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf, ed. Mark Hussey and Vara Neverow-Turk. New York: Pace University Press, 1992, pp. 133-144.

Rowley, G. G. “Literary Canon and National Identity: The Tale of Genji in Meiji Japan.” Japan Forum 9.1 (1997): 1-15.

___________. Yosano Akiko and The Tale of Genji. Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 2000.

Sarra, Edith. Fictions of Femininity: Literary Inventions of Gender in Japanese Court Women’s Memoirs. Stanford University Press, 1999.

Shirane, Haruo, ed. Envisioning The Tale of Genji: Media, Gender, and Cultural Production. Columbia University Press, 2008.

Tyler, Royall. “Sagoromo and Hamamatsu on Genji: Eleventh-Century Tales as Commentary on Genji monogatari.” (Nichibunken) Japan Review 18 (2006):

Yoda, Tomiko. Gender and National Literature: Heian Texts in the Construction of Japanese Modernity. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2004.

Yoshinaga, Seiko. “Enchi Fumiko and rewriting postwar Japan: translating classics, women, and nation.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2001.

6. Film, Musical, and Manga Versions

Hirota, Aki. “The Tale of Genji: From Heian Classic to Heisei Comics,” Journal of Popular Culture 31.2 (1997): 29-68.

Kitamura Yuika. “Sexuality, Gender, and The Tale of Genji in Modern Japanese Translation and Manga.” In Shirane 2008, pp. 329-357.

Miyake, Lynne K. “Graphically Speaking: Manga Versions of The Tale of Genji.” Monumenta Nipponica 63.2 (2008): 359-392.

Tateishi Kazuhiro. “The Tale of Genji in Postwar Film: Emperor, Aestheticism, and the Erotic.” In Shirane 2008, pp. 303-328.

→Contains a full list of postwar films complete with detailed production notes.

Tsuboi Kou and Shimizu Yoshiko, ed. Genji monogatari eigoban: the Illustrated Genji monogatari. Shinjinbutsu Ōraisha, 1989.

Yamato Waki, trans. Stuart Atkin and Toyozaki Yoko. Asaki yume mishi: Genji monogatari bairingaruban. Kodansha Bilingual Comics. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2000-.

→Translation of the most famous Genji manga, originally published in the shōjo manga mimi, 1979-1993.