The Diary of Lady Murasaki

The Diary of Lady Murasaki ( Murasaki Shikibu Nikki) is the title of a collection of diary
fragments written by the 11th-century Japanese Heian era lady-in-waiting and writer Murasaki Shikibu. It is
written in kana, then a newly developed writing system for vernacular Japanese, more common among
women, who were generally unschooled in Chinese. Unlike modern diaries or journals, 10th-century Heian
diaries tend to emphasize important events more than ordinary day-to-day life and do not follow a strict
chronological order. The work includes vignettes,waka poems, and an epistolary section written in the form
of a long letter.
It was probably written between 1008 and 1010 when Murasaki was in service at the imperial court. The
largest portion of the diary detail the birth of Empress Shshi's (Akiko) children. Shorter vignettes describe
interactions among imperial ladies-in-waiting and other court writers, such as Izumi Shikibu, Akazome
Emon and Sei Shnagon. Murasaki includes her observations and opinions throughout, bringing to the
work a sense of life at the early 10th century Heian court, lacking in other literature or chronicles of the era.
A Japanese picture scroll, the Murasaki Shikibu Diary Emaki was produced during the Kamakura period in
the 13th century, and the fragments of the diary serve as the basis for three important translations to
English in the 20th century.

Background
At the peak of the Heian period, from the late 10th to early 11th century, as Japan sought to establish a
unique national culture of its own it saw the genesis of early Japanese classical literature, which to a large
part emerged from women's court literature.[1][2] Through the rise and use of kana, aristocratic women court
writers formed a foundation for classical court literature, according to Haruo Shirane.[3] Kokin Wakash's
first imperial waka collection, published c. 905, set the foundation for court literature. Up to this point,
Japanese literature was written in Chinese traditionally the language of men in the public sphere.[4] It was
in the literature of the imperial court that the gradual shift toward 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." [3]
By the early 11th century new genres of women's court literature were appearing in the form of diaries and
poetic stories. Women, relegated to the private sphere, quickly embraced the use of kana, unlike men who
still conducted business in Chinese.[4] Women's writing showed a marked difference from men's, more
personal and introspective in nature.[5] Thus written Japanese was developed by women who used the
language as a form of self-expression and, as Japanese literature scholar Richard Bowring says, by
women who undertook the process of building "a flexible written style out of a language that had only
previously existed in a spoken form".
Emperor Ichij's court, dominated by the powerful Fujiwara clan, was the seat of two rival imperial
empresses, Teishi and Shshi, each with ladies-in-waiting who were proficient writers producing works
honoring their mistresses and the Fujiwara clan.[5] The three most noteworthy Heian era diaries in the genre
of Nikki Bungaku Murasaki's Murasaki Shikibu nikki, Sei Shnagon's The Pillow Book and Izumi Shikibu's
(Izumi Shikibu Nikki) came from the empresses's courts.[3] Murasaki's diary covers a discrete period, most
likely from 1008 to 1010.[7] Only short and fragmentary pieces of the diary survive and its importance lies, in
part, in the revelations about the author, about whom most of the known biographical facts come from it
and from her c. 1014 short poetry collection, theMurasaki Shikibu sh (or Poetic Memoirs).[7]
Murasaki's given name is unknown. Women were often identified by their rank or that of a husband or
another close male relative. "Muraski" is a nickname given her at court, from a character in Tale of the
Genji; "Shikibu" denotes her father's rank at the Ministry of Ceremonial (Shikibu-sh).[8] A member of a
minor branch of the Fujiwara clan, her father was a scholar of Chinese literature who educated both his
children in classical Chinese, although educating a female child was exceedingly uncommon.[8]
Around 998 Murasaki married Fujiwara no Nobutaka (c. 950 c. 1001);[9] she gave birth to a daughter in
999. Two years later her husband died.[8] Scholars are unsure when she started writing the novel
(monogatari) The Tale of Genji but she was certainly writing after she was widowed, perhaps in a state of
grief.[9] In her diary she describes her feelings after her husband's death: "I felt depressed and confused.
For some years I had existed from day to day in listless fashion ... doing little more than registering the
passage of time .... The thought of my continuing loneliness was quite unbearable".[10] On the strength of
her reputation as an author, Murasaki entered service with Shshi at court, almost certainly at the request

of Shshi's father, Fujiwara no Michinaga,[11] perhaps as an incentive to continue adding chapters to The
Tale of Genji.[12] She began writing her diary after entering imperial service.

Diary
The diary consists of anecdotes in the form of vignettes, a lengthy description about Shshi's (known
as Akiko)'s eldest son Prince Atsuhira's birth, and an epistolary section.[13]Set at the imperial court in Kyoto,
it opens with these words: "As autumn advances, the Tsuchimikado mansion looks unutterably beautiful.
Every branch on every tree by the lake and each tuft of grass on the banks of the stream takes on its own
particular color, which is then intensified by the evening light.
Following the short opening vignettes, Murasaki writes about the events surrounding Shshi's pregnancy.
She begins with a description of the Empress's removal from the Imperial palace to her father's house, the
various celebrations and rituals that took place during the pregnancy, and the eventual childbirth with its
associated rites in celebration of the successful delivery of a male heir. These passages include specific
readings of sutras and other Buddhist rituals associated with childbirth.
In several sections Murasaki reveals her dissatisfaction with court life. [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. In doing so, she adds a sense of self to the diary
entries.
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. Father, a most learned man, was always regretting the fact: 'Just my luck!' he would
say. 'What a pity she was not born a man!
Some fragments of the work may not have survived. Bowring believes the work is difficult to define, that
piecing it together is puzzling. He sees four discrete sections, beginning with the dated descriptions of the
birth, followed by two undated sections of introspective vignettes, and a final dated section in chronological
order. This "strange arrangement", as he calls it, might be the result of stitching together a series of
incomplete sources or fragments. The diary's text was used as a source for the Eiga Monogatari a
laudatory work about Michinaga and the Fujiwara clan, written or compiled in the 11th century with entire
sections copied verbatim from Murasaki's work. Yet the textual differences between the two suggests
the Eiga Monogatori author had access to a different, perhaps more complete text of the diary than has
survived.[20] Bowring questions whether the current structure is original to Murasaki, and the degree to
which it has been rearranged or rewritten since she authored it

Fujiwara dynasty
Unlike the imaginary courts of Murasaki's romantic novel The Tale of Genji, the descriptions in the diary of
imperial court life are starkly realistic. 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.[23] She writes about waking in the morning to find
him lurking in the garden outside her window, and the ensuing exchange of waka
Dew is still on the ground but His Excellency is already out in the garden . he peers in over the top of the
curtain frame [and] makes me conscious of my own disheveled appearance, and so when he presses
me for a poem I use it as an excuse to move to where my inkstone is kept.
Whether the two were intimate is a question scholars have been unable to determine.
Although the diary's sections about the birth of Shshi's son were meant as tribute to Michinaga,[7] he is
revealed as overly controlling.[22]The child's birth was of enormous importance to Michinaga, who nine years
earlier brought his daughter to court as concubine to Emperor Ichij; Shshi's quick ascendence to
Empress and status as 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.
Michinaga dominated the child's father and attending priests throughout the birth ceremonies. After the
birth, he visited twice daily, whereas the Emperor only made a single short imperial visit to his

son. Murasaki chronicles each of Michinaga's ceremonial visits, as well as the lavish ceremony held 16
days after the birth. 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. Her mantle had five cuffs of white
lined with dark red, and her crimson gown was of beaten silk.
Shshi appears to have been a serious and studious young woman who expected decorum from her
ladies-in-waiting often difficult at a fractious court. When she asked Murasaki for lessons in
Chinese,[30] she insisted they be conducted in secret. Murasaki explained that "because [Shshi] 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 given her informal lessons on the two
volumes of 'New Ballads'. I hid this fact from others, as did Her Majesty".

Court life
Some of the diary's passages are unflinching in exposing the behavior at the imperial court, particularly that
of drunken courtiers who seduced the ladies-in-waiting.[17] As Keene describes it, the court was a place
where the courtiers were "drunken men who make obscene jokes and paw at women".[31] Murasaki
complained about drunk courtiers and princes who behaved badly, such as the incident when at a banquet
court poet Fujiwara no Kint joined a group of women asking whether Murasaki was present alluding to
the character in The Tale of Genji. Murasaki retorted that none of the novel's characters lived at this tawdry
and unpleasant court, so unlike the court in her novel.[32] She left the banquet when "Counsellor Takai ...
started pulling at Lady Hybu's robes and singing dreadful songs, but His Excellency said nothing. I
realized that it was bound to be a terribly drunken affair this evening, so ... Lady Saish and I decided to
retire
There are anecdotes about drunken revelries and courtly scandals concerning women who, because of
behavior or age, were forced to leave imperial service.[17] Murasaki suggests that the court women were
weak-willed, uneducated, and inexperienced with men.
The women lived in semi-seclusion in curtained areas or screened spaces without privacy. Men were
allowed to enter the women's space at any time.[34] When the Imperial palace burned down in 1005 the
court was itinerant for the following years, depending on Michinaga for housing. Murasaki lived at his Biwa
mansion, the Tsuchimikado mansion, or Emperor Ichij's mansion, where there was little space. Ladies-inwaiting had to sleep on thin futons rolled out on bare wood floors in a room often created by curtaining off a
space. The dwellings were slightly raised and opened to the Japanese garden, affording little
privacy.[35] 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.
The houses were cold and drafty in the winter, with few braziers available to the women whose
multilayered Jnihitoe kimonos kept them warm,[34] of which there are detailed descriptions in the work.
Heian era noble women dressed in of six or seven garments, each layered over the next, some with
multiple linings in differing hues and color combinations.[36] The description of the clothing the ladies-inwaiting wore at an imperial event shows the importance of fashions, the arrangement of their layers, as well
as Murasaki's keen observational eye:
The younger women wore jackets with five cuffs of various colors: white on the outside with dark red on
yellow-green, white with just one green lining, and pale red shading to dark with one white layer interposed.
They were the most intelligently arranged.[37]
Combining layers of garments, each with multiple linings, to arrive at a harmonic color combination
assumed an almost ritual fascination to the women. It required attention; and achieving an individual
stylistic aesthetic was important.[36] Murasaki chronicles the significance of making a mistake at a courtly
function when two women failed in a perfect color combination: "That day all the women had done their
utmost to dress well, but .... two of them showed a want of taste when it came to the color combinations at
their sleeves ... [in] full view of the courtiers and senior nobles.

Ladies-in-waiting
Murasaki suffered overwhelming loneliness, had her own concerns about aging, and was not happy living
at court.[17] She became withdrawn, writing that perhaps the other women considered her stupid, shy or
both: "Do they really look on me as such a dull thing, I wonder? But I am what I am .... [Shshi] too has
often remarked that she thought I was not the kind of person with whom one could ever relax .... I am
perversely stand-offish; if only I can avoid putting off those for whom I have genuine respect."[39] Keene

speculates that as a writer who required solitude Murasaki's loneliness may have been "the loneliness of
the artist who craves companionship but also rejects it".[17] He points out she had "exceptional powers of
discernment" and probably alienated the other women, about 15 or 16 of whom she describes in her diary.
Although she adds praise for each woman, her criticism is more memorable because she saw through and
described their flaws.[31]
Her insights did not endear her to the other women at a court where intrigue, drama and scheming was the
norm, yet for a novelist it was crucial. 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 Shshi had.
The diary includes descriptions of other ladies-in-waiting who were writers, most notably Sei Shnagon,
who had been in service to Shshi's rival and co-empress, Empress Teishi (Sadako). The two courts were
competitive; both introduced educated ladies-in-waiting to their respective circles and encouraged rivalry
among the women writers. Shnagon probably left court after Empress Teishi's death in 1006, and it is
possible the two never met, yet Murasaki was quite aware of Shnagon's writing style and her character.
She disparages Shnagon in her diary:[41]
Sei Shnagon, for instance, was dreadfully conceited. She thought herself so clever and littered her writing
with Chinese characters; but if you examined them closely, they left a great deal to be desired. Those who
think of themselves of being superior to everyone else in this way will inevitably suffer and come to a bad
end .[42]
Murasaki is also critical of the two other women writers at Shshi's court poet Izumi Shikibu, and
Akazome Emon who authored a monogatari.[43] Of Izumi's writing and poetry she says:
Now someone who did carry on a fascinating correspondence is Izumi Shikibu. 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. Yet, she never really comes up to scratch . I cannot
think of her as a poet of the highest rank.[44]

The diary and The Tale of Genji

Murasaki's The Tale of Genji is barely mentioned in the diary. She writes the Emperor had the story read to
him, and that colored papers and calligraphers had been selected for transcriptions of the manuscript
done by court women. In one anecdote she tells of Michinaga sneaking into her room to help himself to a
copy of the manuscript.[45] There are parallels between the later chapters of Genji and the diary. According
to Genji scholar Shirane, the scene in the diary which describes Ichijo's imperial procession to Michinaga's
mansion in 1008 corresponds closely to an imperial procession in "Chapter 33 (Wisteria Leaves)" of The
Tale of Genji.[46] Shirane believes the similarities suggest portions ofGenji may have been written during the
period Murasaki was in imperial service and wrote the diary.

Style and genre

Heian era diaries resemble autobiographical memoirs more than a diary in the modern sense.[48] The author
of a Heian-era diary (a nikki bungaku) would decide what to include, expand, or exclude. Time was treated
in a similar manner a nikki might include long entries for a single event while other events were omitted.
The nikki was considered a form of literature, often not written by the subject, almost always written in thirdperson, and sometimes included elements of fiction or history.[48] These diaries are a repository of
knowledge about the Heian Imperial court, considered highly important in Japanese literature, although
many have not survived in a complete state.[22] The format typically included waka poetry,[49] meant to
convey information to the readers, as seen in Murasaki's descriptions of court ceremonies. [48]
Few if any dates are included in Murasaki's diary and her working habits are not chronicled. It should not be
compared to a modern 'writer's notebook', according to Keene. 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.[50] According to Keene, the author is revealed as a woman with great
perception and self-awareness, yet a person who is withdrawn with few friends. 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. [31]
Bowring believes the work contains three styles, each distinct from the other. The first is the matter-of-fact
chronicle of events, a chronicle which otherwise would typically have been written in Chinese. The second
style is found in the author's self-reflective analysis. He considers the author's self-reflections the best that

have survived from the period, noting that Murasaki's mastery of introspective style, still rare in Japanese,
reflects her contributions to the development of written Japanese in that she conquered the limits of an
inflexible language and writing system. The epistolary section represents the third style, a newly developed
trend. Bowring sees this as the weakest portion of the work, a section where she fails to break free of the
rhythms of spoken language.[51] 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".
In contrast, written language must compensate for "the gap between the producer and receiver of the
message".[6] She may have been experimenting with the new style of writing, either producing a fictional
letter or writing a real letter, but he writes that at the end of the section the writing is weaker, "degenerating
into ... disjointed rhythms that are characteristic of speech."[52]

Translations
In 1920, Annie Shepley Omori and Kochi Doi published Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan; this book
combined their translation of Murasaki's diary with Izumi Shikibu's (TheIzumi Shikibu nikki) and with
the Sarashina nikki. Their translation had an introduction by Amy Lowell.[53]
Richard Bowring published translation in 1982,[53] which contains a "lively and provocative" analysis.

Emakimono handscroll
Translations[edit]
In 1920, Annie Shepley Omori and Kochi Doi published Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan; this book
combined their translation of Murasaki's diary with Izumi Shikibu's (TheIzumi Shikibu nikki) and with
the Sarashina nikki. Their translation had an introduction by Amy Lowell.[53]
Richard Bowring published translation in 1982,[53] which contains a "lively and provocative" analysis.[12]

Emakimono handscroll[edit]
In the 13th century a handscroll of the diary was produced, The Murasaki Shikibu Nikki Emaki. The scroll,
meant to be read from left to right, consists of calligraphy illustrated with paintings. Writing in "The Housebound 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. About 20 percent of
the scroll has survived; based on the existing fragments, the images would have closely followed the text of
the diary.
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. Also typical of the
period is the style offukimuki yatai (blown off roof) depictions of interiors which seem to be visualized from
above looking downward into a space. According to Mason, the interior scenes of human figures are
juxtaposed against empty exterior gardens; the characters are 'house-bound'.[55]
In the diary Murasaki writes of love, hate and loneliness, feelings which make the illustrations, according to
Mason, of the "finest extant examples of prose-poetry narrative illustrations from the period".[56] Mason finds
the illustration of two young courtiers opening the lattice blinds to enter the women's quarters particularly
poignant, because Murasaki tries to hold the lattice shut against their advances. The image shows that the
architecture and the men who keep her away from the freedom of the garden to the right.[57]
The scroll was discovered in 1920 in a five segment piece, by Morikawa Kanichir (). The Gotoh
Museum holds segments one, two and four; the Tokyo National Museum holds the third segment; the fifth
remains in a private collection. The portion of the emakimono held at the Gotoh museum have been
designated as National Treasures of Japan