Appraising Genji: Literary Criticism And Cultural Anxiety in the Age of the Last Samurai [Hardcover]

Patrick W. Caddeau (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0791466736 | ISBN-13: 978-0791466735 | Publication Date: March 6, 2006

Murasaki Shikibu’s eleventh-century Tale of Genji is the most revered work of fiction in Japan. This book explores Genji’s reception over the years and its place in Japanese culture.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Considered by many to be the world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu is a masterpiece of narrative fiction rich in plot, character development, and compositional detail. The tale, written by a woman in service to Japan’s imperial court in the early eleventh century, portrays a world of extraordinary romance, lyric beauty, and human vulnerability. Appraising Genji is the first work to bring the rich field of Genji reception to the attention of an English-language audience. Patrick W. Caddeau traces the tale’s place in Japanese culture through diaries, critical treatises, newspaper accounts, cinematic adaptation, and modern stage productions.

The centerpiece of this study is a treatise on Genji by Hagiwara Hiromichi (1815–1863), one of the most astute readers of the tale who, after becoming a masterless samurai, embarked on a massive study of Genji. Hiromichi challenged dominant modes of literary interpretation and cherished beliefs about the supremacy of the nation’s aristocratic culture. In so doing, he inspired literary critics and authors as they struggled to articulate theories of fiction and the novel in early modern Japan. Appraising Genji promises to enhance our understanding of one of the greatest literary classics in terms of intellectual history, literary criticism, and the quest of scholars in early modern Japan to define their nation’s place in the world.

About the Author

Patrick W. Caddeau teaches Japanese film and literature at Columbia University and is Director of Studies at Forbes College at Princeton University.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 212 pages
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr (March 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0791466736
• ISBN-13: 978-0791466735
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,849,640 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Reappraising a Genji Commentary, October 12, 2007

By 

Crazy Fox (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Appraising Genji: Literary Criticism and Cultural Anxiety in the Age of the Last Samurai (Paperback)

The one thing this fine book doesn't have going for it is its title. The last bit, mainly, for "Age of the Last Samurai" is utterly misleading on several counts. First of all, no, this book does not explore literary criticism and cultural anxiety in 2003, the year "The Last Samurai" was released in theaters. Oh, okay, what is meant is the time period depicted in the movie, but that's wrong too: granted it's a bit hard to tell because of the film's historical fuzziness, but generally it seems to take place in the 1870's to 1880's (mid-Meiji period, give or take), whereas the focus of this book is clearly the 1850's to 1860's or before (late Tokugawa period). This inaccurate and dreadfully corny reference to a (likewise inaccurate and corny) Hollywood hit is obviously a very ill-conceived attempt to make this book grab a popular audience (which I'm sorry but unfortunately it just will not, regardless) while at the same time threatening to turn away people seriously interested in Japanese literature and intellectual history, especially those interested in the critical reception of "The Tale of Genji" over time--the people to whom this book should otherwise appeal. Trust me, I rolled my eyes and almost didn't give the book a second look.

Which would have been a shame, because this is a fascinating book, carefully researched and convincingly argued. Writing in clear, lucid prose, Caddeau explores the details of one particular scholar and thereby slowly builds up to conclusions that alter and shift our views of Japanese literature more generally in unexpected and interesting ways. The principle focus is Hagiwara Hiromichi and his largely neglected commentary on Murasaki Shikibu's classic "Tale of Genji", the "Appraisal of Genji" ("Genji Monogatari Hyoshaku", incomplete but published in two installments in 1854 and 1861). Hagiwara himself is an intriguing figure, an independent scholar with a Confucian background but closely associated with both Kokugaku Nativist circles and Rangaku schools of Western science in Osaka (especially Ogata Koan's Tekijuku Academy in Osaka, from which hailed Fukuzawa Yukichi among others). Something of the kaleidoscopic complexity of late Tokugawa thought can then be glimpsed through this one somewhat eccentric fellow, most especially in the way he claims the great Nativist Motoori Norinaga as an intellectual forbearer and yet more or less subverts his ideological interpretations of "The Tale of Genji" as found in "Tama no Ogushi"--here instead of a pure and uniquely Japanese work of aesthetic nostalgia a la Norinaga we have a finely crafted fictional work obeying general laws of composition and accessible to anyone anywhere with the patience and enthusiasm to read the novel intently and attentively.

It's especially with the latter point that we get into larger issues, for Norinaga's spin on "Genji" was immensely compelling to thinkers and literary critics in the Meiji years, concerned as they were with issues of national identity and Westernization, and the repercussions of this essentialist and culturally nationalist take on the novel are with us yet both in Japan and abroad, as the author amply demonstrates (even in a 2000 production by the Takarazuka Revue remaking the classic for the stage). Caddeau goes on to show how Hiromichi's approach to "Genji" was deliberately downplayed and ignored in the midst of this, to the point that even those probably influenced by him (such as the Meiji novelist, critic, and Shakespeare translator Tsubouchi Shoyo) took pains to obscure their debt to his ideas. In rescuing this Tokugawa thinker from undeserved obscurity, then, Caddeau offers us a plausible alternative to standard, deeply ideological takes on Murasaki's timeless classic, one indeed better suited to its place as an indispensable part of world literature.

In addition to all of this, the reader will get a very good overview of critical reception to "The Tale of Genji" from the Heian period to today, into which Hiromichi's "Hyoshaku" is properly contextualized. If the book has any flaw, it's perhaps that the author hammers at the Hiromichi/Norinaga contrast rather insistently and repetitively. That, and in one chapter he goes into a carefully minute consideration of Hiromichi's technical terms for the principles of composition he found at work in "Genji" but rather unhelpfully neglects to provide the Chinese characters for them in the kanji glossary in the back. These nitpicks and the annoyingly goofy title aside though, "Appraising Genji" is a highly important and deeply fascinating book highly recommended to those interested in "The Tale of Genji", late Tokugawa thought, or Japanese literary history more generally.