The monogatari is a Japanese literary form that meditates on affairs between members of the royal court, drawing on the complex marital traditions followed by the medieval Heian Court, Japan’s ruling class from 794-1185 C.E. The most common monogatari narratives are concerned with finding love in unexpected or often forbidden places; for example, a high-ranking aristocrat falling deeply in love with a peasant girl. However, these pieces are highly dramatized and do not reflect realistic Heian romances. Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji interlaces monogatari tales to create a structure for the hero Genji, and to a lesser extent his father Emperor Kiritsubo, to explore idealized romances with lower-class women. Emperor Kiritsubo falls passionately in love with the Lady of the Paulownia-Courtyard Chambers, or the Lady Kiritsubo, and cherishes her above all the other consorts. Because of her lower social rank, her “lambent beauty,” and the Emperor’s clear adoration of her, the Lady is completely ostracized by the Kokiden Consort and “certain ladies …show more content…
One of the most shocking, however, is his relationship with Murasaki. Murasaki is the young daughter of Prince Hyobu and niece of the Empress Fujitsubo, raised by nuns in a mountain temple. At the time of their encounter, Genji is about eighteen years old and Murasaki is ten. He finds her during a trip to the temple in search of a bishop to cure his sickness, and is instantly taken by her beauty; however, her beauty is in reference to Fujitsubo, “the woman to whom his heart was eternally devoted” (1188). Genji thus asks the nuns if he could take her in as his own, and explicitly wants to groom her: “She was possessed of both a noble lineage and extraordinary beauty, but she also had an obedient temperament… he wanted to get close to her, raise and train her with his own desires and tastes, and then make her his wife”