PREFACE
SEVERAL critics have asked to be told more about the writer of the Tale of Genji. Unfortunately little is known of Murasaki’s life save the bare facts recorded in the first appendix of Volume I. What other knowledge we possess is derived from her Diary, which will be discussed in a later volume and is meanwhile available in Mr. Doi’s translation. Reviewers have also asked for information concerning the state of literature in Japan at the time when the Tale was written. This I have supplied; and I have further ventured upon a short discussion of Murasaki’s art and its relation to the fiction of the West.
I have been blamed for using Catholic terms to describe heathen rituals. My reason for doing so is that the outward forms of medieval Buddhism stand much nearer to Catholicism than to the paler ceremonies of the Protestant Church, and if one avoids words with specifically Catholic associations one finds oneself driven back upon the still less appropriate terminology of Anglicanism. Thus ‘Vespers’ is a less misleading translation than ‘Evening Service’ though the latter is far more literal.
Finally, I have thought it might be of interest to give a few notes concerning the transmission of the text.
Volume III is finished and will appear shortly.
Note on Pronunciation.—The G in ‘Genji’ is hard, as in ‘gun.’ Vowels, as in Italian.