Word: monogatari
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Dates: during 1932-1932
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Artfully translated by Arthur Waley the first four parts of Lady Murasaki's 900-year-old Japanese masterpiece, Genji Monogatari (The Tale of Genji, The Sacred Tree, The Wreath of Cloud, Blue Trousers), have given many an Occidental reader an appetite for the dainty psychological morsels of antique Nippon. With all its predecessors' inimitable flavor, The Lady of the Boat tells a simple story, though its characters are modernistically complex...
...Author. A lady as irreproachable in her own behavior as her characters were worldly, Lady Murasaki (Murasaki, no Shikibu) belonged to a junior branch of the Fujiwara family, married a kinsman, joined the court of the Empress Akiko when he died. The Genji Monogatari, in 54 books, was finished in 1004 or a little earlier. Tourists who visit the Lake Biwa Temple of Ishiyama can see what legend calls Lady Murasaki's room and a scrap of the handwriting in which she composed the first Nipponese novel, some 700 years ahead of England's Fielding...