![]() ![]() Reading The Tale of Genji is like being steeped in tea, soaking up dreamlike episodes linked by poems. Morris writes that “ The Tale of Genji gives a realistic and fairly complete picture of cultural life in the capital.” What his book adds is the context-historical, anthropological, political, artistic-that makes this picture more three dimensional. The triumph of the book is that he adds so much more to the picture. ![]() Morris’s book conveys most of the 1,000+ page novel’s plot-which spans 75 years around the turn of the 11th century and contains hundreds of characters-as well as its aesthetic flavor. Reading The Tale of Genji before reading The World of the Shining Prince is probably a good idea, and recommended, but not absolutely necessary. From its sparkling prose to its lucidly conceived themes, this 1964 book by Ivan Morris must rank as one of the greatest achievements in liberal arts. ![]() ![]() The World of the Shining Prince synthesizes a vast amount of Japanese history, anthropology, and aesthetics through the prism of the world’s first novel- The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu. Screen depicting the Miotsukushi chapter of Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji, which is the centerpiece of Ivan Morris’s World of the Shining Prince (image via Wikimedia Commons) ![]()
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