The Diary of Lady Murasaki

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Murasaki Shikibu wrote her diary at the Heian imperial court between c. 1008 and 1010. She is depicted here in a c. 1765 Nishiki-e by Komatsuken.

The Diary of Lady Murasaki (紫式部日記 Murasaki Shikibu Nikki) is the title of fragments of a diary written by the 11th-century Japanese Heian era lady-in-waiting and writer Murasaki Shikibu, author of The Tale of Genji. The work is written in kana, then a newly developed writing system for vernacular Japanese that was more common among women, who were generally unschooled in Chinese. Unlike modern diaries or journals, 10th-century Heian diaries tend to emphasize important events more than ordinary day-to-day life and do not follow a strict chronological order. The work includes vignettes, waka poems, and an epistolary section written in the form of a long letter.

Probably written between 1008 and 1010, when Murasaki was in service at the imperial court, the largest portion of the diary chronicles the birth of Empress Shōshi's (Akiko) children. Shorter vignettes describe interactions among imperial ladies-in-waiting and other court writers, such as Izumi Shikibu, Akazome Emon and Sei Shōnagon. Murasaki includes her observations and opinions throughout, bringing to the work a sense of life at the early 10th century Heian court, lacking in other literature or chronicles of the era.

A Japanese picture scroll, the Murasaki Shikibu Diary Emaki was produced during the Kamakura period in the 13th century, and the fragments of the diary serve as the basis for three important translations to English in the 20th century.

Background

From the late 10th to early 11th centuries, at the peak of the Heian period, Japan moved away from predominantly Chinese influences and sought to establish a unique national culture of its own. The formation of Japanese classical literature emerged in women's writing of the period. The gradual shift toward using the vernacular kana writing system, away from classical Chinese styles, was most evident in court literature where waka poetry, in the form of 31 syllables, became immensely popular. Haruo Shirane explains that: "Waka became integral to the everyday life of the aristocracy, functioning as a form of elevated dialogue and the primary means of communication between the sexes, who usually were physically segregated from each other."

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Murasaki Shikibu, depicted by Tosa Mitsuoki, from his illustrations of The Tale of Genji (17th century)

The rise of kana allowed female aristocratic writers at court to form a foundation for "subsequent court literature", explains Shirane Kokin Wakashū's first imperial waka collection, published c. 905, set the foundation for court literature. Up to this point, the Chinese language had traditionally been the language of men in the public sphere. By the early-11th century, though, new genres of court literature were appearing in the form of diaries and poetic stories. Women who were relegated to the private sphere quickly embraced the use of kana, unlike men who still conducted business in the public sphere in Chinese. Women's writing showed a marked difference from men's: it was more personal and introspective in nature, reflecting an "an internal psychological dimension". Thus written Japanese was developed by women who used the language as a form of self-expression and, as Japanese literature scholar Richard Bowring says, women who undertook the process of building "a flexible written style out of a language that has only previously existed in a spoken form".

The powerful Fujiwara clan had two imperial empresses at Emperor Ichijō's court during this period, each with her own competitive court, whose ladies-in-waiting were proficient writers producing works honoring their mistresses and the Fujiwara. These ladies-in-waiting produced three noteworthy Heian era diaries in the genre of Nikki Bungaku  – Murasaki's Murasaki Shikibu nikki, Sei Shōnagon's The Pillow Book and Izumi Shikibu's (Izumi Shikibu Nikki).

Murasaki's covers a discrete period, most likely from 1008 to 1010. Only short and fragmentary pieces of the diary survive and its importance lies, in part, in the revelations about the author, about whom most of the known biographical facts come from it and from her c. 1014 short poetry collection, the Murasaki Shikibu shū (or Poetic Memoirs).

Murasaki's given name is unknown. Women were often identified by their rank or that of a husband or another close male relative. "Muraski" is a nickname given her at court, from a character in Tale of the Genji; "Shikibu" denotes her father's rank at the Ministry of Ceremonials (Shikibu-shō). A member of a minor branch of the Fujiwara clan, her father was a scholar of Chinese literature who educated both his children in classical Chinese, although educating a female child was exceedingly uncommon.

Around 998 Murasaki married Fujiwara no Nobutaka (c. 950 – c. 1001); she gave birth to a daughter in 999. Two years later her husband died. Scholars are unsure when she started writing the novel (monogatari) The Tale of Genji but she was certainly writing after she was widowed, perhaps in a state of grief. In her diary she describes her feelings after her husband's death: "I felt depressed and confused. For some years I had existed from day to day in listless fashion ... doing little more than registering the passage of time .... The thought of my continuing loneliness was quite unbearable". On the strength of her reputation as an author, Murasaki entered service with Empress Shōshi at court, almost certainly at the request of Shōshi's father, Fujiwara no Michinaga, perhaps as an incentive to continue adding chapters to The Tale of Genji. She began writing her diary after entering imperial service.

Diary

The diary consists of anecdotes in the form of vignettes, a lengthy description about Shōshi's (known asAkiko)'s eldest son Prince Atsuhira's birth, and an epistolary section. Set at the imperial court in Kyoto, the work opens with these words: "As autumn advances, the Tsuchimikado mansion looks unutterably beautiful. Every branch on every tree by the lake and each tuft of grass on the banks of the stream takes on its own particular color, which is then intensified by the evening light."

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The 50th day celebration of the birth of Prince Atsuhira-shinnō (later Emperor Go-Ichijō). Fujiwara no Michinaga is in the foreground offering mochi. The figure to his right might be Murasaki Shikibu, c. 13th century.

Following several short vignettes, the work details Shōshi's from the palace, the celebrations surrounding the pregnancy, and the eventual childbirth with the rites associated in celebration of the successful delivery of a male heir. Specific readings of sutras and other Buddhist rituals are included in these passages.

In several sections Murasaki reveals her dissatisfaction with court life. She writes her emotions and feelings of helplessness, her sense of inadequacy compared to higher-ranked Fujiwara clan relatives and courtiers, and the pervasive feelings of loss and loneliness after her husband's death. In doing so, she adds a sense of self to the diary entries.

Murasaki Includes autobiographical snippets before entering imperial service, such as a childhood anecdote about how she learned Chinese:

When my brother Nobunori ... was a young boy learning the Chinese classics, I was in the habit of listening with him and I became unusually proficient at understanding those passages that he found too difficult to grasp and memorize. Father, a most learned man, was always regretting the fact: 'Just my luck!' he would say. 'What a pity she was not born a man!'

Some fragments of the work may have been lost. The work is difficult to define, and according to Bowring, piecing it together is puzzling. He sees four discrete sections, beginning with the dated descriptions of the birth, followed by two undated sections of introspective vignettes, and a final dated section in chronological order. This "strange arrangement", as he calls it, might be the result of stitching together a series of incomplete sources or fragments. The Eiga Monogatari, written or compiled in the 11th century, used the diary as one of its sources, copying entire sections verbatim. Yet differences exist between that and Murasaki's diary, leading Bowring to speculate the author of the Eiga Monogatori had access to a different, and perhaps more complete, text of the diary than has survived. He questions whether the current structure is original to Murasaki or if it has been rearranged or rewritten since she authored it.

Fujiwara dynasty

Court life is described realistically in the diary unlike the imaginary courts Murasaki wrote about in her romantic novel, The Tale of Genji. In particular the "shining prince" Genji, contrasts sharply with the reality of Michinaga's crassness, according to Japanese scholar Donald Keene. Michinaga's drunken behavior embarrasses his wife, Rinshi, and his daughter; he further embarrasses Murasaki with his flirtatious behavior toward her. When she finds him lurking outside her room early one morning, the encounter, with its associated exchange of waka poems is described in the third vignette. "Dew is still on the ground," she writes, "but His Excellency is already out in the garden …. he peers in over the top of the curtain frame … [and] makes me conscious of my own disheveled appearance, and so when he presses me for a poem I use it as an excuse to move to where my inkstone is kept." Whether the two were intimate is question scholars have been unable to determine.

Fujiwara no Michinaga, shown here in a 13th-century illustration of the diary.

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Empress Shōshi and Murasaki reading Bai Juyi's poems in Chinese. From the Murasaki Shikibu Nikki Emaki, 13th century.

The sections of the diary devoted to the birth of Shōshi's son are a mostly meant as tribute to Michinaga, although in those sections she reveals him as overly controlling. The birth was an event of enormous importance to Michinaga, who nine years earlier brought his daughter to court as concubine to Emperor Ichijō; Shōshi's quick ascendence to Empress and status as mother to the heir, consolidated Michinaga's power. The descriptions of the birth are important because they, "marked the final tightening of Michinaga's velvet-gloved strangle-hold on imperial succession through his masterful manipulation of marriage politics." Michinaga dominated the child's father and attending priests throughout the birth ceremonies. After the birth, he visited twice daily, whereas the Emperor only made a single short imperial visit to his son. Each of Michinaga's ceremonial visits is chronicled, as is the lavish ceremony held 16 days after the birth – with long passages devoted to describing court attire the ladies-in-waiting wore: "Saemon no Naishi .... was wearing a plain yellow-green jacket, a train shaded darker at the hem, and a sash and waistbands with raised embroidery in orange and white checked silk".

Murasaki describes Shōshi as a serious and studious young woman who expected decorum from her ladies-in-waiting – often difficult at a fractious court. She asked Murasaki to teach her Chinese, which were conducted in secret, "because [Shōshi] evinced a desire to know more about such things, to keep it secret we carefully chose times when the other women would not be present, and, from the summer before last I started given her informal lessons on the two volumes of 'New Ballads'. I hid this fact from others, as did Her Majesty".

Court life

An illustration of Heian ladies-in-waiting in the snow; another woman is in her chamber with a man. (Tosa Mitsuoki c. late 17th century)

The less pleasant aspects of court life are revealed in the descriptions of inebriated courtiers who seduced the ladies-in-waiting; as Keene says, the courtiers were "drunken men who make obscene jokes and paw at women". Murasaki complained about drunk courtiers and princes who behaved badly. In one incident she describes, court poet Fujiwara no Kintō joined a group of women at a banquet, asking whether Murasaki was in attendance – alluding to the character in The Tale of Genji. Murasaki retorted that none of the novel's characters lived at this tawdry and unpleasant court, unlike the court in her novel. She left when "Counsellor Takai ... started pulling at Lady Hyōbu's robes and singing dreadful songs, but His Excellency said nothing. I realized that it was bound to be a terribly drunken affair this evening, so ... Lady Saishō and I decided to retire."

There are anecdotes about drunken revelries and courtly scandals concerning women who, because of behavior or age, were forced to leave imperial service. Murasaki suggests that the court women were weak-willed, uneducated, and inexperienced with men.

Although the women lived in semi-seclusion in curtained areas or screened spaces, privacy was non-existent for them. Men were allowed to intrude on the women's space at any time. The Imperial palace burned down in 1005, and for some years the court was itinerant, depending on Michinaga for housing. Murasaki lived at the Biwa mansion in the Fujiwara quarter of Kyoto, the Tsuchimikado mansion, or Emperor Ichijō's mansion close to the palace grounds. Ladies-in-waiting had to sleep on thin mats rolled out on bare wood floors; interior spaces had few boundaries with a room often created by curtaining off a space. The dwellings were slightly raised and opened to the Japanese garden, affording little privacy. Bowring explains how vulnerable the women were to men watching them: "A man standing outside in the garden looking in .... his eyes would have been roughly level with the skirts of the woman inside."

Heian era courtiers and ladies-in-waiting with ankle-length hair, wearing multilayered jūnihitoe. (Tosa Mitsuoki c. late 17th century)

The houses were cold and drafty in the winter and had few braziers, requiring the women to dress in layered clothing for warmth. Murasaki writes in detail about the then fashionable Jūnihitoe kimonos and multi-layered court clothing. Attire for Heian era noble women consisted of six or seven garments, some of which had multiple linings of differing hues and color combinations. The importance of fashions, and Murasaki's keen eye, is evident a description of the clothing the ladies-in-waiting wore for an imperial event : "The younger women wore jackets with five cuffs of various colors: white on the outside with dark red on yellow-green, white with just one green lining, and pale red shading to dark with one white layer interposed. They were the most intelligently arranged."

Combining layers of garments, each with multiple linings, and achieving a harmonic color combination, assumed an almost ritual fascination to the women. It required attention; and achieving an individual stylistic aesthetic was important. Murasaki chronicles the significance of making a mistake at a courtly function in her description of an incident when two women failed in a perfect color combination: "That day all the women had done their utmost to dress well, but .... two of them showed a want of taste when it came to the color combinations at their sleeves ... [in] full view of the courtiers and senior nobles."

Ladies-in-waiting

Murasaki suffered overwhelming loneliness, had her own concerns about aging, and was not always happy living at court. She became withdrawn, writing that perhaps the other women considered her stupid, shy or both: "Do they really look on me as such a dull thing, I wonder? But I am what I am .... [Shōshi] too has often remarked that she thought I was not the kind of person with whom one could ever relax .... I am perversely stand-offish; if only I can avoid putting off those for whom I have genuine respect." Keene speculates that as a writer who required solitude Murasaki's loneliness may have been "the loneliness of the artist who craves companionship but also rejects it". He points out with her "exceptional powers of discernment" she probably alienated the other women, about 15 or 16 of whom she describes in her diary. She praises each woman, yet her criticism is more memorable because she was able to "see through seeming perfection to hidden flaws." Her insights did not endear her to the other women at a court where intrigue, drama and scheming was the norm, yet for a novelist it was crucial. He believes that to a degree she needed to be aloof so as to be able to continue writing, but equally that she was intensely private, a woman who "chose not to reveal her true qualities" except to those who earned her trust and respect, as Shōshi had.

The diary includes descriptions of other ladies-in-waiting who were writers, most notably Sei Shōnagon, who had been in service to Shōshi's rival and co-empress, Empress Teishi (Sadako). The two courts were competitive; both introduced educated ladies-in-waiting to their respective circles and encouraged rivalry among the women writers. Shōnagon probably left court after Empress Teishi's death in 1006, and it is possible the two never met, yet Murasaki was quite aware of Shōnagon's writing style and her character. She disparages Shōnagon in her diary:

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Rival poet Akazome Emon depicted in a 1811 ukiyo-e

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Sei Shōnagon depicted gazing at the snow, ukiyo-e print by Utagawa Yoshitora (1872)

Sei Shōnagon, for instance, was dreadfully conceited. She thought herself so clever and littered her writing with Chinese characters; but if you examined them closely, they left a great deal to be desired. Those who think of themselves of being superior to everyone else in this way will inevitably suffer and come to a bad end …. How can the future turn out well for them?

Murasaki is also critical of the two other women writers at Shōshi's court – poet Izumi Shikibu, and Akazome Emon who authored a monogatari. Of Izumi's writing and poetry she says:

Now someone who did carry on a fascinating correspondence is Izumi Shikibu. She does have a rather unsavoury side to her character but has a talent for tossing off letters with ease and seems to make the most banal statement sound special. Her poems are most interesting. Although her knowledge of the canon and her judgements of other people's poetry leaves something to be desired, she can produce poems at will and always manages to include some clever phrase that catches the attention. Yet, she … never really comes up to scratch …. I cannot think of her as a poet of the highest rank.

The diary and The Tale of Genji

Murasaki's The Tale of Genji is barely mentioned in the diary. She writes the Emperor had the story read to him, and that colored papers and calligraphers had been selected for transcriptions of the manuscript – done by court women. In one anecdote she tells of Michinaga sneaking into her room to help himself to a copy of the manuscript. There are parallels between the later chapters of Genji and the diary. According to Genji scholar Shirane, the scene in the diary which describes Ichijo's imperial procession to Michinaga's mansion in 1008, "corresponds almost image for image" to an imperial procession in "Chapter 33 (Wisteria Leaves)" of The Tale of Genji. Shirane believes the similarities in the two works suggest that some portions of Genji may have been written during the period Murasaki wrote the diary.

Style and genre

Murasaki at her desk shown in a 19th-century ukiyo-e.

The genre of diary writing popular at the time resembles an autobiographical memoir more than a diary in the modern sense, according to Japanese scholar Helen McCullough. The author of a Heian-era nikki bungaku would decide what to include, expand, or exclude. Time was treated in a similar manner; a nikki might present long entries for a single event while other events were omitted. The nikki was considered a form of literature, often not written by the subject, almost always written in third-person, and sometimes included elements of fiction or history. These diaries are a repository of knowledge about the Heian Imperial court, considered highly important in Japanese literature, although many have not survived in a complete state. The format typically included waka poetry, meant to convey information to the readers, as seen in Murasaki's descriptions of court ceremonies.

Few if any dates are included in the diary and Murasaki's working habits are not chronicled. It should not be compared to a modern "writer's notebook", according to Keene. Although it is primarily about public events it includes self-reflections, a unique and important aspect of the work, which adds a human aspect unavailable in official accounts. According to Keene, the author is revealed as a woman with great perception and self-awareness, yet she is withdrawn and has few friends. She is unflinching in her criticism of aristocratic courtiers, seeing beyond superficial facades to their inner core, a quality he says is beneficial for a novelist but less useful in the closed society she inhabited.

Bowring has determined that there are three styles, each distinct from the other. The first is the matter-of-fact chronicles of events, which during this period would typically have been written in Chinese, followed by the author's self-reflective analysis. He considers the self-reflections the best that have survived from the period, noting that Murasaki's mastery of introspective style, still rare in Japanese, reflects her contributions to the development of written Japanese, because she overcame the limits of an inflexible language and writing system. The epistolary section represents the third style, which was a newly developed trend, one that Bowring considers the weakest portion of the work. He explains that the rhythms of spoken language assumes the presence of an audience, is often ungrammatical, relies on "eye contact, shared experiences and particular relationships [to] provide a background which allows speech to be at times fragmentary and even allusive". In contrast, written language must compensate for "the gap between the producer and receiver of the message". In the epistolary section she fails to break free of the rhythms of spoken language.

According to Thomas Rohlich, her descriptions are often overwhelming, who writes that "she is so blinded by the social brilliance of her subject that she loses her detachment and lapses into the almost meaningless praise all too present in much of Heian writing."

Translations

In 1920, Annie Shepley Omori and Kochi Doi published Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan; this book combined their translation of Murasaki's diary with Izumi Shikibu's (The Izumi Shikibu nikki) and with the Sarashina nikki. Their translation had an introduction by Amy Lowell.

Richard Bowring published translation in 1982, which contains a "lively and provocative" analysis.

Emakimono handscroll

In the 13th century a handscroll of the diary was produced, The Murasaki Shikibu Nikki Emaki. The scroll, meant to be read from left to right, consists of calligraphy illustrated with paintings. Writing in "The House-bound Heart", Japanese scholar Penelope Mason explains that in an emakimono or emaki a narrative reaches its full potential through the combination of the writer's and the painter's art. About 20 percent of the scroll has survived; based on the existing fragments, the images would have closely followed the text of the diary.

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13th century emakimono painting showing a scene of two courtiers trying to gain entrance to the women's quarters. Murasaki is barely visible on the right. The work is a National Treasure of Japan, held at the Gotoh Museum.

The illustrations in the emaki follow the late-Heian and early Kamakura period convention of Hikime kagibana (line-eye and hook-nose) in which individual facial expressions are omitted. Also typical of the period is the style of fukimuki yatai (blown off roof) depictions of interiors which seem to be visualized from above looking downward into a space. According to Mason, the interior scenes of human figures are juxtaposed against empty exterior gardens; the characters are "house-bound".

In the diary Murasaki writes of love, hate and loneliness, feelings which make the illustrations, according to Mason, of the "finest extant examples of prose-poetry narrative illustrations from the period". Mason finds the illustration of two young courtiers opening the lattice blinds to enter the women's quarters particularly poignant, because Murasaki tries to hold the lattice shut against their advances. The image shows that the architecture and the men who keep her away from the freedom of the garden to the right.

The scroll was discovered in 1920 in a five segment piece, by Morikawa Kanichirō (森川勘一郎). The Gotoh Museum holds segments one, two and four; the Tokyo National Museum holds the third segment; the fifth remains in a private collection. The portion of the emakimono held at the Gotoh museum have been designated as National Treasures of Japan.

Gallery

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  Detail of the Murasaki Shikibu Diary Ekotoba (紫式部日記絵詞). Handscroll (Emakimono), color on paper. Fujita Art Museum, Osaka, Japan. The scroll has been designated as a National Treasure of Japan.

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  Evening of Kankō 5, 11th month, 1st day (December 1, 1008): "Ika-no-iwai" of the Imperial Prince. Drunk, disarranged, and disordered Heian courtiers seen here joking and flirting with ladies-in-waiting. Various facial expressions and attitudes give a lifelike impression.

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  Leaf from the diary with calligraphy attributed to Kujō Yoshitsune, held at Gotoh Museum.

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  Fragment of the emaki showing, on the left, an illustration of Shoshi with her newborn son, and on the right the text written in calligraphy.

References

Sources

• Bowring, Richard John (ed). "Introduction". in The Diary of Lady Murasaki. (2005). London: Penguin. ISBN 9780140435764
• Frédéric, Louis. Japan Encyclopedia. (2005). Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. ISBN 0-674-01753-6
• Henshall, Kenneth G. A History of Japan. (1999). New York: St. Martin's. ISBN 0-312-21986-5
• Keene, Donald. Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest times to the Late Sixteenth Century. (1999a). New York: Columbia UP. ISBN 0-231-11441-9
• Keene, Donald. Travelers of a Hundred Ages: The Japanese as revealed through 1000 years of diaries. (1999b). New York: Columbia UP. ISBN 0-231-11437-0
• Lady Murasaki. The Diary of Lady Murasaki. (2005). London: Penguin. ISBN 9780140435764
• Lowell, Amy. "Introduction". in Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan. Translated by Kochi Doi and Annie Sheley Omori. (1920) Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• Mason, Penelope. (2004). History of Japanese Art. Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-117601-0
• Mason, Penelope. "The House-Bound Heart. The Prose-Poetry Genre of Japanese Narrative Illustration". Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Spring, 1980), pp. 21–43
• McCullough, Helen. Classical Japanese Prose: An Anthology. (1990). Stanford CA: Stanford UP. ISBN 0-8047-1960-8
• Mulhern, Chieko Irie. Japanese Women Writers: a Bio-critical Sourcebook. (1994). Westport CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-25486-4
• Mulhern, Chieko Irie. Heroic with Grace: Legendary Women of Japan. (1991). Armonk NY: M.E. Sharpe. ISBN 0-87332-527-3
• Rohlich, Thomas H. "Review". The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 43, No. 3 (May, 1984), pp. 539–541
• Shirane, Haruo. The Bridge of Dreams: A Poetics of "The Tale of Genji". (1987). Stanford CA: Stanford UP. ISBN 0-8047-1719-2
• Shirane, Haruo. Traditional Japanese Literature: An Anthology, Beginnings to 1600. (2008). New York: Columbia UP. ISBN 978-0-231-13697-6
• Ury, Marian. The Real Murasaki. Monumenta Nipponica. (Summer 1983). Vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 175–189.
• Waley, Arthur. "Introduction". in Shikibu, Murasaki, The Tale of Genji: A Novel in Six Parts. translated by Arthur Waley. (1960). New York: Modern Library.

Further reading

• Gatten, Aileen. "Reviewed Work: Objects of Discourse: Memoirs by Women of Heian Japan by John R. Wallace". Journal of Japanese Studies. Vol. 33, No. 1 (Winter, 2007), pp. 268–273
• Sorensen, Joseph. "The Politics of Screen Poetry". The Journal of Japanese Studies, Volume 38, Number 1, Winter 2012, pp. 85-107
• Yoda, Tomiko. "Literary History against the National Frame". positions: East Asia cultures critique, Volume 8, Number 2, Fall 2000, pp. 465–497

External links

• The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu