Review: Genji Arrives in New York

It is not often that a museum exhibition takes its theme from a work of literature. But then “The Tale of Genji,” supposedly the world’s very first novel, was written in Japan in the early 11^th century and has had a whole millennium in which to work its magic. The Metropolitan Museum is now offering the first survey in this country of art inspired by Lady Murasaki Shikibu’s novel – a 1,300-page epic tracking the adventures of Prince Genji (rhymes with Benjy), a sybarite who devotes his life to amorous conquests and the art of seduction.

The Met show is a crisp, enlightening assembly of 120 objects that span the high-low spectrum. There are scrolls, folding screens, playing cards, kimonos, an actual carriage, bamboo blinds, and contemporary Manga paintings in which the young Genji resembles a suave Disney prince. The highlight, for me, were the Edo-era folding screens, with their snowy mountains and sweeping patterns of gold and mossy green. Look closely and you will see scenes of Genji spying though a row of trees, and women who sit in their tatami rooms, gazing in and out of windows – this is a world that abounds with distance and longing.

Prince Genji, it might be said, is not a hero for our times. His amorous adventures include some egregiously bad behavior (e.g., rape and the pursuit of minors). But the Met show manages to keep his moral infractions in the background; instead, it wisely plays up the feminist part of the story by focusing on Murasaki Shikibu, the book’s pioneering female author.

Her story comprises roughly the first third of the Met show. The opening galleries include assorted treasures from the Ishiyamadera Temple, which is located outside of Kyoto, and is apparently the site where Murasaki conceived the idea for the novel. There’s a wonderful portrait of her that belongs to the temple; it shows her seated on the ground, her kimono flowing around her, an ink brush in her right hand. Blank scrolls of paper on her writing table remind us that she has yet to begin.  It’s interesting that she is depicted at the moment of conceiving her novel – as opposed to having finished it and posing for what we think of as an author’s portrait.

I left the show with many questions, the prime one being: How exactly, did “The Tale of Genji” influence the spread of Buddhism, as the wall labels maintain? On the plus side, the show includes an attractive reading area where you can sit at a shapely George Naskashima table and peruse the catalogue, which, fortunately, is written with impressive clarity and is much shorter than “The Tale of Genji.”