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The Tale of Genji

What is a lowbrow novel?

Although it has been made into movies and stage plays a lot of times, its performance was forbidden to perform from 1933 because military extremists thought that it was an insult to the imperial family. And it caused the other extreme actions. They even demanded to burn the book “The Tale of Genji".

Ikeda Kikan, who was a professor of the Japanese literature department at Tokyo University, said that it was a lowbrow opinion. His opinion was that there was no problem with burning lowbrow books, but “The Tale of Genji” itself was not a lowbrow novel, so it didn't accept its burning. I think what is a lowbrow novel.

In the Edo period, from the 17th to 19th Bushi's society, the ruling class, was restricted by Confucianism. Japanese literary scholars kept a distance from "The Tale of Genji" because it was supposed to be obscene yet. When a daughter of the ruling class got married she often carried the book to her husband's house. Scholars think that the book was used to teach the morals to daughters who was going to get married. But instead, I think that daughters learned the reality of sexual morality by reading "The Tale of Genji".

Actually its hero, Hikaru, is living as an innocent man in the original novel. But that doesn't mean that he is innocent. Everyone knows that his words have a lot of inconsistencies, though he doesn't realize he is inconsistence.

But in the play of this time, Hikeru is portrayed as a blameless person by Shinnosuke, who performs Hikaru very beautifully. When I watched the play, I felt an image of Hikaru different from what I expected. However, I felt a kind of authority in the play, which means that "The Tale of Genji" is great Japanese literature.

Of course the above is true, and there isn't any lowbrow impression of the play at the time. But I think that the director should have thrown away excessive praise about the story. I think that “The Tale of Genji" is a porno novel that has high quality. Because it was well-written, it has been read for the past 1,000years.

Sugawara-no-Takasue-no-Musume, who was the author of "Sarashina Diary" that is a classic essay written 1,000years ago was confined herself to her room to read "The Tale of Genji" days and nights. It hasn't changed since then. A lot of girls read the novel and love Hikaru like Sugawara-no-Takasue-no-Musume.

If it had high quality, and if it was interesting enough, it would be irrelevant how obscene it was. Murasaki Shikibu, who was a widow, wrote about the prince living in her illusion. And we all have the same prince in our mind.