Monday, April 7, 2008

The world's first novel writer: Murasaki Shikibu

Yesterday, when I visited along the Uji River for sight seeing in Uji, near the Uji Bridge I saw statue of the first novel writer a Japanese novel woman 'Murasaki Shikibu'. In the year 1007, she wrote the world's first full novel, Called "The tale of Genji," it tells the story of a prince looking for love and wisdom. In its English translation it covers 54 chapters over 1,000 pages of text. Until then the Japanese had imitated Chinese culture, and Chinese poetry and writing had been popular. However, a home-grown syllabic writing system called hiragana emerged around that time as a means of expressing the sentiments and thoughts of the Japanese - particularly of women. Murasaki Shikibu used the hiragana script in writing the Tale of Genji. The hero of this 54-chapter novel, regarded as a masterpiece of Japan's cultural tradition, is a handsome aristocrat named Hikaru Genji. The novel describes the life of Genji and his many romances against the backdrop of Japan's court society. The author, Murasaki Shikibu, was gifted with great literary talent. After the death of her husband, she served in the imperial court. It is thought that she based the novel on her true-life experiences at court.

Information Reference:
http://didyouknow.org/literature/firstnovel.htm
http://web-japan.org/kidsweb/explore/language/q1.html
Photo: Mero Dolakha

1 comment:

  1. Great Badrijee!

    You are writing regularly and have such good topics.

    ReplyDelete