Tale of Genji / Genji monogatari (1951)

Murasaki’s Genji Monogatari is of course unfilmable, if for nothing else due to its length, and so any attempt is always going to be a sampling at best. This particular sampling comes with the finest pedigree, with the basic adaptation made by Tanizaki, the screenplay by Kaneto Shindo, and direction by Yoshimura. The result is one of the most sumptuously beautiful black and white films you are likely to come across, even without a full Criterion-level blue-ray restoration.

This particular movie focuses on a relatively few years in the life of the young prince Genji, often called the radiant prince for his beauty and courtly perfections. He is unfortunately not the real heir, being born merely to the Emperor’s favorite, and thus he has earned the undying hatred of the official prince’s mother, lest he overshadow her son. Removed as far as possible by her from courtly business, he devotes himself to pleasures such as riding and dancing and, most of all, women. In a way, the movie is “The Five Women Around Genji:” his actual wife Aoi (Mitsuko Mito), Fujitsubo (Michiyo Kogure), Awaji (Machiko Kyo), Murasaki (Nobuko Otowa), and the “first wife” (Chieko Hagashiyama).

Genji’s affairs are not necessarily the courtly seductions, full of wit and maneuvering, that we associate with French or British historical romances, for example. Awaji clearly and openly seduces him, or more precisely voluntarily makes herself available to his seduction. On the other hand, when he falls in love with Lady Fujitsubo, although they eventually have a long affair and she bears his son, the initial coupling would certainly qualify as rape in contemporary eyes. This is further kinkified by the fact that she has been chosen as a wife by his father precisely because she looks so much like Genji’s dead mother. The Lady Murasaki is kidnapped while still in early teens; although he claims this is to take her into his household and educate her, he does eventually marry her when his official wife dies, so there is some doubt about the purity of his initial intentions.

And so, on one level, we have a study of the the types of passion and of love. And it is good to be reminded how passionate scenes can be even in a world where skin never touches skin.

Genji and Lady Fujitsubo

On another, there is the place and treatment of women in general. As with Gate of Hell set in the same period, to call the women “sex objects” would be an understatement. Their purpose is to provide pleasure to the men and to provide heirs; at this social level, they are expected to provide that pleasure through cultural graces as well as genitals, but the wives and their maids live a life as secluded and separate as in any Ottoman’s harem. This is a world in which even the open doorways are screens, and the women (and the Emperor himself we should note) can look out but no one can look in.

Genji lurking

The maids watch Genji pass

One of the strengths of Japanese film-making in the fifties was the ability to make visual symphonies out of chamber music, so to speak, and this is a superb example of that skill. Where for Americans, spectacle came in crowds and battles and wild chases and huge sets, the Japanese were often able to make spectacular movies set within very simple spaces, a sort of lush austerity. Part of this came from the “Zen Garden” aesthetic that we so often associate with Japanese art, where every rock, every tree, every flower is in the perfect place. That often produces great beauty through great purity.

In Genji Monogatari, we see this purity combined with a beautiful use of patterns, implicit colors,  and textures of the clothing and superb control of the lighting, coupled of course with the imagination of the director and his team. It should come as no surprise that this and Kinugasa’s Gate of Hell, as well as Mizoguchi’s staggeringly pure Chushingura were photographed by the same man, Kohei Sugiyama.

As might be expected, the women’s performances are superb, especially considering that about half of their attention has to be devoted to holding their robes together (in this period and level of society, the obi had not yet been developed).  Michiyo Kogure adds to a long list of superb but little recognized performances, and Chieko Hagashiyama gets a chance to prove she can do more than nod agreeably like in Tokyo Story. The show-stealer is Machiko Kyo,

whether fending off the Chamberlain and the Emperor’s first wife while wearing practically nothing or sucking the blood from a wound Genji has received in an assassination attempt.

Unfortunately, from our contemporary viewpoint, Genji himself is a big hole in the production. Not that there is anything particularly wrong with Kazuo Hasegawa’s performance. In a long career stretching back to the silent era, he had established himself as one of Japan’s finest screen actors and stars. But the career does stretch back to 1927, so it is more than a little difficult to accept him as a twenty-year old hunk whom all the women of the court lust after. Star power can carry an actor a long way, but for a later generation that power fades and we are left with a man 20 years too old for the role, like Leslie Howard in Romeo and Juliet. And the lack of a dramatic plot line may leave some American viewers disappointed, since we tend to like our heroes to have a goal of some kind.

Even with those reservations, this is a superb movie, well worth the effort to find a copy.