Is a thousand-year-old Japanese tale the world's first novel? It's complicated.
Around the year 1000, a lady-in-waiting at the Japanese court known as Murasaki Shikibu wrote a vast story of the 'Shining Prince' Genji, with some four hundred characters who age consistently across 54 chapters. It is often called the first novel. Scholars still argue whether that's true.
The Tale of Genji follows Hikaru Genji, a son of the emperor removed from the line of succession for political reasons, through his loves, exile, return and decline, and then follows the next generation after his death. It was written in the early 11th century by a noblewoman and poet known as Murasaki Shikibu, possibly in instalments read by other court women. A diary entry of 1008 is the earliest mention of it, and by 1021 a reader was rejoicing at owning a complete copy of more than 50 chapters.
It was written mostly in hiragana, the phonetic Japanese script associated with women, rather than the Chinese characters used for prestigious writing by men. Court etiquette made using people's given names too blunt, so almost no one is named: characters are identified by rank, relationship or the colour of their clothes, and their labels change as they rise. Poems are often quoted by only their first lines, leaving the reader to supply the rest. Even Japanese readers commonly use annotated editions.
Is it the first novel? It has what we expect of one: a central character, psychological depth, a huge cast and events unfolding over a lifetime. But there are earlier contenders, such as the 7th-century Sanskrit Kādambari and Greek and Roman prose fiction like Daphnis and Chloe, and some question whether Genji is a novel at all. Hence the more careful labels, such as the first psychological novel, or simply the greatest classic of Japanese literature, which few dispute.
Authorship is debated too. The original manuscript is lost, and about 300 later copies differ. The poet Yosano Akiko believed the later chapters were written by Murasaki's daughter, and computer analysis has found statistical differences in style. The story ends abruptly, perhaps unfinished. The 12th-century illustrated handscrolls of the tale are the earliest surviving Japanese picture scrolls and are National Treasures.
Source: Wikipedia — The Tale of Genji · Text summarised from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
