Love and violence.

Some thoughts a little over halfway through Tale of Genji.

I’m reading Tale of Genji with the Catherine Project, a very cool zoom seminar thing. They have nothing to do with this Substack but I thought I’d mention it.

Almost every romantic relationship in the Tale of Genji begins with what certainly reads today like a rape. This puts a contemporary reader in a tiresome bind. On the one hand, you can simply say, it’s a different culture, which it certainly was. (In many ways, I’ve never understood anything less than I understand Heian Japan.) Or you can say, rape is always rape and always wrong, which is true, but doesn’t get you much of anywhere. Both of these approaches shut down a conversation rather than opening one up.

They also make it hard to discern the story’s own attitudes toward its characters and their actions. Some (many, really) of the things people (particularly Genji) do in Genji are clearly regarded b…