his work challenges widely accepted notions of the role of the translator. In order to judge his work fairly, to account for its strengths and weaknesses, we need to consider the validity of the reasons behind his choices.
In 1928, Waley undertook his translation of The Pillow Book during a remarkably productive period of his life. He had begun his studies of Chinese and Japanese in 1913 after taking a position cataloguing the British Museum’s Oriental Prints and Manuscripts collection, and he started his career as a translator a few years later with a focus on Chinese poetry— a project that led to a brief professional association with Ezra Pound. Following on from his work with Chinese literature, he spent over a decade translating Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji , eventually publishing his version in six volumes between 1921 and 1933. The acclaim he received secured his reputation as both a writer and a scholar, and established him as a seminal figure in the history of Japanese cultural studies in the West.
Given the demands placed on him by his other projects, Waley’s decision at that time to turn his attention to The Pillow Book seems extraordinarily ambitious. He certainly had personal reasons to undertake the project, since his success helped create a readership for translations from Asian literatures. There was, however, a compelling historical justification for the project as well. Sh ō nagon’s work has been considered canonical in Japan for a millennium, and it is usually placed alongside Murasaki’s masterpiece as one of the most of important achievements of the aristocratic culture of the Heian court. Taking that shared history into account, the value and appeal of translating The Pillow Book simultaneously with The Tale of Genji is apparent.
Comparisons between these works are sometimes a bit forced, since they are in fact quite different in form and conception. However, there was a long history in Japan of linking the works less on the basis of literary considerations than on the perception of a personal rivalry between the two authors—a rivalry occasionally expressed as a contrast between personalities, with Sh ō nagon being (supposedly) bright, perky, and audacious and Murasaki being dour, melancholy, and profound. While there is some textual basis for claiming this difference in temperament, any conclusions about the personal lives of these women remain speculative. What is not speculative is that they both employed their literary talents in the service of empresses who in fact were political rivals; and while Sh ō nagon and Murasaki may not have been in direct competition (though it is clear from Murasaki’s diary that they were aware of one another) their literary works were produced in a cultural milieu that privileged highly refined aesthetic sensibilities. In that respect their writings were shaped by and provide vivid insight into the values that governed taste and behavior in aristocratic society.
Waley makes it clear in his introductory essay that he believed the most important connection between The Pillow Book and The Tale of Genji was this shared aestheticism, and he makes a number of sweeping generalizations about Japanese court culture to support his claim. He argued that it was a culture that lacked any true historical awareness, that courtiers were so absorbed in the present that the term “modern” always denoted a positive value. As a result, he sees in mid-Heian court culture a kind of intellectual passivity and an obsession with proper form and ritual that led the aristocracy to place great emphasis on aesthetic pursuits.
The reader is likely to find in both The Pillow Book and The Tale of Genji much to justify Waley’s description of Japan in the tenth century. Artistic pursuits and the constant round of rituals, festivals and ceremonies set by the court calendar do seem to dominate the life of the nobility. Nonetheless, just as Waley argues that Murasaki’s
In 1928, Waley undertook his translation of The Pillow Book during a remarkably productive period of his life. He had begun his studies of Chinese and Japanese in 1913 after taking a position cataloguing the British Museum’s Oriental Prints and Manuscripts collection, and he started his career as a translator a few years later with a focus on Chinese poetry— a project that led to a brief professional association with Ezra Pound. Following on from his work with Chinese literature, he spent over a decade translating Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji , eventually publishing his version in six volumes between 1921 and 1933. The acclaim he received secured his reputation as both a writer and a scholar, and established him as a seminal figure in the history of Japanese cultural studies in the West.
Given the demands placed on him by his other projects, Waley’s decision at that time to turn his attention to The Pillow Book seems extraordinarily ambitious. He certainly had personal reasons to undertake the project, since his success helped create a readership for translations from Asian literatures. There was, however, a compelling historical justification for the project as well. Sh ō nagon’s work has been considered canonical in Japan for a millennium, and it is usually placed alongside Murasaki’s masterpiece as one of the most of important achievements of the aristocratic culture of the Heian court. Taking that shared history into account, the value and appeal of translating The Pillow Book simultaneously with The Tale of Genji is apparent.
Comparisons between these works are sometimes a bit forced, since they are in fact quite different in form and conception. However, there was a long history in Japan of linking the works less on the basis of literary considerations than on the perception of a personal rivalry between the two authors—a rivalry occasionally expressed as a contrast between personalities, with Sh ō nagon being (supposedly) bright, perky, and audacious and Murasaki being dour, melancholy, and profound. While there is some textual basis for claiming this difference in temperament, any conclusions about the personal lives of these women remain speculative. What is not speculative is that they both employed their literary talents in the service of empresses who in fact were political rivals; and while Sh ō nagon and Murasaki may not have been in direct competition (though it is clear from Murasaki’s diary that they were aware of one another) their literary works were produced in a cultural milieu that privileged highly refined aesthetic sensibilities. In that respect their writings were shaped by and provide vivid insight into the values that governed taste and behavior in aristocratic society.
Waley makes it clear in his introductory essay that he believed the most important connection between The Pillow Book and The Tale of Genji was this shared aestheticism, and he makes a number of sweeping generalizations about Japanese court culture to support his claim. He argued that it was a culture that lacked any true historical awareness, that courtiers were so absorbed in the present that the term “modern” always denoted a positive value. As a result, he sees in mid-Heian court culture a kind of intellectual passivity and an obsession with proper form and ritual that led the aristocracy to place great emphasis on aesthetic pursuits.
The reader is likely to find in both The Pillow Book and The Tale of Genji much to justify Waley’s description of Japan in the tenth century. Artistic pursuits and the constant round of rituals, festivals and ceremonies set by the court calendar do seem to dominate the life of the nobility. Nonetheless, just as Waley argues that Murasaki’s
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