Ishiyama-dera Temple and The Tale Of Genji


Ishiyama-dera Temple is famous for being the rare temple on the Ishigami-rock-mountain. While looking at many Buddhist buildings on the rock mountain, you will gain a fresh view point of temples. It was established in 747 thanks to the revelation by the deity of Mount Yoshino (in Nara Prefecture). A lot of exalted titled Emperor’s Court people visited on the pilgrimage which included two purposes, one was to pray to Bodhisattva Compassion and the other was to look at the moon in the night sky and on the surface of Seta River.

At the high edge of the temple in front of the river is a moon-viewing cottage, “Tsukimi-tei”, which was for only Emperors.


Murasaki-Shikibu at Ishiyama-dera

The temple has other famous history, which is the relationship with The Tale of Genji. The Tale of Genji (written from 1008-?) is renowned for being the first love story ever written by a female in the world. The writer of The Tale of Genji, who was Murasaki-Shikibu, was a female bureaucrat supporting the empress of the Emperor of Ichijo, Shoshi. Murasaki-Shikibu visited this temple, and it is said that she came up with this Tale on looking at the moon. First of all, she wrote a couple of stories of Hikaru-Genji with a casual try, but it grew in popularity among her friends and bureaucrats. They asked her to write more and that momentum carried her. She turned out to be a good novelist, and finally, The Tale of Genji became a long Tale which is comprised of 54 stories.

The Tale of Genji

The Hero of The Tale of Ganji is Hikaru-Genji, who was a son of an Emperor. He was very attractive for many females since birth but had a sort of abnormal loving feeling for his mother who died in his childhood. He made love with many females and passed a successful period and unsuccessful period in the Emperor’s Court.

The beginning of the Tale is as follows (translated by Dennis Washburn). “In whose reign was it that a woman of rather undistinguished lineage captured the heart of the Emperor and enjoyed his favor above all the other imperial wives and concubines? Certain consorts, whose high noble status gave them a sense of vain entitlement, despised and reviled her as an unworthy upstart from the very moment she began her service. Ladies of lower rank were even more vexed, for they knew His Majesty would never bestow the same degree of affection and attention on them. As a result, the mere presence of this woman at morning rites or evening ceremonies seemed to provoke hostile reactions among her rivals, and the anxiety she suffered as a consequence of these ever-increasing displays of jealousy was such a heavy burden that gradually her health began to fail.”
“Was she not, then, bound to the Emperor by some deep love from a previous life? For in spite of her travails, she eventually bore him a son—a pure radiant gem like nothing of this world. Following the child’s birth His Majesty had to wait impatiently, wondering when he would finally be allowed to see the boy (Hikaru-Genji). As soon as it could be ritually sanctioned, he had the infant brought from the home of the woman’s mother, where the birth had taken place, and the instant he gazed on the child’s countenance he recognized a rare beauty.”

Donaldo Keene (1922-2019, born in America and died as a Japanese person), who was a renowned researcher of Japanese literature, read it during his school-days at Colombia university. It became the reason why he began studying about Japan. He said about The Tale of Genji is as follows.
‘The Tale of Genji has the universality which is accepted by the global society. It is just Feeling.’ ‘There is no violence in this Tale. Beauty is the only one value in the world of this Tale. While reading it again and again I found the answer to the ultimate problem for which a human lives. It is BEAUTY.’
Furthermore, he said about the lady-killer. ‘Hikaru-Genji is completely different from many other lady-killers in old Western books. Don Juan lost interest in the ladies who he made love to. He had no glint of loving feeling for his lovers and he was relentless. On the contrary, Hikaru-Genji would be the most unique play-boy among all the play-boys around the world. In this Tale is an ugly female who has a long nose and the tip of her nose is red. Hikaru-Genji heard a rumor that she would be intelligent and beautiful and he sent a lot of lovely poems for her. After making love with her, in the early morning in her bed he noticed her red nose on her face. Nevertheless, he never avoided her and enjoyed conversation with her for a long time. He never treated females as things. ‘
It is said that the beauty in The Tale of Genji is “Mono-no-aware” in Japanese. “Mono-no-aware” is very difficult to understand, but the approximate meaning is the sensibility to the inherent harmony, individuality or a changing moment among phenomenon or materialistic things. For example, if you viewed floating cherry blossoms petals in the wind, you would feel something regrettable without thinking, it’s “mono-no-aware”. The beauty in The Tale of Genji is the convergence that many bureaucrats developed the Japanese Language for a long time, I think. And just the Japanese language in the Heian period (794-1192) was developed in order to express their inherent feeling in detail.

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