Page:The Tale of Genji.pdf/14

8 the whole fifty-four were not finished till long afterwards. But from the Sarashina Diary, the first of the three contained in the Court Ladies of Old Japan, we know that the Tale of Genji in its complete form was already a classic in the year 1022. The unknown authoress of this diary spent her childhood in a remote province. Her great pleasure was to read romances; but except at the Capital they were hard to come by. She prays fervently to Buddha to bring her quickly to Kyōto, and let her read 'dozens and dozens of stories.' In 1022 she at last arrives at Court and her wildest dreams are fulfilled. Packed in a big box her aunt sends round 'the fifty-odd chapters of Genji' and a whole library of shorter fairy-tales and romances. 'Are there really such people as this in the world? Were Genji my lover, though he should come to me but once in the whole year, how happy I should be! Or were I Lady Ukifune in her mountain home, gazing as the months go by at flowers, red autumn leaves, moonlight and snow; happy, despite loneliness and misfortune, in the thought that at any moment the wonderful letter might come'

Such were the rêveries of one who read the Tale of Genji more than nine hundred years ago. I think that, could they but read it in the original, few readers would feel that in all those centuries the charm of the book had in any way evaporated. The task of translation in such a case is bound to be arduous and discouraging; but I have all the time been spurred by the belief that I am translating by far the greatest novel of the East, and one which, even if compared with the fiction of Europe, takes its place as one of the dozen greatest masterpieces of the world.