Do you know that there is 2000 yen note ?

2000 yen note  was issued in year 2000.  One side depicts the scene from ‘the Tale of Genji’ and a portrait of Murasaki Shikibu who wrote this in early eleventh century.

Like English speaking people learn Shakespeare at school, we learn the Tale of Genji at school.  Since this was written to entertain the Japanese court people of the eleventh century, even modern Japanese translation version is so hard to read.

But this is Japan that means we have manga, and anime.  The most famous manga of this story is ‘Asakiyumemishi’.  Manga is more visual than novel so that we can imagine what noble people were wearing  and how they live in 1000 years ago.

This is a long story but you can tell the aesthetic sense of Japanese.  It is so interesting for me  that there is no scene of having a meal.  At that time the court people think that the action of eating is a lack of beauty.

Another interesting thing is that naming people was considered rude in the court society at that time, so none of the characters are named within the work; instead, the narrator refers to men often by their rank or their station in life, and to women often by the color of their clothing, or by the words used at a meeting, or by the rank of a prominent male relative. This results in different appellations for the same character depending on the chapter.

Try watching anime or reading manga version of the Tale of Genji as I did.  You will find the more interesting culture !