A Country Genji by an Imitation Murasaki - Nise Murasaki inaka Genji

, translated variously as ''The Rustic Genji'', ''False Murasaki and a Country Genji'', or ''A Fraudulent Murasaki's Bumpkin Genji'', is a late-

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

Japanese literary

parody A parody, also known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature, is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satiric or ironic imitation. Often its subj ...

of the ''

Tale of Genji Tale may refer to: * Narrative, or story, a report of real or imaginary connected events * TAL effector (TALE), a type of DNA binding protein * Tale, Albania, a resort town * Tale, Iran, a village * Tale, Maharashtra, a village in Ratnagiri distri ...

'' by

Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court in the Heian period. She is best known as the author of '' The Tale of Genji,'' widely considered to be one of the world's first novels, written in Japanese between abou ...

. The work, by (1783–1842) with illustrations by

Utagawa Kunisada Utagawa Kunisada ( ja, 歌川国貞; 1786 – 12 January 1865), also known as Utagawa Toyokuni III (, ), was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist. He is considered the most popular, prolific and commercially successful designer of ukiyo-e woodbloc ...

, was published in a woodblock edition between 1829 and 1842 by Senkakudō. The parody shifts the time-frame from the

Heian period The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kanmu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means "peace" in Japanese. ...

to the Muromachi period, and replaces inserted Waka (poetry), waka poetry with haiku. It was the best-selling example of the genre known as , a popular literary form that merged image with text. The plot centres on the outlandish adventures of Ashikaga Mitsuuji, second son of Ashikaga Yoshimasa, while seeking to recover a stolen sword, mirror, and poem, upon which the security of the realm depend. The preface to the first chapter introduces the character Ōfuji, whose nickname is Murasaki Shikibu. In the preface to the tenth chapter, Tanehiko describes his own literary project:

When I first began to write ''The Rustic Genji'' an aged friend said to me: "You should try to the best of your ability to preserve the language of the original and not alter the story. It will probably then be of some use to young people who haven't read ''The Tale of Genji''." But a young friend said, "You should vary the plot. Weave in effects from Kabuki and the bunraku, puppet theatre. Surely there can't be anyone who hasn't read ''Genji''."

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Further reading