A wonderfully entertaining dive into The Tale of Genji, arguably the world’s first novel, written a thousand years ago in a culture that can feel almost impossibly alien. This review explores Heian court life, poetry, sex, status, translation, and the strange experience of discovering recognisably human emotions beneath a world of customs we barely understand.
00:00:00 - Introduction
00:00:35 - The past is an alien civilisation
00:02:18 - Who is Genji?
00:07:34 - Aesthetics is everything
00:09:45 - Hierarchy is also everything
00:12:47 - Everything is fleeting and life is full of sorrow
00:14:33 - A life behind screens
00:21:07 - Marriages and other forms of arrangement
00:29:47 - Say it with a poem
00:36:54 - Everything stands between the lines
00:40:22 - Reading a book written in a dead language
00:54:52 - Is it really the world’s oldest novel?
00:58:06 - What it’s like to read Genji
