These seven essays by the most recent English translator of The Tale of Genji emphasize three major interpretive issues. What is the place of the hero (Hikaru Genji) in the work? What story gives the narrative underlying continuity and form? And how does the closing section of the tale (especially the ten 'Uji chapters') relate to what precedes it? Written over a period of nine years, the essays suggest fresh, thought-provoking perspectives on Japan¿s greatest literary classic.

After returning from his defeat, he received news that he was going to get married! She dashed to grab the bride, but found out that she didn't even know him! This bewitching young man was still insisting on pulling her along as he eloped! At the critical moment, the mysterious man kidnapped her! Ask her: Woman, have you forgotten about me? This wasn't the end. The Second Prince had pestered her again to fulfill her promise from back then! Heavens, three years ago, who had she sworn an oath to?

Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji is variously read as a work of feminist protest, the world's first psychological novel and even as a post-modern masterpiece. Commonly seen as Japan's greatest literary work, its literary, cultural, and historical significance has been thoroughly acknowledged. As a work focused on the complexities of Japanese court life in the Heian period, however, the The Tale of Genji has never before been the subject of philosophical investigation. The essays in this volume address this oversight, arguing that the work contains much that lends itself to philosophical analysis. The authors of this volume demonstrate that The Tale of Genji confronts universal themes such as the nature and exercise of political power, freedom, individual autonomy and agency, renunciation, gender, and self-expression; it raises deep concerns about aesthetics and the role of art, causality, the relation of man to nature, memory, and death itself. Although Murasaki Shikibu may not express these themes in the text as explicitly philosophical problems, the complex psychological tensions she describes and her observations about human conduct reveal an underlying framework of philosophical assumptions about the world of the novel that have implications for how we understand these concerns beyond the world of Genji. Each essay in this collection reveals a part of this framework, situating individual themes within larger philosophical and historical contexts. In doing so, the essays both challenge prevailing views of the novel and each other, offering a range of philosophical interpretations of the text and emphasizing the The Tale of Genji's place as a masterful work of literature with broad philosophical significance.

Mono no Aware and Gender as Affect in Japanese Aesthetics and American Pragmatism argues that gender is best understood as a felt sense of the organization of the human body. Through Japanese aesthetics and American pragmatism, this book argues that re-understanding gender as an affect, or a feeling, can expand the ways that gender is understood, enacted, and theorized in experience.

"The Tale of Genji (ca. 1008), by noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu, is known for its sophisticated renderings of fictional characters’ minds and its critical perspectives on the lives of the aristocracy of eleventh-century Japan. Unreal Houses radically rethinks the Genji by focusing on the figure of the house. Edith Sarra examines the narrative’s fictionalized images of aristocratic mansions and its representation of the people who inhabit them, exploring how key characters in the Genji think about houses in both the architectural and genealogical sense of the word. Through close readings of the Genji and other Heian narratives, Unreal Houses elucidates the literary fabrication of social, architectural, and affective spaces and shows how the figure of the house contributes to the structuring of narrative sequences and the expression of relational nuances among fictional characters. Combining literary analysis with the history of gender, marriage, and the built environment, Sarra opens new perspectives on the architectonics of the Genji and the feminine milieu that midwifed what some have called the world’s first novel."

Li's parents, Li Yu Chu, was framed for infidelity, caged and sunk. When he returned, his personality had changed drastically. He had beaten up his stepmother and abused his own younger sister. His methods had been extremely ruthless. What a joke, how could she dress up as a sloppy young miss that could be easily bullied! Rumors had it that the Li family's eldest daughter had become a yaksha and was carrying a prostitute who didn't know who her father was. No one dared to marry her! I am the mother Yaksha I am proud, I bring the oil bottle I am proud of! As for who would dare to marry — what was the point of having two men lined up in front of Li's house? The little bun jumped out, "Mother, I'll choose your man!" Pick and choose... Li Yu Chu smacked his lips and asked, "Bastard, and you chose such a cripple for your mother?" "He said that he can eat soft food in the kitchen and bring children. Mother, I think it's suitable for you!"

What is a female medical examiner? One must go to the imperial court and down to the martial arts world. Obtaining a corpse, fighting a treacherous official, and fighting to the death with courage! She, a modern medical examiner, had become the third incompetent young master of the General's Estate as soon as she had transmigrated. Third Young Master? That was what she used to save her life while disguised as a man! Impotence? She was the one who kept a low profile and hid her true colors! He had wanted to stay away from trouble, but he was pestered by a certain Ghost King who was pretending to be a pig to eat the tiger. He had stolen his heart and was now a passerby. It was said that the Ghost King was ugly and silly. He had been a proton outside for ten years, and was afraid of death. But in fact, the angry roar of a certain woman was all fake! "You don't match up with the rumors, I want to return the goods!" "Return?" A certain man smiled elegantly, "You wish!"