Flares in the Garden, Darkness in the Heart

Abstract

This essay explores various dimensions and manifestations of interiority and exteriority in The Tale of Genji, beginning with analogies to the subject and structure of Japanese screens (byōbu) that depict “scenes inside and outside the capital” and interior and exterior scenes in the Tale itself. It then moves on to suggest that names of characters and of chapters in the Tale also can be seen as aspects of its interiority and exteriority, just as can certain feature of its narrative structure, and then concludes with reflections on how the many poems that are on the surface of the text reveal its deepest interiors while at the same time making the Tale itself a container or “house” for and of them.