"The Tale of Genji" — often considered the world's first novel — ends inconclusively.
Spread across 54 chapters and some 1,300 pages (in English), Murasaki Shikibu’s Genji Monogatari, or “The Tale of Genji,” explores the tumultuous love life of its aristocratic titular hero during Heian period Japan (794–1185 CE). Written around the beginning of the 11th century, Genji is an incredibly ambitious work featuring some 400+ named characters and a 70-year-long narrative that spans generations. Because of its realistic setting, psychological depth, and the detailed development of its heroes — Prince Genji and his son Kaoru — many consider Genji to be the world’s first novel, and thus Murasaki, who served as a lady-in-waiting at Japan’s imperial court, the world’s first novelist. An instant success, the book is still hugely influential in Japan today.
But one detail about the story has perplexed readers and scholars for a millennium: The ending isn’t much of an ending. One of Kaoru’s love interests becomes a Buddhist nun, and Kaoru is foiled in an attempt to make contact with her — hardly a satisfying conclusion after 1,000+ pages of Heian-era court romance. Translators have debated whether this abrupt and unsatisfying ending was the author’s intention or if the story remains incomplete, perhaps because Murasaki died before she could finish it. Others argue that she might not have had a concept of a traditional narrative ending, and anyway was not writing for publication — instead, Genji’s many chapters (never originally numbered) were originally passed among the women of court in handwritten notebooks. Scholars will likely never know the definitive answers behind the ending, but the abruptness gives Genji a modern feel and reinforces the novel’s pervading Buddhistic sense of “mono no aware,” a phrase associated with the “beautiful yet tragic fleetingness of life.” Like a blossom falling from a cherry tree, The Tale of Genji serves as an example of the beautiful ephemerality inherent in all existence.
For nearly as long as The Tale of Genji has been delighting readers, fan fiction and other related Genji apocrypha has attempted to fill in the gaps of Genji and Kaoru’s incomplete lives. One of the oldest stories, possibly from the 13th century, called “Yamaji no tsuyu” or “Dew on the Mountain Path,” gives the story a compelling conclusion — evidence that audiences have hungered for a more decisive ending since almost the beginning. In more recent centuries, The Tale of Genji has become a wellspring of inspiration for modern artists who’ve created films, noh theater, operas, paintings, and dozens of manga based on the 1,000-year-old tale.
