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If you've ever fallen in love with a novel
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you know the moment:
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you look at the clock,
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it's one in the morning,
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and you still can't put the book down.
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You've been pulled into a world
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conjured from someone else's imagination,
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where the thoughts and feelings
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of the people on the pages
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are as real as your own.
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It's hard to imagine a time
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before novels as we know them existed --
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but there was, in fact, a first novel.
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And if we want to understand
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how it came into being,
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we have to look
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more than 1000 years into the past,
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at the writing desk of one woman.
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Her name was Murasaki Shikibu,
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or at least,
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that's the only name we can give her now.
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Born into an aristocratic Japanese family
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sometime in the 970s,
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she lived in at time when the name of women
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were rarely recorded.
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Instead, well-born women like Murasaki
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were given nicknames:
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usually related to the rank or position
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of a close male relative.
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She lived in an intensely-cloistered world
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where women were constantly shielded
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from public view by screens or curtains.
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Sometimes, it was easier to identify
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an aristocratic woman by the distinctive pattern
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of a protruding sleeve than by her face.
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Despite the often suffocating limitations
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on their lives,
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women like Murasaki were educated
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and expected to be highly literate.
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The granddaughter of a famous poet
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and the daughter of a scholar,
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Murasaki became conversant in Japanese
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and Chinese literature so quickly,
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she was considered something of a literary prodigy.
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In her diary, Murasaki recorded
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her father's reactions when he realized
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exactly how talented she was.
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He said,
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"Just my luck.
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What a pity she was not born a man."
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In her early twenties, she married a man
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old enough to be her father,
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who died only two years later,
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but not before they had a daughter.
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Instead of marrying again,
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the gifted young widow and mother
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began working on The Tale of Genji,
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an intricate saga of romance and intrigue,
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in the life of an imperial Prince.
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The Tale of Genji is often considered
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the first modern novel,
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because Murasaki offered readers
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not just a chronicle of events,
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but deep psychological insight into the characters
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and their inner lives.
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Her story made history because it was more
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than just a story:
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it was a complex literary portrait
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of what it means to be human.
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Although the hero of The Tale of Genji
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is a man named "Prince Genji,"
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Shikibu filled her novel with multifaceted
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female characters who provided a rare glimpse
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into how it felt to be a woman in her world.
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As Virginia Woolf later wrote,
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when Murasaki set out to illuminate
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the complicated life of the prince,
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she naturally chose the medium
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of other women's minds.
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The Tale of Genji earned Murasaki
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a permanent place in literary history.
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It may also have helped her secure a position
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at the imperial court,
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where she became an attendant and occasional
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tutor to the Empress Shoshi.
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Murasaki became quite close with the Empress,
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and even secretly taught her Chinese:
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a language only men were supposed to learn.
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Although it was a comfortable life,
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Murasaki was often lonely,
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and her literary fame made her the target
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of court gossips, who called her
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pretentious, arrogant, and unfriendly --
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complaints often heard about successful women
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even today.
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No one is sure exactly when Murasaki died,
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but the legacy she left behind
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changed Japanese literature forever,
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and left a mark on the broader world of fiction
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that can never be erased.
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Throughout history, great novels
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have traditionally been considered the domain
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of male writers,
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while tales of romance,
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especially those written by women,
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are often dismissed as frivolous or inferior.
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But history itself tells a very different story.
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Not only was the first novel a romance,
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but it was one of the greatest literary masterpieces
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in human history --
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and it was written by a woman.
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Because she dared to imagine the world
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in ways that no one had before,
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we can still hear her voice echoing through time
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more than a thousand years later,
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daring us to imagine worlds of our own.