![]() ![]() Murasaki is a Caster-class Servant who gives an air of elegance, but tends to turn into a blubbering mess if she makes a mistake, usually accompanied with "Awawawa."/ "Nononoo.".The Tale of Murasaki by Liza Dalby is a fictionalized biography of her.Uta Koi - one episode is centered on Murasaki having writer's block with The Tale of Genji, and gaining inspiration from another woman she has known since childhood, with their relationship framed romantically.She is remembered chiefly as the author of The Tale of Genji and is also credited with the aforesaid Diary and a collection of poems. The date of Murasaki's death is as uncertain as all the others, with some experts placing it as late as 1025 and others as early as 1014. Even the pronunciation of her possible name is not known and is sometimes given as Kaoriko or other readings. That is literally all scholars have to go on. note We know Murasaki was a Fujiwara and a lady in waiting to Empress Shoshi, and the only Fujiwara lady in waiting Michinaga mentions that fits the time period is Fujiwara no Takako. ![]() Incidentally, Michinaga's court diary gives the names of several ladies-in-waiting at the time and some scholars have suggested that Murasaki and one lady named "Fujiwara no Takako" are one and the same. In it, she recounts exchanges, poetic and otherwise, with the Empress's father, the chief minister Michinaga - which has suggested an affair between them to some readers, and sexual harassment on Michinaga's part to others. Her 'Diary' is an autobiographical fragment covering perhaps two of the years she spent at court. Murasaki portrays herself as melancholic and reserved and feeling out of place and unhappy at court - though she admits she is no happier at home. She began her service at court in the entourage of the Empress Akiko in the early years of the 11th c. It's known, because Murasaki herself tells us so in her 'Diary', that she was depressed and unhappy after her husband's death, but whether she was drowned in grief or only depressed over the loss of his economic and social support she doesn't say. She had at least one child, a daughter named Katako who became a noted writer like her mother (under the name Daini no Sanmi ), but was widowed after only two or three years of marriage. Late in the 990s, Murasaki became one of the several wives of her second cousin Fujiwara no Nobutaka, an official of the Ministry of Ceremonials and man about the Court. This 'masculine' learning was (of course) perfectly useless to Murasaki and a source of embarrassment, as it labelled her an unfeminine bluestocking. As a child, she was permitted to study Chinese literature along with her brother, with such success that her father openly mourned she had not been born a boy. She was the daughter of a lower level official, Fujiwara no Tametoki, who had literary pretensions instead of rank or connections. The woman known to us as Murasaki Shikibu was probably born in the early to mid 970s AD. It is difficult to write a biography of a woman whose birth and death are unrecorded and whose very name is unknown - not that people have let this stop them!
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