My question is about the script of _Genji Monogatari_. It is easy to find many
anecdotal claims that it was written in hiragana, and that this is explained
by Chinese characters considered unsuitable for women to study and use at the
time.

However, I ran into difficulty trying to establish if there's an actual
scholarly consensus about this. The statements in English-language books - I
can't read Japanese - about the history of Japanese seem more cautious; as a
typical example, Bjarke Frellesvig in "A History of the Japanese Language"
says that 10-11th centuries begat a large body of _monogatari_ literature,
"much of which was written in hiragana". At the same time, he mentions other
genres, such as _setsuwa_ tales, that employed the mixed kanji/kana style in
the same period.

If I understand correctly, the earliest surviving manuscripts of _Genji
monogatari_ date from the 13th century, and are in mixed kanji/kana style,
which might of course be due to the fact that it became standard by that time.
I imagine that the question of how the original manuscript had been written
has been intensely studied. Is there a consensus about whether it did or did
not employ a nontrivial number of Chinese characters? If there is one, what is
it based on? (e.g. maybe there are surviving period manuscripts of other
_monogatari_ writings all in hiragana, or unambiguous references to the script
of _Genji monogatari_ in some other writing from the period).
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-02T13:47:33.647
18910
2016-01-18T21:25:42.887
7391
question
history
Was "The Tale of Genji" really written completely or almost completely in hiragana?
I'm not finding anything at the level one could cite in a paper after a brief
search in Japanese, but three different sources ([Japanese
Wikipedia](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%BA%90%E6%B0%8F%E7%89%A9%E8%AA%9E),
NHK Kids show, and [Japanese version of yahoo
answers](http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q11135030366))
agree that the original was written in a mix of kana and kanji. The "yahoo
answers" answerer points out that there is no copy of the original.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-10-02T17:02:19.453
18912
2014-10-02T17:02:19.453
4091
18910
answer
The author, Murasaki Shikibu, is known for badmouthing a contemporary writer
for writing her works with kanji "as if she was a man" (it was believed back
then that the more artistical "hiragana", which was not exactly current
hiragana, was more fitting for women while the more complex and more
intelligent-looking kanji were for males; katakana was reserved to monks), so
most likely, yes.

It is known that Murasaki Shikibu knew kanji, however, since she used them in
her personal diary, but given that the diary is personal while the Genji
Monogatari was public, chances that she used kanji in it are fairly low, but
they exist.

It's impossible to say anything to the respect when not only we don't have any
copies ancient enough of the text, we also even lack parts of the story as it
has seem to have suffered severe censure and even after that no one managed to
keep a complete enough collection.

I've heard that at least three books are theorized to have been lost, one of
them centered about Rokujou no Miyasudokoro (the most blatant, as she's
abruptly introduced as if the reader should have known about her), and the
final part of the last book is missing (the ending is too sudden, with no
clear indication that it should stop there, and the title of the book that
should have come from a verse inside it has no related poem).

I cannot tell you if the Genji had been written like that, but I can tell you
that there are other works known to have been written entirely in hiragana.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-01-18T21:25:42.887
30524
2016-01-18T21:25:42.887
9769
18910
answer