The Atlantic: What Murasaki Shikibu Saw

This essay revisits the world of Murasaki Shikibu, the 11th-century author of The Tale of Genji, often called the world’s first novel. It reflects on how her writing still echoes through Kyoto’s landscapes and cultural imagination a thousand years later.

A work trip takes me to Japan later this year. This won’t be my first time in Kyoto, but I find that a second visit opens space for a different kind of reflection. The first trip dazzles with temples, gardens, and lantern-lit lanes; the second allows for slowing down, noticing subtler rhythms, and seeing the city through literature’s longer lens.

To move beyond surface images of geishas and cherry blossoms, two Japanese novels I’m revisiting are:

• Yasunari Kawabata’s The Old Capital — a meditative portrait of Kyoto’s seasons, festivals, and quiet inner lives.
• Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s The Makioka Sisters — set partly in Kyoto, it captures the tensions of tradition and modernity through the lives of a family in pre-war Japan.

Both novels peel back Kyoto’s layers, showing the city not as a postcard but as a living, shifting place where beauty and impermanence entwine. Literature doesn’t just record a place; it reshapes how we return to it, seeing more deeply each time.