A History of the World in 100 Objects - Dr Neil MacGregor [147]
Lady Murasaki was a little bit like Jane Austen. The Tale of Genji gives an extraordinary insight into what life was like in that aristocratic hothouse of the Heian period.
One thing that distinguishes medieval Japanese culture is that it was extremely aestheticized; it turned beauty into a kind of cult. And that included everything in daily life; not just objects – like mirrors, or chopsticks or whatever it was – but life itself, which was of course highly ritualized. In an aristocratic society it always is. That’s true of all aristocratic societies, but possibly the aristocracy of the Heian period went further than any other culture before or since. People communicated by writing poetry, they had incense-smelling contests, they were connoisseurs of every kind of aesthetic pursuit, and that included the relations between men and women. Of course, feelings came into it, and so that led to jealousies and all the normal forms of human behaviour which Murasaki recorded so beautifully.
We can see something of Lady Murasaki’s world of aesthetic refinement and incense-smelling contests in our mirror. On the back, the elegant decoration shows a pair of cranes in flight, their heads thrown back, their wings outstretched and pine branches in their beaks. Their necks curve to match exactly the curve of the circular mirror. On the outer edge are more decorative pine fronds. It’s a rigorously balanced, perfectly composed work of art. But as well as being beautiful, our mirror also had a meaning: cranes had a reputation for longevity – the Japanese believed that they lived for a thousand years. Lady Murasaki tells us of one of her contemporaries who, at a particular court event, wore a gown decorated with cranes on a seashore:
Ben-no-Naishi showed on her train a beach with cranes on it painted with silver. It was something new. She had also embroidered pine branches; she is clever, for all these things are emblematic of a long life.
The cranes also carry another meaning – these birds mate for life, and so are symbols of marital fidelity. The message on the back of our mirror is quite simply one of enduring love. At one point in The Tale of Genji the princely hero, before setting off for a long absence, takes a mirror, recites into it a passionate love poem and then gives it to his beloved, so that by holding the mirror once he is gone she will be able to hold both his message of love and within its polished surface the image of Genji himself. Our mirror with its faithful cranes would have been a particularly appropriate vehicle for such a declaration of love.
Japanese mirrors could also communicate darker messages, and not just between humans – through them we can enter the world of the spirits and indeed speak to the gods. Ian Buruma explains:
The mirror in Japanese culture does have several meanings, and some of them may seem contradictory. One is that it’s an object to ward off evil spirits, on the other hand it can also attract them, which is why if you go into a rather traditional household in Japan even today people often cover up their mirror when they don’t use it – they have a cloth that they hang in front of it because it might attract evil spirits. At the same time it’s a sacred object. In the holiest shrine in Japan, in Ise, the holiest of holy parts that nobody ever gets to see has one of the three great national