Finished Reading

source of picture: http://www.hogaku.it/bibliografia/imgl/genji3.jpg

Yehey! I have finally finished reading “The Tale of Genji”, which I supposedly bought for my thesis last year when I was still in college. It’s really a boring book, reminiscent of what you have to go through when you were in high school and you encounter “Noli Me Tangere” and “El Filibusterismo” By the way, Noli and El Fili are books written by our national hero, Dr. Jose P. Rizal. Everytime I start reading the book, I always end up wanting to stop reading because there were so many elements in the story that it was hard to follow. Well maybe it is just me that I might be the dumbest person who read the book, but it’s just full of the escapades of this one prince and the social dynamics of the Japanese Imperial Court. It’s full of courtship, political tension and poetic serenades. The story is both tragic and boring. I might say all in all that it’s one of the worst stories I have read. However, it just might be me who is saying this. I also might say that it is a good depiction of Zen Buddhistic philosophy applied, but I find it so different from the movie The Last Samurai, starring movie star Tom Cruise, or even Kurasawa’s 12 Rojins. But it is, after all, a classic Japanese literature, I suppose it’s just too heavy drama for me to read casually every now and then. Maybe some other day I will try and read it again.