Beautiful Deathbed Encounters: Affective Projection and the Visual Grammar of Death in The Tale of Genji
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Often lauded as the “world’s first psychological novel,” The Tale of Genji (c. 1008) evokes associations of romance and lyricism—not death. Yet some of its most striking moments unfold at the deathbed, as male protagonists confront the paradoxically beautiful bodies of women they loved. Despite their consistency, these encounters resist analysis: they reintroduce the long-absent image of the corpse yet eschew lament poetry, and what’s more, raise questions of how static, polluted bodies could generate positive appraisals in a culture where active social performance and beauty went hand-in-hand. This talk proposes “affective projection” as the mechanism at work. Drawing on the tale’s larger visual grammar, it demonstrates how subjective overlays of memory and desire allowed observers to aestheticize the corpse and overcome its abjection. By examining how this mechanism operates and evolves across the narrative, this analysis subsequently demonstrates how Genji both innovates and continually reimagines its own conventions.
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