Playing fast and loose as usual with the connections, often tenuous but ever-present, between games and literature, this time let's nevertheless open with a fairly straightforward question: Why are the Genji Gloves a recurring peak item in the Final Fantasy series?
And a little reading and searching provides at least three possible literary references.
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The ever-helpful, unpretentious Fandom wiki page for "Genji Glove (FFVI)" states in its etymology:
Genji is a recurring type of equipment in the Final Fantasy series, usually associated with Gilgamesh. The surname of Genji refers to the onyomi reading of the Minamoto Clan. Minamoto was a surname commonly bestowed on the children of the Emperor who were not eligible for the throne. According to history and legend, they were most active in the days of the late Heian era, and were samurai who became known as the fighters of evil and keepers of peace. The time was said to have been fraught with disorder and anarchy. Many future samurai claim lineage from the clan, including Miyamoto Musashi and Tokugawa Ieyasu who were subject of literary discourse from The Tale of Genji, which follows royal figures, to The Tale of the Heike, focusing on the major figures and the events of the Genpei War.
Genji is also a short period in Japanese history, lasting only a single year from 1864–1865.
From there, naturally, we'll follow up on the link to the "Gilgamesh" FF Fandom page (again quoting from the etymology section, passing over for now the historical origins in the Mesopotamian epic--see Professor Kozlowski's lectures for more on that!):
Gilgamesh in Final Fantasy is also based on Benkei, a famous character in the Japanese mythologies and chronicles of the Genpei War. A powerful warrior monk said to have personally defeated 200 men in every battle he engaged in and said to have had the strength of demons, Benkei's introduction sees him set out to collect 1,000 weapons, and to this end he posted himself at Gōjō Bridge in Kyoto and challenged every warrior who attempted to cross. On his 1000th duel Benkei was defeated by Minamoto no Yoshitsune, the only defeat he had ever known, and became his faithful retainer throughout the rest of his life.
From the story of Benkei, Gilgamesh takes his preference for the naginata (Benkei's traditional weapon as a monk), his penchant for fighting on bridges, his collecting of weapons from enemies he defeats, and his friendship with the player's characters who defeat him. Benkei's devotion to Yoshitsune is the basis for Gilgamesh's association with Genji equipment—the Minamoto Clan is also called the Genji Clan, using the alternate pronunciation for the Chinese characters for mina and moto, gen and uji, respectively. Gilgamesh's face paint is based on traditional kabuki actors, for which Benkei is a popular character to portray.
And from the Behind the Scenes section, citing an interview in V-Jump (Nov 1993):
Gilgamesh's Genji equipment refers to him being wandering royalty. In Japanese "genji" is a term used for a wandering noble or prince.
Gilgamesh's signature attack, "Ultimate Illusion", is a synonym for "Final Fantasy".
Huh. So the Genji Gloves are profoundly self-referential, as well as ~three literary references -referential: to The Epic of Gilgamesh/the legends of Benkei, The Tale of Genji (my summer read last year), and The Tale of Heike (which I haven't had occasion to read, though its supposedly more martial than Genji and seems like a good place to look. Unfortunately, a quick search of the text turns up 0 gloves there.)
Benkei, noted for his great size, strength, and bravery, was Yoshitsune’s most famous retainer. While accosting passersby in Kyōto and taking their swords for his collection, Benkei encountered Yoshitsune, “a slight, elegant youth, playing a flute.” Benkei demanded his sword, but the youth outdueled him with superior quickness, agility, and swordsmanship, after which Benkei became a lifelong retainer and friend. The duel, in one version of the legend, took place on Gojō Bridge (McCullough, Yoshitsune 39–43).
Yoshitsune (right) and Benkei dueling on a bridge in Kyōto. Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) (credit: Kawaharada)
This looks like the source for the first appearance of Gilgamesh in FFV for the iconic "Clash on the Big Bridge." He carries a chest to keep all his swords and other gear, he's a bit comical, and the association with gameplay is there, too, in the reference to Boys' Day in Basho's accompanying poem for the visit to the temple:
Proudly exhibit With flying banners The sword and the satchel This May Festival Day. (Yuasa trans.)
Bashō’s verse looks forward to the Boys’ Day Festival, celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth moon (5.5). During the Genroku Period (1688–1704), the festivities included displays of “life-size armour-clad figures” and imitation halberds and spears”; also, “ships and scenes from the war between the Heike and Genji”; and banners erected on poles and printed with “images of heroes or animals” (Casal 70; see the print below depicting a Boys’ Day scene; also “Tango Festival.” ) Mulberry-paper banners (帋幟, kami-nobori) were originally battle standards printed with family crests. The intent of the displays was to encourage sons to become strong and brave, like warriors of old. (Kawaharada)
“Fifth Moon” by Kitao Shigemasa (1739-1820): In the top half of the print, three boys celebrate Boys’ Day by playing at being warriors; decorative war banners (at the right margin) are raised for the occasion. (Kawaharada)
Very interesting! Now on to Genji. To begin with Basho again (From Narrow Road to the Deep North, Barnhill trans. this time, since the word "Genji" replaces the "Minamoto" of the passage in Yuasa):
72 Basho¯’s Journey
At a place called Little Pine
a lovely name—
Little Pine, where the wind wafts
over bush clover and miscanthus
shiorashiki / na ya komatsu fuku / hagi susuki
In this area, I visited the Tada Shrine which contains Sanemori’shelmet and a piece of his armor brocade. In days of old, it is said, at a time when he still served the Genji clan, these articles were given to him by Lord Yoshitomo.Certainly they were meant for no common warrior: from eye shield to ear flaps there is an engraved arabesque of chrysanthemum inlaid with gold and at the crown is a dragon’s head with hoe shaped crests attached. In the annals of the shrine it is written that after Sanemori’s death in battle, Kiso Yoshinakadedicated these relics to the shrine with a message of prayer, Higuchi no Jirohis emissary. Here they lie before me eyes, just as in the legend.
so pitiful—
under the helmet,
a cricket
muzan ya na / kabuto no shita no / kirigirisu
Beautiful. For more context, again, see Dennis Kawaharada's notes on the poems: "The verse on Sanemori’s helmet serves as the climax to his reflections on the vanity of war. Saitō no Bettō Sanemori (1111–1183) first served Lord Minamoto no Yoshitomo (1123–1160), head of the northern Genji, but later switched sides, joining the Heike against the Genji..."
There we have it, right? The Genji gear, resplendent, of Final Fantasy Tactics fame and full of concrete historical referents--but sans gloves...
Following the Fandom clues about Gilgamesh and Benkei, I began this long search for the FF Genji Gloves' sources with Basho, rather than with the seemingly more obvious allusion to The Tale of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu, for two reasons. First, Basho is dense and allusive, too, but at least his book is short. The Tale of Genji is massive, and every page of it is rich in poetry and influences flowing backward and forward in time and culture. Still, for the student of Final Fantasy, insofar as we'd want to know something about the Japanese context, as for the student of world literature, Genji is indispensable. Fortunately, it is also delightful, surprisingly entertaining. My second reason, though, is the much stronger strike against it for our purposes here: the Genji of Lady Murasaki's story, like practically all of her characters, is a lover, not a fighter. He never dons armor. The words "armor," "helmet," and, alas, "gloves" do not appear in the text (search the Seidensticker and Waley translations for yourself. I read Waley's version, which apparently skips a few chapters, so I went back and looked at those sections in Seidensticker. Like Monkey, Waley's adaptation and abridgement of Journey to the West, by Wu Ch'eng-en, his Genji is wonderfully stylish yet accessible, and the episodes he does include are enthrallingly told, but I can't opine on his choices of translation or its faithfulness to the original text. Supposedly Seidensticker is the more literal.)
Famously a key source for Toriyama's Dragonball, but that's another story...
So the most illustrious literary Genji could not have given his gloves to the games. Now, it's entirely possible that the Final Fantasy series adopts the name Genji even so, allying itself with the reverberations of the great Tale by affixing its title to a set of items. Even if there is a tension between the items themselves and the content of the story for which they are named, the power of that word Genji to conjure up a golden age of courtly love could be all the game designers had in mind, lending their own romances the borrowed sheen of a great literary work. I make a similar argument at greater length in connection with FF's Excalibur, a similarly a recurring item, in "The Rat Tail and Knights of the Round."
And I have to expatiate for a bit here on just how great a book The Tale of Genji is. I'd be remiss not to, though these notes are hardly liable to make any sense even to me. My library's edition of Waley's translation carried a foreword by Dennis Washburn, helpful enough for the foreign reader, in which at least two kinds of introductory material are apparent: translation-interpretive and biographical-historical. Touching on questions of modernist aesthetics, literary themes, and historical context, this intro did not address the question I was most interested in (aside from the question of whether Genji's gloves did indeed help him dual-wield swords; again, spoiler: they do not; he does not wear gloves; the only times a sword appears, it's because he's had a nightmare vision, or because the sword is the proper gift to send for the occasion). The question of form is not raised, that is, of Murasaki's blending of poetry and the novel-like elements of her tale, though the novel is of course a form which did not exist before she wrote and arguably only came into existence centuries later and half a world away.
Then the opening of The Tale of Genji, like a fairy tale or chronicle: "It matters not when," reminiscent of "Once upon a time," but also of "I don't care to recall" in Cervantes' contender for the first novel, Don Quixote. Also, to me there is at least as much Don Giovanni as there is Proust or Shakespeare to Genji--or King Arthur, for that matter. From the very start, we are regaled with jealousy and its mythic proto-instantiation: Yang Kueifei and Ming Huong in the Land Beyond the Sea, whose parallel story, recorded inThe Everlasting Wrong of Po Chu-i, will recur throughout the Tale. Anxiety of (cultural) influence, with its own peculiar valence of the jealousy theme, is there from the very start.
Poetry, visual arts, dance, and music are all vibrantly present in the text; in this regard, at least, video games are comparable insofar as they, too, embrace other forms of media. The FF games in particular revel in borrowing across video game genres, as well, in mini-games and developments in the combat system, from turn-based to active time to action-oriented.
Religious belief, chiefly in the first half of the story the power of karma and the bonds of love in past lives, but increasingly towards the end (Genji himself dies around halfway through the book) the potential to escape these bonds. Shades of the FF penchant for killing off characters, replacing them, reincarnating them; and suddenly springing on the party a final boss beyond the ostensible big bad, a breaking through to transcendent realms of power and consciousness.
The very quality of the Genji Gloves is suggested in The Tale's interest in--or rather obsession with--rank, protocol, and excellence. Another important text, apropos of "real things in the darkness," our games' aesthetic included, is In Praise of Shadows, by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, whose evocation of traditional Japanese wall-screens and narrow corridors with their dark alcoves could be a touchstone for Miyamoto's childhood explorations feeding into his crafting of spaces in TheLegend of Zelda, or a physical paradigm for the "twisty little passages" of interactive fiction outside Japan as well.
So much of the plot and characterization proceeds by way of exchanges of letters and poems; so much weight is placed on their handwriting, as much or more than their content, the reader is sure to see a kind of self-awareness of the author at play. Laws against foreigners already in force foreshadow future historical struggles, and yet Korean fortune tellers receive great deference. Oedipal motifs, resemblances; Fujitsubo and Genji's initiation, dance, accomplishments, beauty, betrothal. Alternative explanations offered in the course of the invented narrative as an archaism, or an affectation, or simply to break up the sense of fate?
The Broom Tree sees the friends' reticence pitted against their curiosity, a search for female perfection in dialogue and storytelling, women likened to the work of craftsman versus artist, but Genji sleeps through a discourse on virtue. Subsequent chapters detail his love affairs, including the acceptance of a boy for his elusive sister. Utsusemi playing go is the first actual game within the tale, and endless evocations of the hide-and-seek activity, too earnest to call it a game, of spying on people behaving naturally when they think themselves unobserved.
The lady from To no Chujo's tale appearing by the threshing mills; suspicion and sleeplessness; that nightmare woman, scandal, scripture, love and death: sin to bear and his retainer Koremitsu's long made-up tale to cover up for him. Reception and the void.
Murasaki giving her name to the author, resembling Fujitsubo again. Recuperating from dreams in the mountains, making a sudden move. Music interrupted, followed by tact. Simultaneous events, chapters moving backward and forward in time, filling in details: her silence, old-fashioned formality, imagination and curiosity again; referring to stories again; disillusionment. Sad end to the game they were playing; cliffhangers and seemingly disconnected episodes.
What else might you find?
Godlike song at the Festival of Red Leaves, promotions, likeness perhaps willfully overlooked; violent emotions, experimental flirtation. The surprised Empress. Flower Feast a poetry game, beauty of night, archery and the fan enfolding messages. Vestal Virgins and real reasons, Genji's real secret: a question of birth, lineage, and reverence for the dead: hence his name.
The retinue parade, carriage-jockeying insults and slights; hiding Murasaki; Rokujo's hostile spirit back with her spark of malice. Genji's annotations of Po Chu-i; mysteries and another betrothal. Gods and love, the virgin's reply. Murasaki fiction, sub eidolon, poems omitted. Sympathy. Village of Falling Flowers recreating emotion, constancy. Exile at Suma, the moon a symbol, the poet a fool. Recalling view from heights meeting Murasaki. Play, a rustic dream, a dragon king. Retreat: Lao Tzu? More word play, reading. Tired and depressed. Picture competition. Everlasting Wrong and Kaguya. Ancients and moderns.
Wind in Pine Trees: waiting. Chess. A poem game. Wreath of Cloud: conflicting emotions, hushed up history. Snowballs. Fujitsubo's dream. Education, poetry, women not knowing Chinese music (very important in Hesse's Glass Bead Game, too). Astrological considerations, cosmic home and gardens. Ransomed prisoner poem set adrift. A leech-child? First song of the Year: butterflies, poetry, fairyland, talent; Confucius, old romances, and Murasaki. Po Chu-i again. Glow Worm: delusion. More romances. Novel native music. The perfect lover in Typhoon. The Blue Trousers: games and old stories. The perfume contest. Football with four trees in the gardens of the seasons.
What is all this disjecta membra to say for itself? And it leaves out the concluding chapters, with their late-Shakespearean resurrections from the dead, where I was too carried away to keep taking notes...
Simply, that in the search for understanding the Genji Gloves in Final Fantasy, entire vistas of language, culture, myth, and indeed gameplay are disclosed. And we could substitute Gilgamesh, Excalibur, or the Phoenix, or Odin, or any number of allusions. If we come away from all this reading still caring about Final Fantasy, not just as a video game but as a bearer of cultural memory, then I think we also have to say that it is truly a literary classic in its own right.
(Gilgamesh morphs into a multi-armed creature.)
Gilgamesh: Now that it's mine, let's see how good this Excalibur really is!
(He swipes at them a few times with the "Excalibur", but it doesn't do much.)
Gilgamesh: Have at you!
(After another few times, he realizes it.)
Gilgamesh: Ehhh!? Why, I've been had! This is far from the strongest of swords!
I feel so betrayed! (FFV script)
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