Point of View

The novel employs a third person omniscient narration that operates at a scale far beyond conventional storytelling. This perspective is omniscient in an absolute sense, since it speaks with complete authority about events that occurred centuries earlier and describes processes so minute they fall outside ordinary perception, such as the path of a grain of pollen drifting through the air during the formation of the hidden garden. Nothing is too large or too small for the narrative voice. Human lives, animal suffering, the movements of wind, and the slow development of trees appear within the same field of vision. This produces a mode of narration that treats all forms of existence as part of one continuous reality rather than separating human stories from environmental or historical processes.

Within this wide frame, the narration frequently narrows its focus to the grandson of Prince Genji. When it...