Arthur Waley (1889–1966) was silent about The Tale of Genji after he completed the English translation from the original Japanese in 1935, except for his book review on Professor Kazuo Oka’s Genjimonogatari no Kisoteki Kenkyu (1954, Tokyo).

　This was in striking contrast to his voluminous and numerous achievements in the Chinese field made after he completed the translation of Genji. However, we are able to understand Waley’s views of The Tale of Genji in his closing days, by his book reviews on Ivan Morris’s The World of the Shining Prince — Court Life in Ancient Japan — (1964, Oxford). In this book review, Waley still holds fast to his own views which appeared in 1935, that the ending of The Tale of Genji is perfect. In opposition to Professor Morris’s conclusion, Waley thinks that it is quite definite that The Tale of Genji is complete. He considers that the last line of The Bridge of Dreams appearing in the last chapter of this Tale is a perfect ending to which the wavering and suspicious character of of Kaoru comes into effect. Waley suggests that if The Bridge of Dreams was continued by the authoress in order to make readers “know something more about Kaoru’s and Niou’s reactions to Ukifune’s retirement to a nunnery”, as Professor Morris thinks, The Tale of Genji should have become like one of the works of Wilkie Collins.

　It may be said in the conclusion that if the points of the technique in The Tale of Genji consisted in the elasticity of time, for instance, “flash back”, “anticipation”, “digression”，and “sudden acceleration” in the time sequence of plot, which characterize the turn of Western novels in this century, Waley’s views on The Tale of Genji being perfectly complete must have appeared under the atmosphere of his Bloomsbury group.

　In writing this paper, I am indebted to Madly Singing in the Mountain — An Appreciation and Anthology of Arthur Waley, edited by Professor I. Morris in 1970.

　In this essay I survey the vast field of thematology, a traditional approach to literary studies which has traditionally been criticized. First I consider a number of these criticisms: the problem of scope, the problem of evaluation, the problem of the unity of the work, and the problem of the authority of the critic.

　Then I discuss three approaches to thematology: theme as subject, theme as story or plot, and theme as idea. Theme as subject includes words and concepts which are not limited to literature: love, education, war, kingship, death, utopia, revenge, the absurd, etc. Here we ask the question, “What is this work about?” Theme as story or plot is the concrete expression of an idea in a particular context: these people, in this place, doing this and that happening. Here the question would be, “What happens in this work?” Theme as idea means abstract ideas about fundamental human situations: an artist is blessed by the gift of his genius but at the same time cursed, or the more one struggles against fate, the closer one comes to bringing it about. Here the question would be, “What is the larger meaning or significance of the work?”

　Finally, I discuss those aspects of thematology which apply in particular to comparative literature such as terminology (trying to reconcile the literary terms used in various countries), cultural contexts (orientalism vs. occidentalism), and literary types (Oedipus, Antigone, Faust).