The Tale of Genji

  The Haven and the Consort were not at all inclined to behave pettishly toward each other, but unpleasant incidents that occurred between their women confirmed the fears wisely voiced by the Counselor, the Haven's elder brother. Where will these quarrels end? the Mistress of Staff wondered. Will she be held up to shame and ridicule? She means a great deal to His Eminence, but it will be a disaster if the ladies who have already served him so long turn against her. Meanwhile she received reports that His Majesty was thoroughly annoyed and making no secret of it, and this so upset her that she decided to send her younger daughter to court and to cede her her own title of Mistress of Staff. Her resignation was by no means easy for an Emperor to accept, but she declared that it was a step she had long hoped in vain to take, cited His Late Excellency's wishes, and put forward such precedents, though old ones by now, that she obtained what she wished. One gathered that she had previously encountered repeated refusals only because her younger daughter's destiny required them.

  If only palace life smiles on her! she thought, her thoughts turning unhappily at the same time to the Lieutenant and his mother's entreaties. I did give her to understand that I would consider him favorably—what will she think of me?

  She approached His Excellency on the subject through her son the Controller, putting the best face on it that she could. “This, then, is what I have been hearing from His Majesty,” she said, “and it upsets me very much, you know, to imagine some people in the world perhaps accusing me of having aimed too high for my daughter.”

  “I quite understand His Majesty's expressions of displeasure,” His Excellency replied. “It would be unfortunate if she did not fulfill her obligation to serve him, and I believe that you should resolve to have her do so immediately.”

  Once more she sought an Empress's goodwill before sending off a daughter. They could never even consider dismissing her if only His Late Excellency were still alive! she said to herself. His Majesty was not particularly pleased, since he had heard that the elder sister was famed for her beauty, but this one, too, had a great deal to commend her, and she served him with distinction.

  The former Mistress of Staff was now resolved to enter religion, but she put off doing so when her sons pointed out that she would never have peace in her prayers as long as she remained so concerned about her daughters. They urged her first to see both of them through to a more settled life, after which she could give herself fully and wholeheartedly to her devotions. Now and again she visited the palace discreetly. However, she refrained from calling on His Eminence even when she might well have done so, for his importunities had never ceased. She thought back to how with feigned innocence she had allowed a marriage condemned by everyone else in order to make up after all for having once dared to disappoint him, and she reflected that if any such foolishness on her part were now to be noised abroad, however lightly it might be meant, the result for her would be complete disgrace; and yet she could reveal nothing of this to her daughter, who therefore assumed resentfully that despite all she had meant to her father, her mother had always favored her sister, as in their rivalry over the cherry tree, and that she simply dismissed her. “Look how she has just abandoned you to an old man like me!” His Eminence would say. “Not that I am surprised she thinks so little of me.” He felt more and more sorry for her.

  A few years later she gave His Eminence a son, something that none of his many other women had ever managed to do, and the world was startled by this evidence of her remarkable destiny. His Eminence was even more deeply astonished, and he loved his little boy very much. What an event this would be if I had not already abdicated! he thought, lamenting that nothing in life had the old savor anymore. His First Princess had always been his greatest treasure, but these enchanting new arrivals struck him as all but miraculous, and his Consort came to feel that things simply could not go on this way. Unfortunate, spiteful incidents began to occur, inevitably straining relations between the two ladies. When women of no importance come into conflict, then, too, bystanders as a rule favor the one with the earlier claim, and staff high and low throughout His Eminence's palace therefore took the part of the lady who had reigned there so long, and condemned the newcomer for the tiniest lapse.

  “We told you so!” her brothers said, ever more accusingly. “Were we wrong?”

  “But so many people lead quiet, respectable lives, and nothing like that ever happens to them!” their unhappy mother replied. “No, I should never have sent her into such service unless she could aspire there to the greatest good fortune of all.”43

  Those who had courted her elder daughter rose nicely in rank and office, and a good many of them would have done her credit enough. One, the Minamoto Adviser, once seemingly so slight and young, was now a Consultant Captain, and people praised him until one wearied of hearing “His suave perfume, ah, his fragrance!” Indeed, he had acquired so noble a dignity that one gathers the greatest Princes and Ministers would approach him on behalf of their daughters, although he ignored them. The former Mistress of Staff was moved to observe, “Years ago he seemed such a young man, and so insubstantial, but look how fine he is now!”

  The former Lieutenant was now well regarded as a Third Rank Captain. “And he is handsome, too!” her officious women cried, adding in low voices, “Better at any rate than that oh-so-difficult gentleman…” She was in a sad plight. The Captain in question still felt all the ardor of his first love, and while bitterness and sorrow had led him to accept the daughter of His Excellency of the Left, he cared very little about her; instead he was constantly scribbling or humming “Hitachi sash far down the road…”44 until one wondered what on earth he meant by it.

  All the unpleasantness that the Haven had to suffer meant that she spent more and more time at home, and her mother lamented an outcome so different from the one she had imagined. In contrast, the younger daughter was getting on admirably at the palace, where she was respected by the world at large and pleasingly favored by His Majesty.

  His Excellency of the Right took over the Left45 after that Minister's death, and the Fujiwara Grand Counselor46 assumed the Right, with a concurrent appointment as Left Commander. Their juniors all rose in turn. The Fragrant Captain became a Counselor and the Third Rank Captain a Consultant. No one seemed to matter then but those two gentlemen's sons.47

  The new Counselor called on the former Mistress of Staff to express his pleasure and made his obeisance from the garden before her residence. She then received him in person.48 “It is very good of you not to shun a gate by now so sadly overgrown,” she said, “and your kindness brings straight to mind the gentleman whose loss we still mourn.” Her voice had distinction, charm, and perfect immediacy of presence. She never ages! he thought. That is why His Eminence is still angry about her. He could make trouble over her at any time.

  “This success does not mean that much to me personally,” he answered, “but I wanted to come and present myself to you.49 I am sure that when you spoke of my not shunning your gate, you meant only to remind me how seldom I actually come.”

  “I should refrain from burdening you with my troubles, because I am an old woman, and today is not the day for that, but your visits here are indeed rare, and some things, you know, unless said face-to-face… I am so upset! I always thought that my daughter who serves His Eminence could talk to his Consort when things became too much for her, or that his Empress would not really mind her coming to her, whereas in fact both have turned against her. It is too hard! She has her little Prince and Princess, but life there is so difficult now that she has come home at my invitation at least to regain some peace of mind, and look at all the talk that has started! I understand that His Eminence disapproves as well. Please tell him something of how I feel, if you can find the moment to do so. I sent her to him because I thought that I could count on them both, and I believed the assurances they both gave me, but it has all turned out so badly that I hate myself for being so childishly credulous.” He gathered that she was weeping.


  “You should not allow the matter to upset you so,” he replied discouragingly. “It has always been well understood that joining such company presents certain risks. His Eminence's ladies may seem willing to live and let live, now that His Eminence is in quiet retirement and no longer commands attention for what he does, but each must feel at heart the same need to be preferred. I expect that the Consort and the Empress both easily take as affronts to their dignity things to which no one else would object at all. Did you really believe when you originally made your decision that no friction of this kind would ever arise? You should simply ignore it all and let it pass. I am afraid that it is not something a man can bring up with His Eminence.”

  “I had looked forward to our next talk so that I might confide my sorrows to you, but alas”—she smiled—“you have given me little hope.”

  Her youth and innocence struck him far more than all her earnestly maternal concern. The Haven must be like that too, he reflected, and I suppose what attracts me to the elder daughter in Uji is that she has this wonderful quality as well. The Mistress of Staff,50 too, was then at home from the palace, and the two sisters made a lovely presence, installed there each on her own side of the main house. The awed Counselor knew that behind their blinds they were wholly at leisure, and he minded himself so perfectly that their mother wished he were her son-in-law.

  His Excellency of the Right's51 residence stood immediately to the east, and his sons and the other attendants for the celebratory banquet all gathered there. As guest of honor he had invited His Highness of War,52 remembering how His Highness had been to the Minister of the Left's New Year archery banquet, to the wrestling meet,53 and so on; but His Highness did not come. His Excellency was particularly eager to win His Highness's favor on behalf of the daughters of whom he thought so highly, but for some reason His Highness did not respond. The Minamoto Counselor meanwhile had grown into a gentleman so fine and so well endowed with every quality that His Excellency's wife now cast her eye upon him.

  The commotion next door, the noise of carriages coming and going, and the escorts' cries turned the former Mistress of Staff's thoughts back to old memories, and there in her residence she yielded to sorrowful dreaming. “His Excellency began calling on her almost as soon as His Late Highness was gone,” she said, “and I gather that many people dismissed her then as all too easy, but their affection lasted, and by now they on the contrary make a very fine couple. One never knows how things will turn out. Which of them has really done better, she or my elder daughter?”

  The Consultant Captain, His Excellency of the Left's son, came to call the evening of the day after the banquet. The thought that the Haven was there made him especially eager. “It means nothing to me that His Majesty has deigned to acknowledge my merit,” he said, “for I suffer more with each passing year from the sorrow of having lost what I so desired.” The way he dried his tears had something self-conscious about it. At twenty-seven or -eight he had all a fine young gentleman's glow and brilliant good looks.

  “Look at him, the way he thinks the world is his!” the former Mistress of Staff exclaimed and burst into tears. “Why, rank and office mean nothing to him! If only His Late Excellency were alive, my sons, too, could indulge in these frivolous cares!” She resented it that the Intendant of the Right Watch and the Right Grand Controller were still only “qualified” for Consultant. The one earlier called the Adviser seems by then to have become the Secretary Captain. The appointment was not out of keeping with his age, but his mother lamented that he was falling behind. The Consultant Captain kept up his smooth talk.

  45

  HASHIHIME

  The Maiden of the Bridge

  Hashihime (“the Maiden of the Bridge”) is a shadowy figure from early Japanese folkore. She appears to be a jealous goddess of bridges, and she has a close poetic association with the bridge over the Uji River at Uji, south of Kyoto. This chapter, which is set at Uji, introduces two sisters who live there. It is entitled “Hashihime” because Kaoru uses the word in a poem to the elder, Ōigimi:

  “What drops wet these sleeves, when the river boatman's oar, skimming the shallows,

  sounds out the most secret heart of the Maiden of the Bridge!”

  RELATIONSHIP TO EARLIER CHAPTERS

  “The Maiden of the Bridge” begins by describing the earlier life of the Eighth Prince (Hachi no Miya). Kaoru enters when he is already a Consultant Captain. After the passage of some time the story resumes late in the autumn, apparently when Kaoru is twenty-two. The main story seems to begin where “The Perfumed Prince” leaves off, and ends before the end of “Bamboo River.”

  PERSONS

  The Consultant Captain, age 20 to 22 (Kaoru)

  His Highness, the Eighth Prince (Hachi no Miya)

  His wife

  His older daughter, 22 to 24 (Ōigimi)

  His younger daughter, 20 to 22 (Naka no Kimi)

  The Adept (Uji no Ajari)

  His Eminence Reizei, 49 to 51

  The watchman at Uji

  Ben, a gentlewoman of Hachi no Miya's daughters, nearly 60

  The Third Prince, His Highness of War, 21 to 23 (Niou)

  Her Cloistered Highness, Kaoru's mother, early to mid-40s

  (Onna San no Miya)

  There was in those days an aged Prince who no longer mattered to the world. Of extremely distinguished birth on his mother's side as well, he had seemed destined for great things, but then times changed, and disgrace brought him a downfall so thorough that for one reason and another everyone who upheld his interests renounced the world, leaving him completely alone in both public and private. His wife, a former Minister's daughter, suffered sadly from this outcome, the many and extremely painful circumstances of which little resembled what she remembered her parents wishing for her; but the unequaled affection she shared with her husband comforted her in her sorrow, for they were as devoted to each other as a couple can be.

  It troubled them more and more over the years to have no children, and His Highness often longed desperately for a pretty child to relieve the loneliness and tedium of their lives until, wonder of wonders, a beautiful little girl was born. They loved and cherished her exceedingly, and meanwhile it soon became clear that the lady was expecting again. They rather hoped for a boy this time, but it was a girl as before. The birth itself went well, but she became gravely ill afterward and died. His Highness was distraught.

  Life has tried me sorely and often, he reflected, but I loved her too well to leave it, and her looks and ways bound me to it after all. Things will be even worse now that I am alone! What a spectacle I shall make, constrained as I am,1 bringing up my daughters all by myself! He longed to act on his deepest desire,2 but there was no one else to look after them. His agonizing hesitations continued until in time both grew up into perfectly lovely girls who were an unfailing comfort to him after all.

  The women who served the last born whispered of her, “Look what misfortune she brought!” and gave her only halfhearted attention. However, her mother in her final moments, when no longer aware of her surroundings, had still been sufficiently concerned about her to repeat again and again to His Highness, “Please be good to her, in memory of me!” and despite bitterness that their tie from past lives had failed, the thought that his loss was destiny and that she had to the last spoken tenderly of their new child inspired him to treat the girl with great affection. She was extremely pretty, indeed, alarmingly so. The elder, with her quiet poise, was wonderfully distinguished in looks and manner, but the younger displayed a nobler charm, and he therefore treasured them both. Still, there were many things that he could not do for them, and loneliness pervaded his residence more and more as the years went by. This was too much for the people in his service, who felt bereft of hope, and one by one they all drifted away. In the confusion His Highness had never managed to find his new daughter a reliable nurse, and the one chosen abandoned her charge with the nonchalance typical of her class, leaving His Highness to
look after everything on his own.

  His Highness's residence was large and handsome nonetheless, and the lake and knolls of the park, although now sadly neglected, remained as they had always been. He spent his days gazing vacantly out at the scenery they offered. There was no one to tidy it all up because he no longer had any capable retainers. Weeds grew everywhere, thick and green, and green ferns3 along the eaves seemed to claim his dwelling as their own. The colors and scents of each season's leaves and flowers consoled him many a time simply because she, too, had once enjoyed them, but his growing loneliness and sense of helplessness prompted him to adorn his chapel and spend day and night there at his devotions. It was a bitter disappointment still to be detained by such ties, and the thought of thus being prevented from acting on his desire decided him ever more firmly that nothing obliged him any longer to behave like other people; no, the world was no concern of his. A thoroughgoing hermit at heart, he never again after his wife's death shared even casually the more commonplace feelings.

  “But Your Highness, why must you do this?” people would say. “You seemed to grieve more deeply than anyone has ever done when my lady died, but what is the point of going on and on that way? You might surely manage still to live as others do;4 it would do this miserably neglected place a world of good!” But he ignored every one of the many attempts made through his relations to change his mind.