The Tale of Genji

  53. Genji's aunt and the Emperor's sister. Genji is about to marry a first cousin.

  54. After coming of age, Genji would normally receive material support from his wife's family. The wife to so young a man was called a “companion in bed” (soibushi).

  55. The imperial sons, who were seated in order of rank. Genji sat next to his future father-in-law, for the Minister of the Left occupied the highest seat among the nonimperial nobles.

  56. The woman (a Naishi no Jō, a third-level official in the Office of Staff) probably communicated the Emperor's message through a Chamberlain. The Minister is to receive the gifts customarily awarded to the “sponsor.”

  57. This uchiki, made for presentation, would have been reduced in size for actual use.

  58. This poem, like the Minister's reply, plays on the verb musubu, “bind up” the hair and “make” a vow (of conjugal fidelity). The cord used was purple (murasaki), the color of close relationship.

  59. Nagahashi, a plank bridge between the Seiryōden and the Shishinden.

  60. Mihashi, the steps down from the Seiryōden to the garden just east of it.

  61. Gifts for the lower servants.

  62. The wedding rite for Genji and the Minister's daughter, known to readers as Aoi.

  63. Hereafter Genji's great friend, known to readers as Tō no Chūjō.

  64. At his father-in-law's residence.

  65. Fujitsubo joined in the music (asobi) but remained invisible.

  2: HAHAKIGI

  1. Katano no Shōshō, an amorous hero whose story has not survived.

  2. From Ise monogatari 1 (Tales of Ise, tenth century), an episode in which the young hero is swept away by a glimpse of two pretty sisters: “Robe dye-patterned with young murasaki of the Kasuga meadows, all in a hopeless tangle is my heart as well.”

  3. Monoimi, a time of confinement indoors to avoid evil influences.

  4. Tō no Chūjō, the Secretary (Tō) of the Chamberlains' Office and Captain (Chūjō) of the Palace Guards.

  5. Tō no Chūjō's father-in-law.

  6. Letters like these were not signed.

  7. Her gentlewomen.

  8. Shina takaku, “born to a high standing in society.” The notion of shina includes both formal rank and the family's general social distinction.

  9. As before, the gentlewomen around her: talented gentlewomen devote themselves to developing whatever capacity she may have.

  10. Naka no shina, including particularly the daughters of privy gentlemen or of provincial Governors, i.e., of gentlemen of the fourth or fifth rank.

  11. Shimo no kizami to iū kiwa, presumably daughters of men in the lower ranks of the official bureaucracy. Such women were beneath the notice of young men like these.

  12. Naobito, gentlemen of the fourth or fifth rank.

  13. Hisangi, a man of the fourth rank, either a past Consultant (Sangi) or qualified for this office. Consultant (there were eight) was a distinguished appointment, below only Counselor and Minister.

  14. His white, unstarched gowns are probably two, and his summer dress cloak (nōshi) is probably thin enough to be nearly transparent. He seems not to have on its normal complement, gathered trousers (sashinuki).

  15. Genji and Tō no Chūjō (the Secretary Captain).

  16. An image from a poem on marriage by Bai Juyi (Hakushi monjū 3564).

  17. Aoi, Genji's wife.

  18. Motifs from Chinese-style painting. Hōrai (Chinese Penglai) is a fabulous island inhabited by immortal beings.

  19. “I shall acknowledge you as my wife.”

  20. In Japan one crooks the fingers to count. This poem and the reply rely on several wordplays.

  21. Kamo no rinji matsuri, on the last day of the Bird in the eleventh month. Music was performed for the deity by the palace musicians and the rehearsal was held in the palace.

  22. Tatsuta Hime, the “Tatsuta Lady,” was associated with the beauty of colored autumn leaves and was therefore the patron goddess of dyeing. Tanabata, the Weaver Star who meets the Herdboy Star, her celestial lover, once a year on the night of the Tanabata Festival (the seventh day of the seventh month), was a patron of sewing, among other things.

  23. Probably his father.

  24. The moon is reflected in the garden lake.

  25. Frost-withered chrysanthemums were prized.

  26. A saibara folk song: “You must stop at the Asukai spring, for you will have shade, the water is cool, the grazing is of the best…” The singer hints that he hopes to spend the night.

  27. The blinds hang between her room and the veranda. The wagon (“Japanese koto”) has six strings, and the richi mode was rather “minor” in feeling.

  28. “Dear me, you seem to be all alone this evening.”

  29. The wind refers with coquettish modesty to her own playing.

  30. Both similes evoke a young woman ready at a touch to swoon into a suitor's arms. The “flower” is the poetic hagi, whose long, drooping fronds bloom deep pink, violet, or white in autumn; while the “gleaming leaf” is tamazasa, a species of “dwarf bamboo.” The mention of hagi refers to Kokinshū 223.

  31. He is apparently seven years older than Genji. Although he started out talking to Tō no Chūjō, he must have begun addressing the higher-ranking Genji when Genji woke up.

  32. Commentators disagree over whether the “fool” (sbiremono) is To no Chūjō's or the woman.

  33. “Rustic boor that I am, I know that I hardly deserve your favor, but do at least sometimes remember our dear child.” The “little pink” (Yamato nadeshiko) is the future Tamakazura. Kokinshū 695: “Ah, how I miss her, and how I long to see her, the Yamato pink blooming in the rustic hedge!”

  34. “You are the only one I really care for.” The tokonatsu (“gillyflower”) and the nadeshiko (“pink”) are the same flower, but the words have different associations. Nadeshiko refers to the child, tokonatsu to the mother. This is partly because of a play on toko (the “sleeping place” of lovers) in Kokinshū 167, by Ōshikōchi no Mitsune, to which Tō no Chūjō alludes a line or two later: “No speck of dust will I allow to soil this bed / gillyflower, abloom since you and I first lay down together.”

  35. The gillyflower's (lady's) sleeves are wet with tears; “brushing a deserted bed” refers to “No speck of dust will I allow…” in Kokinshū 167, Tō no Chūjōs source poem. The autumn storms are probably Tō no Chūjōs indifference and his wife's threats.

  36. He surmises that her disappearance might have involved another man.

  37. A seductively ample goddess of good fortune, probably Indian in origin. Her image was common in Buddhist temples, where tales were told about monks falling in love with her.

  38. Daigaku, largely a school for training lower-ranking officials. The students studied Chinese poetry, philosophy, and history.

  39. A homily on marriage from a poem by Bai Juyi (Hakushi monjū 0075). The wine cups, too, are in the poem, which stresses the wisdom of taking a bride from a poor home.

  40. Women wrote mainly in the phonetic kana script, men in more or less accomplished Chinese. This avoidance of kana (her letters are entirely in Chinese characters) creates a strangely formal, masculine effect.

  41. “Broken-backed” (koshi ore) is a term of poetic criticism.

  42. Genji and Tō no Chūjō rank so high that they need no accomplishment to get ahead.

  43. Garlic.

  44. His sally and her retort both play on hiru (“garlic”) and hiruma (“daytime”). Poetic lore had it that a woman could tell whether her lover was coming by watching a spider's behavior.

  45. A gesture of censure or irritation.

  46. Poems for this occasion are full of plays on ayame (“sweet flag”) and other words associated with the event, and so at this point is the Chief Equerry's own speech.

  47. Ladies moistened a bit of chrysanthemum-patterned brocade with dew from chrysanthemum flowers, rubbed their cheeks with it to smooth the wrinkles of age (since chrysanthemum dew conferred immortal
youth), and composed poems lamenting the sorrows of growing old.

  48. Fujitsubo.

  49. The Mid-God (Nakagami), one of the deities of yin-yang lore, moved in a sixty-day cycle. Having spent the first sixteen days in the heavens, the deity descended to earth and circled the compass, spending five or six days in each of the eight directions. One shunned (imu) travel in a direction “blocked” (ftagaru) by this deity. Genji's planned destination violates this taboo, and he must now “evade” (tagau) the “blocked” direction by taking refuge elsewhere, in another direction from his point of departure (the palace).

  50. Genji's residence, on “Second Avenue.”

  51. A stream, now gone, in the northeastern part of the city.

  52. Only a great lord could have had his ox carriage driven in through someone's gate.

  53. It would have run north-south between the main dwelling and its east wing, hence next to where Genji was staying.

  54. Watadono, between the main dwelling and the east wing.

  55. A reference to a folk song in which a host leaves his guests the wine jar and “goes darting about” to fetch edible seaweed from the shore.

  56. Utsusemi, the wife of the Iyo Deputy.

  57. These bluebells (asagao) have supplied the traditional name of the lady (Asagao), who first appears in person in “Heart-to-Heart.” She is Genji's first cousin, since her father is the Emperor's younger brother.

  58. Kudamono, mainly fruit or nuts.

  59. “It is a poor host who does not have a woman ready for his guest.” Genji alludes to a saibara song: “In my house the curtains are all hung; come, my lord, come: my daughter shall be yours…” The song then mentions sea urchin (kase), a shell felt to resemble the female genitals.

  60. The Iyo Deputy's other children.

  61. One of her women.

  62. They are in the aisle room, diagonally across the chamber from Genji. The aisle was a beam-width lower.

  63. People slept under robes.

  64. He pretends to take the woman's name to mean himself. Chūjō means “Captain” (she may be the daughter or the wife of a Captain), and Genji is a Chūjō in the Palace Guards.

  65. It is not clear which room is meant, but the most plausible possibility is a divided-off section of the chamber itself—perhaps a fully walled-in “retreat” (nurigome).

  66. “You must not imagine that the liberties you have taken constitute any kind of precedent for the fu-ture. What you have done has not established a relationship between you and me.”

  67. As there would be if he had come for a secret rendezvous.

  68. Genji's poem plays on tori (“cock”) and tori aenu (“before I grasp [what I seek]”); hers similarly exploits tori kasanete (“again and again [I / the cock lament… ]”).

  69. That the boy should carry messages for him.

  70. Yume, a lovers' meeting.

  71. Shūishū 735, by Minamoto no Shitagō: “What comfort have I from my longing for you, when at night I cannot sleep and so never dream?”

  72. Sonohara (in Shinano Province) is associated with a bush called hahakigi (“broom tree”), similar to broom. Kokin rokujō 3019 (slightly modified as Shinkokinshū 997), by Sakanoue no Korenori, describes hahakigi as visible from a distance and yet invisible as one comes nearer.

  73. Fuseya, associated with the name Sonohara, may be a place name or a word for a low, humble dwelling.

  3: UTSUSEMI

  1. Kokin rokujō 371, by Ōyake no Iratsume: “Dusk shrouds the path: O love, await the moon to return, and I shall watch you as you go.”

  2. The east end of the main house. There were tsumado (twin, hinged doors that opened outward) at each corner. This one leads toward the bridgeway to the east wing.

  3. The Governor of Kii's sister, known to readers as Nokiba no Ogi (“reed at the eaves”).

  4. He follows the veranda around to where the boy went through; but the rest has been much discussed and resists convincing reconstruction. Some hold that the blinds hang outside shutters that open inward, so that Genji slips between them and a shutter panel (lowered again after the boy's entrance); but this, too, leaves unanswered questions. One also wonders why it was plausible for the boy to create a diversion by demanding admittance through a closed shutter when he could have simply entered through the doors.

  5. Genji must be looking across the aisle, although in the dark (except for the oil lamp) this seems rather far for all he sees.

  6. He sees her hands when she places a Go stone, but she keeps them otherwise in her sleeves.

  7. There was a song about the countless bathing tubs at Dōgo hot spring in Iyo, her father's province.

  8. The door between the veranda and the bridgeway to the east wing. Across the veranda from Genji are the double doors into the aisle of the main house.

  9. Shūishū 727, a winter love poem (although it is now summer), which speaks of sleeplessness and frozen tears.

  10. Ichijō no Sesshō go-shū 132 (Fujiwara no Koremasa): “At night I lie awake and spend the day dreaming, for these eyes of mine enjoy no spring.” The poem plays on konome, “my eyes” and “buds on the trees.”

  11. Before the entrance to the two women's curtained bed (michōdai).

  12. On the floor of the aisle to the north (kitabisashi), the thickness of the lintel beam below the level of the chamber.

  13. The light kouchiki under which Utsusemi had been lying.

  14. Not on a lower floor but in the servants' part of the house.

  15. Tatōgami, paper to be carried, folded, in the front fold of one's robe. Love notes were usually written on thin, colored paper (usuyō).

  16. The cicada larva emerges from the earth, molts, and then climbs the tree as an adult, leaving behind its larval shell.

  17. Fearing that her gown may smell of perspiration, she thinks of Gosenshū 718, by Fujiwara no Koremasa, “written when [the poet] sent for a robe that he had left at a lady's house.” He worried that she might have “found the robe forgotten by the Ise fisherman a little salty.”

  4: YŪGAO

  1. “Fifth Avenue,” between the palace and Rokujō, “Sixth Avenue.”

  2. This use of his personal name suggests his intimate, subordinate relationship with Genji.

  3. The house is an itaya, a modest dwelling roofed with boards rather than cypress bark thatch or tiles. To about chest height it has higaki—walls faced with thin, crisscrossed slats of cypress (hinoki) wood; these are then extended upward by half-panel shutters (hajitomi) that can be swung up and secured open in a horizontal position. Each panel covers the full space (ken) between two structural pillars. The “four or five” panels probably cover the full width of the house. The paleness of the blinds (sudare) shows them to be new.

  4. Presumably through his carriage's side window (monomi) or past the edge of the blind that covered the carriage's rear entrance.

  5. The gate was attached to a horizontal crosspiece and swung open vertically. It was propped open with a pole.

  6. Kokinshū 987: “In all this world, what home is ours forever? Mine shall be the lodging I come upon tonight.”

  7. Kokin rokujō 3874: “What need have I for a palace? Rather to lie with you where the weeds grow thick.”

  8. Kokinshū 1007 (a sedōka): “A word I would have with you, O you from afar who gaze into the distance: that white flower blooming yonder—what is its name?”

  9. Yūgao (more literally, evening face). Genji's attendant observes that this name makes the flower sound like a “person” (hito), meaning someone who “is someone,” that is, socially distinguished. In this context yūgao refers either to Genji himself or to the woman for whom the chapter is named, and “beauty” is therefore meant as an allusion to both.

  10. Genji enters this gate in his carriage, as he did at the Governor of Kii's, because the people are below him in rank.

  11. She has vowed to uphold the Buddhist rules of conduct (the Precepts) and looks forward to going to the paradise of the Buddha Amida
. There were nine possible grades of birth into this paradise. The lowest of these required a more or less long wait before the soul could fully witness Amida's glory.

  12. Probably his mother, who died in his third year, and his grandmother, who died in his sixth.

  13. Kokinshū 901 (also Ise monogatari 154, section 84), by Ariwara no Narihira: Would that in this world there were no final parting, for a son who wishes his mother a thousand years!”

  14. “You are Genji, are you not?” He is the dew, she the flower.

  15. The way this lady, the Rojukō Haven, slips into the narrative as though the reader already knew her is intriguing enough to have prompted reflections on how these early chapters may have been composed.

  16. Probably the gallery leading to the middle gate where Genji will enter his carriage.

  17. The aster (shion) layering presumably achieved the blue-violet of the simple shion color, close to that of the bluebell.

  18. Kami no sagariba, locks cut short above the ears to frame the face.

  19. The Japanese preface to the Kokinshū criticizes the “uncouthness” of Otomo no Kuronushis poetry: “It is, so to speak, like a woodcutter pausing with his load of firewood beneath a blossoming tree.”

  20. The bridge between the buildings seems to consist only of planks, and the word in the original, hai-wataru (“crawl across”), suggests that she crosses it in trepidation.

  21. The god of the Kazuraki Mountains, ordered by a wizard to build a stone bridge from one mountain range to another, refused to work in daylight and so never quite finished.

  22. Tō no Chūjō.

  23. They talk to their mistress as equals, but the children sometimes begin to address her in honorific language.