The Tale of Genji

  22. The former Kokiden Consort, the mother of the present Retired Emperor.

  23. Tō no Chūjō.

  24. Not only had her pregnancy made the journey too taxing for her, but in that state she was polluted and so unfit to approach the shrine.

  25. The color of the fifth rank, one higher than sixth-rank green.

  26. The Riverside Minister (Kawara no Otodo), Minamoto no Tōru (822–95), was the first imperial son to receive the Minamoto (or Genji) surname.

  27. An explanatory rendering of kumoi (“the cloud realm,” “the sky”), which frequently alludes to the lofty realm of the Emperor and the court.

  28. Of Settsu, where the Sumiyoshi Shrine (and Suma) was located.

  29. From the pavilion where he sat to watch the dancing.

  30. “Those days under the god's care” (kamiyo; literally, “the age of the gods”) refers to Suma and Akashi and acknowledges the divine protection Genji enjoyed there.

  31. A channel or canal, well known in poetry, said to have been dug in the reign of Emperor Tenmu (reigned 673–86).

  32. From Gosenshū 960, by Prince Motoyoshi: “Being so unhappy, nothing is left me now but to seek to meet her, at Naniwa, though it means giving my all.” The poem plays on the syllables mi-o-tsu-ku-shi (“giving my all”), which also form the word for “channel marker” (a pole set in an estuary bottom to mark the channel). In poetry, miotsukushi was associated with the Horie Channel.

  33. The poem's key play on miotsukushi is lost in translation. The “channel markers” of the Horie Channel have reminded Genji of “give my all.”

  34. The play on miotsukushi is repeated, and there is another on the syllables of the name Naniwa.

  35. The Isle of Tamino that once stood near the mouth of the Yodo River vanished long ago.

  36. “I weep with longing for you as I did at Akashi.” The syllables mino, in the name Tamino, make the word for “(straw) raincoat”; hence, “Tamino Isle gives me no protection from the dew of my tears.”

  37. At the Sumiyoshi Shrine.

  38. The “island” is Awaji, opposite Akashi; the phrase refers to a complex of poems involving departure from Akashi.

  39. The Rokujō Haven had been at Ise for about six years. The accession of the new Emperor had brought her daughter's term as Ise Priestess to an end.

  40. The Ise Shrine, where taboo had cut her off from any contact with Buddhist teaching or practice.

  41. She seems to be lying in a curtained bed, at the entrance to which stands the curtain through which Genji is peering.

  42. Emperor Reizei.

  43. The lower district of the City (she lives near the intersection of Rokujō [east-west] and Kyōgoku [north-south]) was sparsely inhabited, and Kyōgoku was near the many temples built along the Eastern Hills.

  44. In order to introduce her into the palace as his adopted daughter.

  45. The former Minister of the Left has adopted his own granddaughter in order to lend her the weight of his supreme eminence as Chancellor.

  46. Reizei is eleven, she twelve.

  15: YOMOGIU

  1. While Genji was in exile at Suma.

  2. Who (unlike Hanachirusato or Suetsumuhana) had a secure source of material support.

  3. This description harks back to a passage of a poem by Bai Juyi (Hakushi monjū 0004).

  4. In terms of the sights and sounds of nature.

  5. Antique tales favored by earlier generations. The first two have been lost, and the third is now known as The Old Bamboo Cutter (Taketori monogatari).

  6. Dai, the assigned topics on which a great many poems were written.

  7. She thought it unladylike to betray any active interest in Buddhism, which in her father's time was judged too serious for a woman.

  8. Genji, appointed Commander of the Right between “Under the Cherry Blossoms” and “Heart-to-Heart.”

  9. Kokinshū 948: “Can life have always been this hateful, or has it become like this only for me?”

  10. In Kokinshū 951 the speaker, weighed down by care, resolves to “tread the steep mountain trails of Yoshino.”

  11. The five defilements (gojoku) that according to the Lotus Sutra characterize the world into which a buddha is born.

  12. A Chinese allusion. Two sources available to the author describe a poor dwelling with “three paths” through its garden. One is a poem by the Tang poet Tao Yuanming; the other is a note in Mōgyū, a Japanese primer of Chinese literature.

  13. Suetsumuhana is horrified not merely to have a visitor but to see her aunt (whose low rank does not permit her this liberty) drive straight up to the south side of the house.

  14. Too dirty.

  15. This poem equates Suetsumuhana's gift (the fall of hair) with the bond between Suetsumuhana and Jijū, then with Jijū herself. “Strands in shining coils” loosely renders tamakazura, a word that generally means “vine” but that is here divided into the poetically noble prefix tama (“jewel,” “jewel-like,” “shining”) and kazura, a homophone (or perhaps just a related meaning) of the word for “wig” or “fall.”

  16. Suetsumuhana's nurse, Jijū's mother. Mama is the original word.

  17. Hakusan (“White Mountain,” 8,917 feet), a peak toward the Japan Sea side of Honshu, in the old province of Etchū, now Toyama Prefecture.

  18. It recalled the past vividly, as tachibana blossoms do.

  19. Koremitsu has caught the resemblance between their situation and that evoked in “The Eastern Cottage” (“Azumaya”), a romantic saibara folk song; the sentence alludes to “The Eastern Cottage” twice. His language also recalls Kokinshū 1091 on the same theme: “My good man, tell your lord he must have an umbrella: the dew beneath the trees at Miyagino is wetter than rain.”

  20. Kokinshū 982: “My humble dwelling is below Miwa Mountain: come, if you love me, to the gate where the cedars stand.” The speaker is the Miwa deity, to whom the cedar (sugi) is sacred.

  21. The sentence to this point alludes to Gosenshū 1107, by Ōshikōchi no Mitsune: “Of course the one who planted the pine has aged, and yet how tall, meanwhile, the tree has grown!” The pine (matsu) that has grown tall hints at Genji's recognition of how patiently Suetsumuhana has awaited (matsu) his return.

  22. The poem plays on matsu, “pine tree” and “wait.” It also alludes to Kokinshū 982.

  23. Kokinshū 961, by Ono no Takamura: “I never thought to fall so low, banished to the wilds, as to haul a fisherman's line and take fish from the sea!”

  24. Kokinshū 200: “Here at my old home, encumbered as it is with the grasses of remembering, a pine cricket's singing fills me with sorrow.” The “grasses of remembering” are shinobu, a kind of fern that grows in a thatched roof, and the name of which suggests “remember [you] fondly.”

  25. That he had just built near his Nijō residence.

  26. This paragraph is written as though spoken directly to someone far higher in rank.

  16: SEKIYA

  1. As Deputy Governor (Suke), since the Governor of Hitachi was a Prince who held the post as a sinecure.

  2. Kokinshū 1098: “O how I long to send her word on the wind blowing over the hills and mountains, the mighty mountains of Kai.” Mount Tsukuba, which is in Hitachi rather than Kai, acknowledges that Utsusemi lives in Hitachi. Distrust of the wind means distrust of any possible messenger.

  3. The Ōsaka barrier between the City and Lake Biwa, on a low pass crossed by the road to the eastern provinces. Ishiyamadera was a Buddhist temple near the southern end of Lake Biwa and a favorite destination for pilgrims from the City.

  4. Along the southern shore of Lake Biwa, within the present city of Ōtsu.

  5. The gateway, as it were, to the City, at the western end of the road over Ōsaka pass.

  6. The last day of autumn.

  7. The “spring” of Ōsaka Barrier (seki no shimizu) was known in poetry. Gosenshū 1089, by Semimaru (a legendary figure associated with the barrier) is the source for “coming and going”: “See, O see
! Coming and going they follow their ways, while friends and strangers meet at Ōsaka Barrier.” “Ōsaka” is written with characters that mean “slope of meeting.”

  8. For having failed to accompany Genji to Ishiyama.

  9. This tissue of double meanings begins with a play on ō (or au, “meet,” “come together”) and Ōmiji (the “Ōmi road”). The mention of Ōmi (Province) evokes Ōmi no umi, the “lake of Ōmi” (Lake Biwa); and the lake, which is fresh, has no kai (“shellfish,” but also “desired benefit”).

  10. The “watchman” is the “watchman of the barrier” (sekimori), a stock figure in love poetry, where he stands for anyone who keep lovers apart. Here he refers at once to Utsusemi's husband and to the Ōsaka Barrier, where Genji passed Utsusemi's carriage.

  11. The poem again plays on ō (or au, “meet”) and Ōsaka, and on nageki (“sorrows”), which suggests the idea of many “trees” (ki).

  17: EAWASE

  1. The “hundred paces” are a proverbial measure of a perfume's excellence.

  2. The comb of parting that Suzaku gave Akikonomu when she left for Ise (“The Green Branch”).

  3. Because Suzaku (under his mother's influence) had forced Genji into exile.

  4. Suzaku gave Akikonomu the comb together with the ritual injunction “Set not your face toward the City again.”

  5. Akikonomu.

  6. For Akikonomu's formal entry into the palace.

  7. Does not appear elsewhere. The man is Director of Upkeep for the palace and also a Consultant on the Council of State.

  8. Both stories concern tragically separated lovers and are therefore ill omened for any felicitously matched couple.

  9. Suma and Akashi. The expression uraura (“those shores”) is from Shūishū 477, which names both.

  10. “Plum court,” Akikonomu's residence at the palace. Red and white blossoming plum trees grew beside it.

  11. The Old Bamboo Cutter (Taketori monogatari) is a short, fairy-tale-like work of uncertain date. Toshikage is the hero of the first chapter of the long tenth-century romance known as The Hollow Tree (Utsubo monogatari).

  12. Kaguya-hime (“Princess Brightly Shining,” the heroine) is found by the old bamboo cutter as a tiny baby, inside a joint of bamboo. She has been born onto earth from the palace in the moon, and at the end of the tale she returns to the heavens after refusing many suitors, including the Emperor. The original passage starts with a line filled with familiar puns on yo (“age” and “joint of bamboo”) and fushi (“passage” and, again, “joint of bamboo”).

  13. She never married the Emperor and shed her light over all the land.

  14. An incident in the tale. Kaguya is courted by five suitors, to all of whom she gives such impossible tasks that they fail comically. From Abe she requires the pelt of the “fire rat,” which no fire can burn. At vast expense Abe buys an alleged fire-rat pelt that goes up in smoke when she tests it.

  15. Kuramochi's task was to bring back from Hōrai, a paradise mountain far out in the sea, a branch from the jewel trees that grow there. He had craftsmen make one instead, and they turned up to demand their fee just as he was presenting it to Kaguya-hime.

  16. Kose no Ōmi, a painter active in the first two decades of the tenth century, was the son of the famous Kose no Kanaoka. Ki no Tsurayuki (died 946) was the most influential poet at the early-tenth-century court.

  17. The mountings of the Left are in the red range, those of the Right in the range of green or blue. The same pattern appears in the poetry contest of 960 (see the chapter introduction) as well as in the colors of the two divisions (Left for “Chinese” pieces, Right for “Korean”) of the bugaku dance repertoire.

  18. During his wanderings, which took him as far as Persia, Toshikage gained ultimate mastery of the koto.

  19. Both figures belong roughly to the present of this scene. The painter Tsunenori lived from 946 to 967 and the great calligrapher Ono no Michikaze from 894 to 966.

  20. Tales of Ise (Ise monogatari) is a tenth-century classic, the influence of which is visible in Genji itself. Jōsanmi has been lost.

  21. “Must those who champion the modern, and who know nothing of the excellence of Tales of Ise [Ise is by the sea], now consign the work to oblivion?” Narihira (below) is the central figure of the work.

  22. “Jōsanmi is far superior in theme to Tales of Ise.” The hero of Jōsanmi is apparently summoned to high station (“high above the clouds”) by the Emperor, making Narihira's adventures seem contemptible in comparison.

  23. Apparently the heroine of Jōsanmi.

  24. On Narihira. Fujitsubo's poem plays on words associated with love and with the sea, and its defense of the exiled Narihira implies a defense of the recently exiled Genji.

  25. Akikonomu's.

  26. Kamie, paintings to go into handscrolls, as opposed to paintings for screens or sliding partitions. “Make up” refers to mounting as well as to painting the work.

  27. Kose no Kinmochi, a contemporary of Tsunenori.

  28. Sakon no Chūjō. He does not appear again.

  29. The “sacred rope” (shimenawa) alludes first to Akikonomu's priestly duty at the Ise Shrine, which removed her from him, and second to the holy precincts of the imperial palace, where she is again inaccessible.

  30. “To the days when I served the gods at Ise.”

  31. His mother, the Kokiden Consort of the early chapters, was the daughter of the Minister of the Right and the elder sister of the present Kokiden Consort's mother.

  32. Oborozukiyo, one of the Kokiden Consort's younger sisters.

  33. The building immediately west of the Seiryōden, across a narrow strip of garden.

  34. The front women are dressed in red tones, the rear ones tones more in the range of green. “Left” (red, Akikonomu) is senior to “Right” (green, Kokiden).

  35. Genji's younger brother, traditionally known as Prince Hotaru because of his role in the “Fireflies” chapter.

  36. The asagarei adjoined the gentlewomen's sitting room to the north. There were sliding panels between the two rooms.

  37. Prince Hotaru.

  38. At this time of the lunar month the moon rises just before dawn.

  39. Probably with their batons (shaku) or with their folded fans.

  40. Having received one already for serving as judge.

  18: MATSUKAZE

  1. Where Hanachirusato lives. The fact that she is close to the household office and retainers suggests that she is in charge of Genji's east pavilion.

  2. An early commentary speculatively identifies this person as Kaneakira (914–87), a son of Emperor Daigo.

  3. A stretch of the Katsura River in northwestern Kyoto, near Arashiyama.

  4. Legal ownership of the property presumably passed on to Prince Nakatsukasa's descendants, including the Akashi Nun, but since the place has remained unclaimed for so long, the caretaker feels that the right to dispose of it belongs to him.

  5. A still-extant temple in the Saga district of western Kyoto. Originally a villa belonging to Emperor Saga, it became a temple in 876 and remained under imperial patronage.

  6. The Novice speaks of her far more politely than he does of his wife or daughter.

  7. The three lower realms of transmigration: beasts, hungry ghosts, and hell.

  8. Roughly 8:00 A.M.

  9. Kokinshū 409: “My heart is with the boat that draws away, dim through the mists off Akashi, and disappears behind the island.”

  10. “That distant shore” is the shore of paradise, and perhaps Akashi, where she had led a life of religious devotion. The poem plays on ama (“nun” and “woman [or man] of the sea”).

  11. Apart from being simply a boat, “buoyant wood” (ukiki) also alludes to a Chinese legend about a man who rode a piece of wood up a great river to its source in the fabulous Kunlun Mountains.

  12. The river is wide and shallow at this point, and her house, like the one at Akashi, is surrounded by pines.

  13. When her great-grandf
ather had lived there.

  14. Not only the wind itself (as at Akashi) but her daughter's music. Her “changed guise” is that of a nun.

  15. Katsura was along the Ōi River. Genji seems to be building a villa there, although this is the tale's first allusion to it.

  16. Sagano, the general location also of the Shrine on the Moor (“The Green Branch”). Genji's temple is presumably at the edge of the moor, against the hills that bound it.

  17. A Chinese story tells how a woodcutter deep in the mountains came upon two immortals playing Go. His ax handle rotted away while he watched, and he found on returning home that seven generations had gone by.

  18. To leave Akashi.

  19. Genji has taken off his dress cloak. The gown (uchiki) is the next layer down.

  20. That is, of poor karma due to offenses committed in past lives.

  21. A common literary figure for a child. The evergreen pine promises everlasting vigor.

  22. “That my own undistinguished standing should compromise her future.”

  23. Because the stream was here in the Prince's time and knew him well, yet Genji and the Nun are ignoring it.

  24. Because it might be said of her that her mother was a country woman of low rank.

  25. Together with Genji, when Genji went into exile at Suma.

  26. “You seem to find me as inaccessible at Ōi as I ever was at Akashi, and I was just thinking that there is no one left who cares about me.” (1) “The mountains, fold on fold,” is from Gosenshū 1173: “The longer one lives where the mountains, fold on fold, are crowned by white clouds, the more willingly one stays.” (“Ōi is as remote as Akashi, and we are so comfortable here, no wonder you didn't write!”) (2) “Gone behind the isle” is from Kokinshū 409: “How this heart of mine goes to the boat that fades into the morning mists and is gone behind the isle.” (3) “Long ago even the pine” is from Kokinshū 909: “Whom have I to call a friend, when long ago even the pine of Takasago did not know me?”