The Tale of Genji
Murasaki Shikibu
26. The absence of the Ministers of Left and Right was normal on such an occasion.
27. Ten men to perform the Azuma Asobi dances at Sumiyoshi.
28. The middle of the tenth lunar month is already early winter, well into the season of red leaves. (a) The vines along the shrine fence at Sumiyoshi recall Kokinshū 262, by Ki no Tsurayuki: “The kudzu vines on the sacred fence of the god, so swift and mighty, could not withstand autumn and have turned.” (b) The “reddened leaves beneath the pines” contrast with the pines’ lofty constancy of color and suggest a love poem, Shūshū 844: “My trust is in the lofty green of the pine, which knows nothing of the leaves turning color below.” (c) “Announced not only in sound” alludes to Kokinshū 251, by Ki no Yoshimochi: “On the mountain where leaves never turn, perhaps it is blowing wind that announces autumn.”
29. Azuma Asobi, a set of dances based on folk songs from Azuma (“the East”), the region now called the Kanto and centered on Tokyo.
30. Yamaai, a wild indigo plant that yields a green dye.
31. “Motomego,” one of the Eastern Dances, was danced with the outer robe off one shoulder. After it, the senior nobles join the regular dancers to bring the sequence of dances to an end.
32. Tō nō Chūjō.
33. Akashi's. He has gone back into his own carriage.
34. A wreathlike headdress of mulberry-bark fiber threads, worn by the officiant at a shrine ritual.
35. Fukuro no sōshi 140, where the poem is attributed to Sugawara no Fumitoki: “The god appears to have accepted our offerings: Mount Hira, too, wears a sacred wreath.” Mount Hira rises above the western shore of Lake Biwa, north of Mount Hiei.
36. One of Murasaki's women.
37. Matsu no chitose, one of the stock congratulatory phrases with which such poems bristle.
38. These meals would have been brought by men of the fourth rank or below, depending on the standing of the recipients.
39. Suzaku.
40. Every spring and autumn the Emperor formally visited his mother and the Retired Emperor(s).
41. Koremitsu's daughter. This child has not been mentioned before. She appears later as Yūgiri's Sixth Daughter (Roku no Kimi).
42. Higekuro and Tamakazura.
43. Presumably they are to learn deportment as privy pages.
44. Suzaku, her first teacher, hopes that Genji has continued her lessons, but he rather doubts it.
45. The repertoire of the kin seems to have been divided into major, medium, and minor pieces (taikyoku, chūkyoku, shōkyoku), although it is no longer clear what these were.
46. A son (the Heir Apparent) and a daughter, the First Princess.
47. Being pregnant, she might conceivably have polluted the rites in honor of the kami (gods) that were done in the palace in the eleventh month.
48. Where Onna San no Miya lives.
49. Genji is in the middle of the long, narrow aisle room. On either side of him are two standing curtains, one behind the other; and behind each standing curtain is one of the participants in the concert.
50. Yūgiri.
51. The cushions are to put the instruments on.
52. The meaning of this sentence is unclear.
53. Kokinshū 13, by Ki no Tomonori: “The scent of blossoms rides upon the breeze and sends an invitation for the warbler to come.”
54. Yūgiri is on the veranda.
55. One of the six gagaku modes. The “tonic string” (hachi no o) is the one tuned to the kyū, or ground note of the mode; in this mode it is the instrument's second string.
56. The original praises the touch both of her left hand (tsumaoto) and of her right (kakikaeshitaru ne).
57. He marks the beat with his fan and sings the names of the notes (solfège).
58. Wisteria blossoms from late spring into early summer, at a time when no other poetically sanctioned flower is in bloom.
59. In her seventh month of pregnancy.
60. By wearing a train, however small, she acknowledges her humble standing and adopts the posture of a gentlewoman in a great lady's service.
61. She modestly avoids sitting squarely on so fine a cushion.
62. The original includes a phrase from Kokinshū 139: “The perfume of orange blossoms awaiting the fifth month recalls the sleeves of someone long ago.”
63. Fushimachi no tsuki, the moon of the nineteenth night, which rises very late.
64. A canonical commentary on the Chinese Book of Songs observes, “A woman feels the yang spirit of spring and longs for a man; a man feels the yin spirit of autumn and longs for a woman.”
65. Richi, a Japanese mode, was generally associated with autumn. The ryo mode, from China, was associated with spring. Ryo predominates in the saibara repertoire.
66. Kashiwagi and Hotaru.
67. These powers, accorded to poetry (uta, “song”) in the Japanese preface to the Kokinshū, were already generally attributed to poetry and music in China.
68. In the tenth-century Tale of the Hollow Tree, Toshikage went all the way to Persia in order to learn the secrets of the kin.
69. Like Toshikage in The Tale of the Hollow Tree. “Cathay” (morokoshi) includes here not only China but Central Asia and even the Near East.
70. A shift from ryo to richi, a common transition in gagaku.
71. The original describes the virtues of Onna San no Miya's playing in more technical detail, but the meaning of the terms used is poorly understood.
72. Yūgiri's son is probably younger than Higekuro's and so gets a lesser gift.
73. Presumably Murasaki.
74. A six-holed flute a little shorter and thinner than the Japanese yokobue.
75. Ōmiya, Kumoi no Kari's paternal grandmother.
76. Fujitsubo died in her thirty-seventh year, which was thought to be especially dangerous for a woman.
77. Murasaki's great-uncle.
78. The last clause of this sentence is unsatisfactory in the original and may be corrupt.
79. To become a nun.
80. “Dark recesses” (kuma) refers to Murasaki's jealous streak.
81. Wakamiya, presumably the girl who has been under Murasaki's care.
82. He now holds this office in parallel with that of Intendant of the Right Gate Watch.
83. Kokinshū 878: “My heart is desolate at Sarashina when I see the moon shining down on Mount Obasute.”
84. Jijū means “Adviser” (presumably the woman's husband was one), and Kojijū means “Little Jijū.”
85. Kashiwagi has been promoted. As a Counselor he now has the third rank, junior grade, and should wear a light purple formal cloak.
86. His dress and carriage are far below his normal standard.
87. Does not figure otherwise in the tale.
88. She has brought Kashiwagi closer than he asked. She may be more anxious to keep him out of sight than to protect her mistress. The curtained bed being fairly spacious, there is probably a standing curtain between him and Onna San no Miya.
89. The southwest corner of the main house, next to the double doors leading onto the bridgeway.
90. His wife, Princess Ochiba.
91. “I wish I had not taken Onna San no Miya, when Genji never allowed me to do so.” The poem plays on aoi (the plant “heart-to-heart” and “day of meeting”) as well as on tsumi (“pluck” and “sin“).
92. “When both are Suzaku's daughters, so that both should be equally desirable, why did I get the inferior one?” The first word of the poem, morokazura (“twinned green”), refers to the combination of aoi and katsura leaves in the headdress for the Festival. Because of this poem Kashiwagi's wife, the Second Princess, is known to readers as Ochiba (“fallen leaf”).
93. To perform prayer rites for the deceased.
94. The Buddhist deity Fudō, whose spiritual power was vital to healing rites, was believed to have promised to add half a year to the devotee's natural life.
95. They look like Fudō, who is visualized surrounded by smoke and flames.
br /> 96. When Rokujō's living spirit possessed Aoi.
97. The sin of neglecting the Buddhist faith, since at Ise all things Buddhist were shunned.
98. He shut the girl (the medium) into another room. There is no distinction between the spirit and the possessed medium.
99. From the Kamo Shrine, after the Festival.
100. Kokinshū 70: “Were they, when one called ‘Stay!’ to linger on and never fall, why would one ever prefer cherry blossoms?”
101. Ise monogatari 145 (section 82): “It is because cherry blossoms fall that they are so precious; what in this sad world ever lasts long?”
102. He allows her to receive (vow formally to uphold) only the Five Precepts administered to laymen: to abstain from killing, stealing, wanton conduct, slander, and wine.
103. “Let us promise each other to be reborn on the same lotus throne in paradise.”
104. Kokin rokujō 371: “The path is shadowy in the evening dusk: await the moon, love, to go, and I shall have you that much longer!” Onna San no Miya picks up the allusion in her answer.
105. Kokin rokujō 1980: “How vast must the mountains of love be, that all those who enter them still lose their way!”
106. Tamakazura.
107. Oborozukiyo.
108. Become a nun.
109. The familiar play on ama, present in Genji's poem as well, is prominent here. The poem's import is not especially clear, except for Oborozukiyo's appeal to a distant past that both share.
110. Shikimi (Illicium religiosum), a broadleaf evergreen normally offered on a Buddhist altar in Japan. It is strongly associated with Buddhist practice.
111. Asagao.
112. Yūgiri's grandmother, Ōmiya, had died in this month.
113. Because one who has renounced the world should not be so concerned about it.
114. The Kiritsubo Emperor, the father of Genji and Suzaku, died in the eleventh month.
115. The blinds between the aisle room and the veranda. Kashiwagi is in the aisle, Genji in the chamber.
116. “Senyūka,” a gagaku piece said to have no accompanying dance. It alludes by its title to Genji's status as an Honorary Retired Emperor, because a Retired Emperor was imagined as a Taoist Immortal and inhabited a Sentō Gosho (“Palace of the Cave of the Immortal”). Immortals (sennin) were supposed to sport among the mists of mountain peaks and to need no other food.
117. To rebirth in Amida's paradise.
118. The Sanskrit name (transliterated in the original as Makabirusana) of the supreme deity of the Esoteric Buddhist (Shingon) pantheon, whose name appears more often in Japan in its translated form of Dainichi (Great Sun). Ninnaji, the historical temple traditionally associated with Suzaku's in the tale, is dedicated to this deity. In the original this sentence is incomplete.
36: KASHIWAGI
1. The sin of preceding one's parents in death.
2. To take religious vows.
3. Kokin rokujō 2096: “How little this world answers my desires, when no one in it is a thousand-year pine!”
4. Kokin rokujō 3984: “The summer fly comes in the end to grief because it burns with a single flame.” The “summer fly” (natsumushi) is the firefly, whose light in poetry is the flame of love.
5. Kokin rokujō 3241: “With all the tears that fall upon the bed of one who sleeps alone, even a pillow of stone might well float away.”
6. A spell transliterated from Sanskrit via Chinese and unintelligible as language.
7. Onna San no Miya is not an Empress or a Consort.
8. The cutting of the umbilical cord, the ritual bathing, the first suckling, and so on.
9. Tsuigasane, a tray (oshiki) combined with a simple rectangular stand.
10. Takatsuki, a tall stand for food or drink, resting on a single foot.
11. The sin of dying in consequence of childbirth.
12. Down from the raised platform of the bed.
13. Nine years ago, in “New Wisteria Leaves.”
14. To speak through a medium. Genji seems to assume it is Rokujō, though she has never spoken like this before.
15. Murasaki.
16. A younger brother, possibly Kōbai.
17. It was proper for a gentleman to wear his hat (eboshi) even indoors.
18. His wife, the Second Princess. The location of her residence (“First Avenue”) has not been mentioned before.
19. Kumoi no Kari, Kashiwagi's sister.
20. Tamakazura.
21. Shūishū 665: “I am sick from the absence of my beloved; no medicine but heart-to-heart [aoi] will heal me.”
22. For having been driven by need to marry below her, only to have her husband leave her a widow.
23. Onna San no Miya, now a nun.
24. Glutinous rice, to be fed to the baby with chopsticks. Onna San no Miya's women are unsure how to arrange the ceremony now that she is a nun.
25. The hair at her forehead has been cut, and the ends are bothering her, but at the back her hair is still much longer than the normal “nun's cut” (ama sogi).
26. Genji's daughter's.
27. Kaoru's fiftieth day is in principle a happy occasion at which tears are taboo (kotoimi).
28. A collapsed line from a poem by Bai Juyi (Hakushi monjū 2821), composed when the poet had his first son at the age of fifty-eight. The full line mentions joys as well as sorrows.
29. Another phrase from Bai Juyi's poem.
30. The “pine” is Kaoru. Genji's poem varies on Kokinshū 907.
31. The second month (it is now the third) was particularly busy, with events such as the Kasuga Shrine festival, the Ōharanō Shrine festival, and others.
32. If Yūgiri had visited Ochiba and her mother during the second month, he would have had to remain standing and refrain from actually entering the house, because service to the gods prohibited any contact with the pollution of death.
33. Kokinshū 832, by Kamutsuke no Mineo, lamenting the death of Fujiwara no Mototsune: “O cherry trees upon Fukakusa Moor, if you are kind, I beg you, just this year, blossom in gray!” The allusion may be unlucky because of the gray robes now worn by Onna San no Miya.
34. Kokinshū 97: “The blossoms' glory returns every spring, yet in this life I shall see them no more.”
35. A compliment to Ochiba in her bereavement: like the cherry tree that always blossoms in season, she retains her beauty despite having lost her husband (the “great branch”).
36. “I weep, not knowing what my daughter's fate will be.”
37. Not even a truly filial son, mourning his father, would have so neglected his beard. The thought is Chinese.
38. “Wet with tears shed for my son, I wear this spring the mourning gray that, properly, he was to wear for me.” Ko (“tree” or “trees”) in the expression ko no shita no shizuku (“drops that rain from the trees”) is homophonous with “child”; and the “garment of mist” (kasumi no koromo, an image associated with spring) refers here as in the poems that follow to the gray of mourning. “Upside down” (sakasama) refers to the reversal of the natural order, according to which a father dies before his son.
39. Kokinshū 853, by Miharu no Arisuke: “The clump of pampas grass that you once planted is now a wilderness filled with insect cries.”
40. A humble sort of blind, suitable for a household in mourning.
41. “I want to know you [Ochiba] better, and Kashiwagi gave me leave to do so.” Ochiba is a silent (and invisible) presence in this scene.
42. One of the gentlewomen.
43. An early commentary attributes this line (originally in Chinese) to Ki no Arimasa, in a now lost lament on the death of Fujiwara no Yasutada.
44. Yasutada's death in 937.
37: YOKOBUE
1. Kashiwagi, who was promoted on his deathbed. This is his proper title, but people continued to remember him as the Intendant of the Gate Watch, and he will remain “the Intendant” below.
2. For further memorial services. The gold is probably gold dust. r />
3. Princess Ochiba, Kashiwagi's widow.
4. Literally, “seek the same tokoro as I.” In the sense of “place,” tokoro refers to paradise, but the same syllables also mean “taro root.”
5. Raishi, a tall stand shaped rather like a takatsuki (“footed stand”) but with a deep lip, lacquered black outside and red within, customarily used for such things as fruit and nuts. These hold Suzaku's gifts.
6. The sky blue flowers of tsuyukusa (“dayflower,” “spiderwort”), a common weed, yield a blue dye. A very young child's head was shaven.
7. The Akashi Empress's eldest daughter.
8. Kokinshū 97: “The blossoms' glory returns every spring, yet in this life I shall see them no more.”
9. This poem (Genji presumably says it only to himself) plays on words associated with bamboo. The most important is fushi (“that passage of bitterness”); fushi also means a “joint” of bamboo.
10. Kokinshū 853, by Miharu no Arisuke: “The clump of pampas grass that you once planted is now a wilderness filled with insect cries.”
11.Literally, “ever since the koto string broke.” Kagerō nikki 93 (also Goshūishū 894), by Michitsuna no Haha: “The departed does not come back again, and the time when the koto string broke has returned once more.”
12. Genji monogatari kochūshakusho in'yō waka 275: “If only there were an end in this world to longing, one would live carefree year after year.”
27. Ten men to perform the Azuma Asobi dances at Sumiyoshi.
28. The middle of the tenth lunar month is already early winter, well into the season of red leaves. (a) The vines along the shrine fence at Sumiyoshi recall Kokinshū 262, by Ki no Tsurayuki: “The kudzu vines on the sacred fence of the god, so swift and mighty, could not withstand autumn and have turned.” (b) The “reddened leaves beneath the pines” contrast with the pines’ lofty constancy of color and suggest a love poem, Shūshū 844: “My trust is in the lofty green of the pine, which knows nothing of the leaves turning color below.” (c) “Announced not only in sound” alludes to Kokinshū 251, by Ki no Yoshimochi: “On the mountain where leaves never turn, perhaps it is blowing wind that announces autumn.”
29. Azuma Asobi, a set of dances based on folk songs from Azuma (“the East”), the region now called the Kanto and centered on Tokyo.
30. Yamaai, a wild indigo plant that yields a green dye.
31. “Motomego,” one of the Eastern Dances, was danced with the outer robe off one shoulder. After it, the senior nobles join the regular dancers to bring the sequence of dances to an end.
32. Tō nō Chūjō.
33. Akashi's. He has gone back into his own carriage.
34. A wreathlike headdress of mulberry-bark fiber threads, worn by the officiant at a shrine ritual.
35. Fukuro no sōshi 140, where the poem is attributed to Sugawara no Fumitoki: “The god appears to have accepted our offerings: Mount Hira, too, wears a sacred wreath.” Mount Hira rises above the western shore of Lake Biwa, north of Mount Hiei.
36. One of Murasaki's women.
37. Matsu no chitose, one of the stock congratulatory phrases with which such poems bristle.
38. These meals would have been brought by men of the fourth rank or below, depending on the standing of the recipients.
39. Suzaku.
40. Every spring and autumn the Emperor formally visited his mother and the Retired Emperor(s).
41. Koremitsu's daughter. This child has not been mentioned before. She appears later as Yūgiri's Sixth Daughter (Roku no Kimi).
42. Higekuro and Tamakazura.
43. Presumably they are to learn deportment as privy pages.
44. Suzaku, her first teacher, hopes that Genji has continued her lessons, but he rather doubts it.
45. The repertoire of the kin seems to have been divided into major, medium, and minor pieces (taikyoku, chūkyoku, shōkyoku), although it is no longer clear what these were.
46. A son (the Heir Apparent) and a daughter, the First Princess.
47. Being pregnant, she might conceivably have polluted the rites in honor of the kami (gods) that were done in the palace in the eleventh month.
48. Where Onna San no Miya lives.
49. Genji is in the middle of the long, narrow aisle room. On either side of him are two standing curtains, one behind the other; and behind each standing curtain is one of the participants in the concert.
50. Yūgiri.
51. The cushions are to put the instruments on.
52. The meaning of this sentence is unclear.
53. Kokinshū 13, by Ki no Tomonori: “The scent of blossoms rides upon the breeze and sends an invitation for the warbler to come.”
54. Yūgiri is on the veranda.
55. One of the six gagaku modes. The “tonic string” (hachi no o) is the one tuned to the kyū, or ground note of the mode; in this mode it is the instrument's second string.
56. The original praises the touch both of her left hand (tsumaoto) and of her right (kakikaeshitaru ne).
57. He marks the beat with his fan and sings the names of the notes (solfège).
58. Wisteria blossoms from late spring into early summer, at a time when no other poetically sanctioned flower is in bloom.
59. In her seventh month of pregnancy.
60. By wearing a train, however small, she acknowledges her humble standing and adopts the posture of a gentlewoman in a great lady's service.
61. She modestly avoids sitting squarely on so fine a cushion.
62. The original includes a phrase from Kokinshū 139: “The perfume of orange blossoms awaiting the fifth month recalls the sleeves of someone long ago.”
63. Fushimachi no tsuki, the moon of the nineteenth night, which rises very late.
64. A canonical commentary on the Chinese Book of Songs observes, “A woman feels the yang spirit of spring and longs for a man; a man feels the yin spirit of autumn and longs for a woman.”
65. Richi, a Japanese mode, was generally associated with autumn. The ryo mode, from China, was associated with spring. Ryo predominates in the saibara repertoire.
66. Kashiwagi and Hotaru.
67. These powers, accorded to poetry (uta, “song”) in the Japanese preface to the Kokinshū, were already generally attributed to poetry and music in China.
68. In the tenth-century Tale of the Hollow Tree, Toshikage went all the way to Persia in order to learn the secrets of the kin.
69. Like Toshikage in The Tale of the Hollow Tree. “Cathay” (morokoshi) includes here not only China but Central Asia and even the Near East.
70. A shift from ryo to richi, a common transition in gagaku.
71. The original describes the virtues of Onna San no Miya's playing in more technical detail, but the meaning of the terms used is poorly understood.
72. Yūgiri's son is probably younger than Higekuro's and so gets a lesser gift.
73. Presumably Murasaki.
74. A six-holed flute a little shorter and thinner than the Japanese yokobue.
75. Ōmiya, Kumoi no Kari's paternal grandmother.
76. Fujitsubo died in her thirty-seventh year, which was thought to be especially dangerous for a woman.
77. Murasaki's great-uncle.
78. The last clause of this sentence is unsatisfactory in the original and may be corrupt.
79. To become a nun.
80. “Dark recesses” (kuma) refers to Murasaki's jealous streak.
81. Wakamiya, presumably the girl who has been under Murasaki's care.
82. He now holds this office in parallel with that of Intendant of the Right Gate Watch.
83. Kokinshū 878: “My heart is desolate at Sarashina when I see the moon shining down on Mount Obasute.”
84. Jijū means “Adviser” (presumably the woman's husband was one), and Kojijū means “Little Jijū.”
85. Kashiwagi has been promoted. As a Counselor he now has the third rank, junior grade, and should wear a light purple formal cloak.
86. His dress and carriage are far below his normal standard.
87. Does not figure otherwise in the tale.
88. She has brought Kashiwagi closer than he asked. She may be more anxious to keep him out of sight than to protect her mistress. The curtained bed being fairly spacious, there is probably a standing curtain between him and Onna San no Miya.
89. The southwest corner of the main house, next to the double doors leading onto the bridgeway.
90. His wife, Princess Ochiba.
91. “I wish I had not taken Onna San no Miya, when Genji never allowed me to do so.” The poem plays on aoi (the plant “heart-to-heart” and “day of meeting”) as well as on tsumi (“pluck” and “sin“).
92. “When both are Suzaku's daughters, so that both should be equally desirable, why did I get the inferior one?” The first word of the poem, morokazura (“twinned green”), refers to the combination of aoi and katsura leaves in the headdress for the Festival. Because of this poem Kashiwagi's wife, the Second Princess, is known to readers as Ochiba (“fallen leaf”).
93. To perform prayer rites for the deceased.
94. The Buddhist deity Fudō, whose spiritual power was vital to healing rites, was believed to have promised to add half a year to the devotee's natural life.
95. They look like Fudō, who is visualized surrounded by smoke and flames.
br /> 96. When Rokujō's living spirit possessed Aoi.
97. The sin of neglecting the Buddhist faith, since at Ise all things Buddhist were shunned.
98. He shut the girl (the medium) into another room. There is no distinction between the spirit and the possessed medium.
99. From the Kamo Shrine, after the Festival.
100. Kokinshū 70: “Were they, when one called ‘Stay!’ to linger on and never fall, why would one ever prefer cherry blossoms?”
101. Ise monogatari 145 (section 82): “It is because cherry blossoms fall that they are so precious; what in this sad world ever lasts long?”
102. He allows her to receive (vow formally to uphold) only the Five Precepts administered to laymen: to abstain from killing, stealing, wanton conduct, slander, and wine.
103. “Let us promise each other to be reborn on the same lotus throne in paradise.”
104. Kokin rokujō 371: “The path is shadowy in the evening dusk: await the moon, love, to go, and I shall have you that much longer!” Onna San no Miya picks up the allusion in her answer.
105. Kokin rokujō 1980: “How vast must the mountains of love be, that all those who enter them still lose their way!”
106. Tamakazura.
107. Oborozukiyo.
108. Become a nun.
109. The familiar play on ama, present in Genji's poem as well, is prominent here. The poem's import is not especially clear, except for Oborozukiyo's appeal to a distant past that both share.
110. Shikimi (Illicium religiosum), a broadleaf evergreen normally offered on a Buddhist altar in Japan. It is strongly associated with Buddhist practice.
111. Asagao.
112. Yūgiri's grandmother, Ōmiya, had died in this month.
113. Because one who has renounced the world should not be so concerned about it.
114. The Kiritsubo Emperor, the father of Genji and Suzaku, died in the eleventh month.
115. The blinds between the aisle room and the veranda. Kashiwagi is in the aisle, Genji in the chamber.
116. “Senyūka,” a gagaku piece said to have no accompanying dance. It alludes by its title to Genji's status as an Honorary Retired Emperor, because a Retired Emperor was imagined as a Taoist Immortal and inhabited a Sentō Gosho (“Palace of the Cave of the Immortal”). Immortals (sennin) were supposed to sport among the mists of mountain peaks and to need no other food.
117. To rebirth in Amida's paradise.
118. The Sanskrit name (transliterated in the original as Makabirusana) of the supreme deity of the Esoteric Buddhist (Shingon) pantheon, whose name appears more often in Japan in its translated form of Dainichi (Great Sun). Ninnaji, the historical temple traditionally associated with Suzaku's in the tale, is dedicated to this deity. In the original this sentence is incomplete.
36: KASHIWAGI
1. The sin of preceding one's parents in death.
2. To take religious vows.
3. Kokin rokujō 2096: “How little this world answers my desires, when no one in it is a thousand-year pine!”
4. Kokin rokujō 3984: “The summer fly comes in the end to grief because it burns with a single flame.” The “summer fly” (natsumushi) is the firefly, whose light in poetry is the flame of love.
5. Kokin rokujō 3241: “With all the tears that fall upon the bed of one who sleeps alone, even a pillow of stone might well float away.”
6. A spell transliterated from Sanskrit via Chinese and unintelligible as language.
7. Onna San no Miya is not an Empress or a Consort.
8. The cutting of the umbilical cord, the ritual bathing, the first suckling, and so on.
9. Tsuigasane, a tray (oshiki) combined with a simple rectangular stand.
10. Takatsuki, a tall stand for food or drink, resting on a single foot.
11. The sin of dying in consequence of childbirth.
12. Down from the raised platform of the bed.
13. Nine years ago, in “New Wisteria Leaves.”
14. To speak through a medium. Genji seems to assume it is Rokujō, though she has never spoken like this before.
15. Murasaki.
16. A younger brother, possibly Kōbai.
17. It was proper for a gentleman to wear his hat (eboshi) even indoors.
18. His wife, the Second Princess. The location of her residence (“First Avenue”) has not been mentioned before.
19. Kumoi no Kari, Kashiwagi's sister.
20. Tamakazura.
21. Shūishū 665: “I am sick from the absence of my beloved; no medicine but heart-to-heart [aoi] will heal me.”
22. For having been driven by need to marry below her, only to have her husband leave her a widow.
23. Onna San no Miya, now a nun.
24. Glutinous rice, to be fed to the baby with chopsticks. Onna San no Miya's women are unsure how to arrange the ceremony now that she is a nun.
25. The hair at her forehead has been cut, and the ends are bothering her, but at the back her hair is still much longer than the normal “nun's cut” (ama sogi).
26. Genji's daughter's.
27. Kaoru's fiftieth day is in principle a happy occasion at which tears are taboo (kotoimi).
28. A collapsed line from a poem by Bai Juyi (Hakushi monjū 2821), composed when the poet had his first son at the age of fifty-eight. The full line mentions joys as well as sorrows.
29. Another phrase from Bai Juyi's poem.
30. The “pine” is Kaoru. Genji's poem varies on Kokinshū 907.
31. The second month (it is now the third) was particularly busy, with events such as the Kasuga Shrine festival, the Ōharanō Shrine festival, and others.
32. If Yūgiri had visited Ochiba and her mother during the second month, he would have had to remain standing and refrain from actually entering the house, because service to the gods prohibited any contact with the pollution of death.
33. Kokinshū 832, by Kamutsuke no Mineo, lamenting the death of Fujiwara no Mototsune: “O cherry trees upon Fukakusa Moor, if you are kind, I beg you, just this year, blossom in gray!” The allusion may be unlucky because of the gray robes now worn by Onna San no Miya.
34. Kokinshū 97: “The blossoms' glory returns every spring, yet in this life I shall see them no more.”
35. A compliment to Ochiba in her bereavement: like the cherry tree that always blossoms in season, she retains her beauty despite having lost her husband (the “great branch”).
36. “I weep, not knowing what my daughter's fate will be.”
37. Not even a truly filial son, mourning his father, would have so neglected his beard. The thought is Chinese.
38. “Wet with tears shed for my son, I wear this spring the mourning gray that, properly, he was to wear for me.” Ko (“tree” or “trees”) in the expression ko no shita no shizuku (“drops that rain from the trees”) is homophonous with “child”; and the “garment of mist” (kasumi no koromo, an image associated with spring) refers here as in the poems that follow to the gray of mourning. “Upside down” (sakasama) refers to the reversal of the natural order, according to which a father dies before his son.
39. Kokinshū 853, by Miharu no Arisuke: “The clump of pampas grass that you once planted is now a wilderness filled with insect cries.”
40. A humble sort of blind, suitable for a household in mourning.
41. “I want to know you [Ochiba] better, and Kashiwagi gave me leave to do so.” Ochiba is a silent (and invisible) presence in this scene.
42. One of the gentlewomen.
43. An early commentary attributes this line (originally in Chinese) to Ki no Arimasa, in a now lost lament on the death of Fujiwara no Yasutada.
44. Yasutada's death in 937.
37: YOKOBUE
1. Kashiwagi, who was promoted on his deathbed. This is his proper title, but people continued to remember him as the Intendant of the Gate Watch, and he will remain “the Intendant” below.
2. For further memorial services. The gold is probably gold dust. r />
3. Princess Ochiba, Kashiwagi's widow.
4. Literally, “seek the same tokoro as I.” In the sense of “place,” tokoro refers to paradise, but the same syllables also mean “taro root.”
5. Raishi, a tall stand shaped rather like a takatsuki (“footed stand”) but with a deep lip, lacquered black outside and red within, customarily used for such things as fruit and nuts. These hold Suzaku's gifts.
6. The sky blue flowers of tsuyukusa (“dayflower,” “spiderwort”), a common weed, yield a blue dye. A very young child's head was shaven.
7. The Akashi Empress's eldest daughter.
8. Kokinshū 97: “The blossoms' glory returns every spring, yet in this life I shall see them no more.”
9. This poem (Genji presumably says it only to himself) plays on words associated with bamboo. The most important is fushi (“that passage of bitterness”); fushi also means a “joint” of bamboo.
10. Kokinshū 853, by Miharu no Arisuke: “The clump of pampas grass that you once planted is now a wilderness filled with insect cries.”
11.Literally, “ever since the koto string broke.” Kagerō nikki 93 (also Goshūishū 894), by Michitsuna no Haha: “The departed does not come back again, and the time when the koto string broke has returned once more.”
12. Genji monogatari kochūshakusho in'yō waka 275: “If only there were an end in this world to longing, one would live carefree year after year.”
