The Tale of Genji

  55. Who once a year at Tanabata (the seventh night of the seventh month) crosses the River of Heaven (the Milky Way) to spend one night with the Weaver Maid.

  56. The opposite bank from the sisters' house.

  57. Literally, “Only His Highness felt like the Lake of Ōmi” (Lake Biwa, in Ōmi Province). The name Ōmi plays on au mi, “one who meets (his love).” Niou feels like that because despite the good fortune the name suggests, the lake water is fresh and so has no mirume (a kind of seaweed) in it; and mirume means “lovers' meeting.”

  58. By the Doctors.

  59. The senior officer of the Empress's household.

  60. The dayflower (tsukikusa, in modern Japanese tsuyukusa) yields a blue dye that fades quickly.

  61. Abandoned by my husband, like my sister.

  62. Sin (tsumi) because this sort of misery, however little deserved, creates bad karma.

  63. “Let me have her as one of my gentlewomen; then you can see her whenever you want without making trouble.”

  64. His elder sister.

  65. Onna e, colored paintings with a generally romantic, narrative content.

  66. Ise monogatari, a tenth-century set of short tales built around poems and centered in theme on the varieties of love. It is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of this work in the literary tradition.

  67. Section 49 of Ise monogatari tells of a young man so taken with his sister that he gives her this poem: “This regret will not leave me, that such grass, so fresh and young, and so sweet to rest upon, alas, should go to another.” The “grass” is the sister, and the poem plays on ne: “root”; “lie down”; “sleep (with)”; and also “sound” of an instrument—hence probably the kin shown in the painting but not present in the text.

  68. From the sister's reply in Ise monogatari 49, which means something like “What strange words, as rare as new grass in spring! And here I was, my thoughts all innocence!” The exchange has been interpreted variously, and the sister's reply can be taken either as innocent or as complicitly erotic. Niou favors the latter.

  69. Ōigimi herself, this time, invites Kaoru to come and talk from where he sat yesterday.

  70. A parent too preoccupied at death with the fate of a child risked being dragged by this attachment into hell.

  71. Because of being ill.

  72. Because they are women.

  73. “Incense for the return of the soul” (hangonkō). Bai Juyi described in a long poem (Hakushi monjū 0160) how Emperor Wu of the Early Han called back the soul of Lady Li, thanks to a special incense that a wizard compounded for him.

  74. Ise shū 424: “Dipping water from the rippling mountain spring, I realize who even now makes my life worthwhile.”

  75. Kokinshū 838, by Ki no Tsurayuki: “I who know I may never see tomorrow grieve for him who did not live out today.”

  76. Genji monogatari kochūshakusho in'yō waka 514: “Winter rains always fall in the month when the gods are gone [kaminazuki, the tenth month], but these sleeves have never been so wet!”

  77. Gosenshū 468: “Deep in these mountains, in a village lashed by hail, such is the loneliness that surely no one else will ever come.”

  78. Shūishū 853, attributed to Hitomaro: “This is a time when, like a boat pushing into port through the reeds and facing many obstacles, I cannot meet my love.”

  79. In most years the tenth month had three days of the Ox, and the Gosechi Festival began on the second of them, around the middle of the month; but in some years there were only two, and in that case the festival began on the first, near the beginning of the month.

  80. Niou's marriage to Roku no Kimi.

  81. As a gentlewoman.

  82. Mi-yuzuke, brown rice in hot water, a winter food; in summer one ate suihan, rice in cold water.

  83. He appears to be in the chamber with her, in the southern half, while she lies in the northern half behind a curtain. The lamp is as far from her as possible.

  84. Paradise, despite Hachi no Miya's worry over his daughters when he died.

  85. Literally “I sent some to [do] Never-Despise.” In the chapter on the Bodhisattva Never-Despise (Jōfukyō Bosatsu bon), the Lotus Sutra describes how a follower of the Buddha prostrated himself in homage before all monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen as future buddhas. The Adept sent priests out in all directions to do this.

  86. The end of the Lotus Sutra passage, chanted as a prayer for the benefit of all sentient beings (ekō). The passage concludes, “… because they are all to be buddhas.”

  87. “Celebration” (matsuri), a rite to summon, honor, and influence a non-Buddhist deity; “purification” (harae), a rite to remove evil influences by infusing them into dolls or other objects. Both were characteristic of yin-yang (onmyōdō) practice.

  88. Kaoru has seen her face, felt her forehead, etc. He has physical knowledge of her and so is close to being her husband after all.

  89. Because of the pollution of death.

  90. Kokinshū 831, by the priest Shōen, lamenting the cremation of Fujiwara no Mototsune at Fukakusa in 891: “It was some consolation to see the cicada shell he left behind; but now, O Mount Fukakusa, at least put forth smoke [to remember him by]!”

  91. Ōn-imi, a ritual seclusion of thirty days to avoid spreading the pollution due to contact with death. “Many people” took part because of Kaoru's presence.

  92. His mother, Onna San no Miya. He is thinking of taking religious vows, too.

  93. He was not entitled to wear mourning because he had no formal connection with Ōigimi.

  94. The rolling up of the blinds and parts of the sentence that follows come from a poem by Bai Juyi (Hakushi monjū 0978).

  95. The Snowy Mountains (yuki no yama, sessen) are the Himalayas. Once Sessen Dōji (“Snowy Mountain Youth,” the Buddha in a former life) learned from a demon the first half of a verse in praise of enlightenment. The demon then required his flesh and blood in exchange for the second half. Sessen Dōji agreed, received the verse, and engraved it on the wall of his cave. Then he leaped from a cliff, whereupon the demon changed into the god Indra and saved him. The story is told in the Nehan-gyō and elsewhere.

  96. Genji monogatari kochūshakusho in'yō waka 927: “I have sworn so many times to be true that you must know the name of every god in the land.”

  48: SAWARABI

  1. Kokinshū 870, by Furu no Imamichi: “Since the light of the sun shines even in the wilds, flowers bloom here at Isonokami, in this ancient village.”

  2. One makes the first half of a poem (five-seven-five syllables), and the other adds the rest (seven-seven).

  3. Sawarabi and tsukuzukushi (modern Japanese tsukushi), the early shoots of Pteridium aquilinum and Equisetum arvense.

  4. The poem plays on tsumi, “pick” and “grow in number” (speaking of the years).

  5. “Your expression shows nothing, but you seem still to love her.”

  6. From Kokinshū 41, by Ōshikōchi no Mitsune: “On a night in spring, darkness covers all; plum blossoms remain unseen, but their scent cannot be hidden.”

  7. The night he spent with Naka no Kimi. Genji monogatari kochūhakusho in'yō waka 367: “If you love me, come to be with me, that we may speak in person, as birds call to each other in Iwase Wood.”

  8. Kokinshū 981: “Come, here I shall spend my life, for here at Sugawara I would not have Fushimi village go to rack and ruin.” The locality mentioned is near the present town of Nara.

  9. The prescribed mourning for a brother or sister lasted three months, and when that period was over the mourner underwent purificatory ablutions on the bank of a stream. “Shallow” (asaki) is conventionally associated with “purification” (misogi), perhaps because of the shallowness of a shrine's sacred brook.

  10. She had wanted to mourn her sister as she would have her mother.

  11. An expert in yin-yang lore, whose services were required at the end of any period of mourning as well as for any occasion as momentous as Naka no Kimi's departure.

  12. The “garment of mist” (kasumi no koromo) is at once Naka no Kimi's mourning robes and the mists that rise among the hills in early spring.

  13. Ōigimi, a subject too sad to be appropriate on the happy occasion of a move to the City.

  14. Kokinshū 747, by Ariwara no Narihira: “Is this not the moon, is this spring not the spring of old, while only I remain just as I was then?”

  15. The poem plays on arashi (“storm wind”) and araji (“will not be there”).

  16. Shūishū 953, by Ki no Tsurayuki: “So encompassing are the sorrows that afflict me alone, that I have come to condemn all the world.”

  17. She has cut her hair to a nun's shoulder length (ama sogi).

  18. The shallows or rapids (seze) of a river are an image for the vicissitudes of life.

  19. Kokinshū 611, by Ōshikōchi no Mitsune: “My love knows no destination and has no end; the only boundary, to me, is the next time we meet.”

  20. The poem plays on ama (“nun” and “woman of the sea”) as well as on a set of words associated with the sea. In this spirit the place-name Sode no Ura (“Sleeve Beach,” in northern Japan) adds poetic luster to the sode (“sleeves,” the new clothes) that the women are making for the next day.

  21. “Is not my sorrow just as bitter as yours, when I must set out tomorrow to a new home, on a journey I have never made before?”

  22. “Shoal” is an image for one of life's vicissitudes.

  23. She expects disappointment and a return to Uji.

  24. Words used in the saibara song “This Gentleman” to describe an imposing residence.

  25. Genji monogatari kochūshakusho in'yō waka 1933: “Were there but a way to turn present into past, for I would have the world be as I knew it then!”
r />   26. The poem begins with shinateru ya, a conventional epithet (makura kotoba) for Nio no Umi (“Lake of Grebes,” Lake Biwa); but since the meaning of the expression is unknown, “Ah, glimmering waters!” is less a guess than simply a replacement for it. The poem also plays on maho, “fine sail” and “truly” (I was with her, but not truly).

  27. Shūishū 62, by Egyō Hōshi: “Could it be that the cherry blossoms abandoned by an empty house scatter more blithely on the wind?”

  49: YADORIGI

  1. “Those days” (sono koro) lie in a vague past. (The same expression, one suitable for starting a new tale, also begins “Red Plum Blossoms,” “The Maiden of the Bridge,” and “Writing Practice.”) This Minister of the Left is probably the one mentioned briefly in “The Imperial Progress” and “Spring Shoots I.” In “The Plum Tree Branch” his third daughter is described as having gone to the Heir Apparent before the future Akashi no Chūgū, and the chapter specifies that “she was known as Reikeiden.” She must have moved to the Fujitsubo later on.

  2. The spring of Kaoru's twenty-fourth year.

  3. Nyōkan, lower-ranking women appointed to tend the baths, the kitchen, and so on.

  4. To the Fujitsubo, where her mother had lived. She had been at home during the forty-nine days.

  5. Because the Second Princess is in mourning.

  6. On the value of Go to while away an idle day, the Emperor is alluding to a line by Bai Juyi (Hakushi monjū 0920).

  7. The conceit and the wording are based on a Chinese couplet, Wakan rōei shū 783, by Ki no Tadana: “I hear that you have beautiful flowers in your garden: Sir, I ask your leave to pluck a branch of these spring blossoms.” These flowers are autumn chrysanthemums.

  8. The “withered” garden refers to the young lady's mother and the still-fresh color to herself.

  9. His half sister.

  10. In other words, a Prince's fortunes depend on support from a father-in-law with wealth and political power—a commoner.

  11. Yūgiri, a commoner, shares his time equally between Kumoi no Kari and Ochiba no Miya.

  12. Bai Juyi's poem “Lady Li” (Hakushi monjū 0160) tells how Emperor Wu of Han, after losing his beloved Lady Li, saw her face in the smoke of incense burned by a magician.

  13. Naka no Kimi.

  14. From an otherwise unknown poem cited in an early commentary: “Perhaps the morning glory is the flower of transience, for it blooms at daybreak and afterward dies.”

  15. Niou's Nijō residence, just north of Kaoru's.

  16. The gentlewomen's sitting room.

  17. As it withered.

  18. “In my eyes you should have been the same as your sister, who wished me to have you.”

  19. “My fate is still more fragile than my sister's.”

  20. Kokinshū 248, by Henjō: “It is a poor village, and those who inhabit my home are old: the fence and garden have turned to an autumn moor.”

  21. This probably means that they married provincial officials.

  22. The literal meaning of wasuregusa (modern Japanese yabukanzō), an orange daylily.

  23. The Empress's First Princess and Second Prince, according to “The Perfumed Prince.”

  24. That of attachment to the things of this world.

  25. Kokinshū 944: “A mountain village makes a lonely home indeed, yet it is a happier place than this troubled world.”

  26. The bell for the third anniversary of her father's death, in the eighth month.

  27. Abstention from meat and fish.

  28. Kokinshū 934: “I who have little enough time left, why am I so troubled by a nun's abundant sorrows?” The poem plays on karumo, the seaweed the ama gathers, which is likened to tangled cares.

  29. Where Hanachirusato had lived. It was now occupied by Ochiba no Miya and her adopted daughter, Roku no Kimi.

  30. Presumably the Secretary Lieutenant mentioned in “Beneath the Oak,” a full brother of Roku no Kimi.

  31. Motoyoshi Shinnō shū 150: “While this house of mine welcomes even the moon aloft in the sky, you yourself pass by beyond the clouds!”

  32. Presumably, the news of the arrival of Yūgiri's messenger.

  33. From copious weeping. Kokin rokujō 3241, by Hitomaro: “Upon the tears I weep as I lie alone, even a pillow of stone could well float away.”

  34. Legend had it that a man once left his aged and useless mother to die on Obasute-yama, a mountain in Shinano (Nagano Prefecture). Kokinshū 878: “My heart has no comfort at Sarashina, watching the moon shine down on the Mountain of the Abandoned Crone.”

  35. Autumn nights were supposed to be long.

  36. Kokinshū 965, by Taira no Sadafumi: “I, whose time will be soon, only wish that, that short while, I might have few sorrows.”

  37. Kokinshū 631: “I have not learned my lesson, for soon they will be bandying my name about again; but after all he and I do get on together.”

  38. Gosenshū 938, by Ise: “I can say neither yes nor no, for alas, in this world one can never do as one pleases.”

  39. “If I become Heir Apparent and then Emperor, I will make you my Empress.”

  40. Apparently a fragment of a poem, intended to suggest either “If I live long enough, I will do this for you” or “You must see to it that you live long enough for me to do this for you.”

  41. The messenger bringing the answer to Niou's letter has been plied with wine and showered with gifts (robes), in keeping with the happy character of the occasion. The original plays on kazuki (“dive” and “receive across one's shoulders”) to say, more literally, “He was buried under the marvelous, gleaming seaweeds that the seafolk dive down to harvest.”

  42. Ochiba.

  43. Thanks to a play on oki (“arise” in the morning, “leave,” as well as “settle,” speaking of dew), the poem seems to ask not only what the dew (Niou) did to the maidenflower (Roku no Kimi) during the night, but what he did when he took his leave of her to upset her so.

  44. Or “someone ordinary.” It is not clear that the meaning here is intended to be specifically “nonimperial.”

  45. Kokinshū 204: “A cicada sang, and I thought the sun had set, but it was just that I had come under the shadow of the hills.”

  46. Genji monogatari kochūshakusho in yō waka 381: “While I weep aloud for the sorrows of love, seafolk are fishing below my pillow.”

  47. For the second night of Niou's marriage to Roku no Kimi.

  48. Because as a subject he was forbidden to emulate certain aspects of imperial splendor.

  49. Although he and Yūgiri left the palace together, he seems to have returned home briefly before going to Rokujō.

  50. The dishes would have been silver.

  51. To leave Roku no Kimi, with whom he has been up to now, and to go and enjoy the festive meal prepared for him.

  52. Presumably by color or pattern.

  53. Presumably one of his mother's gentlewomen.

  54. “Barrier Brook” (Sekigawa) alludes to the brook at Ōsaka pass, between Kyoto and Lake Biwa. Ōsaka means literally “slope of meeting,” and it is associated in poetry with the motifs of meeting (of lovers) and separation.

  55. Yamato monogatari 161 (episode 106) “You may well think it shallow, but I know that at heart Barrier Brook will never run dry.”

  56. On the morning after their third night together.

  57. Kumoi no Kari.

  58. Roku no Kimi is in the northeast.

  59. The blinds between the veranda and the aisle.

  60. The blinds between the aisle and the chamber. Kaoru is in the aisle.

  61. Genji monogatari kochūshakusho in'yō waka 940: “Is it the world that is harsh or he who is cruel? No, I blame none but myself.” The poem includes a long, conventional play on warekara, “of my own will,” as well as the name of a creature said to live in “seaweed gathered by the seafolk.”