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The Tale of Genji

Murasaki Shikibu

  62. Koshi, a band worn by a pregnant woman around her lower belly.

  63. Gosenshū 563: “What can those times when we never met have been, when I so long for you because at this very moment I do not see you?”

  64. Genji monogatari kochūshakusho in'yō waka 382: “I who know how little I am worth will not complain; and yet whence this incomprehensible cruelty?”

  65. Kokin rokujō 2122: “I, not he, shall be the first to forget; why should I trust him when he has been so cold toward me?”

  66. “When I trusted that you and I would always be as close to one another as we have been…” “Middle robe” (naka no koromo), an expression proper to poetry, alludes to the bond between lovers. The poem also repeats words (kabakari nite) just used by Niou and translated a few lines above as “if his scent is this strong on you”; to which it adds a double meaning on ka, “this (much)” and “scent.”

  67. Because she is so irresistible.

  68. The ninth, when there were several important Buddhist rites. The clothes Onna San no Miya mentions are probably intended as offerings.

  69. Kokin rokujō 2096: “Alas that in this life we should not have what we wish, when neither of us is a thousand-year pine!”

  70. Kokin rokujō 2571, by Sakanoue no Korenori: “If love ever had an end in this world, with the years my cares would melt away.”

  71. Otonashi no sato, mentioned in Kokin rokujō 1296: “Ah, to bewail my unhappiness in love! Where is it, that I may cry aloud, the village of Not-a-Sound?”

  72. Kaoru's wish may recall that of Emperor Wu, who had a painting made of his beloved Lady Li.

  73. Mitarashigawa, a stream near a shrine, used for purification. Kaoru's wish to make a hitokata (“doll”) of Ōigimi reminds Naka no Kimi of the hitokata used in a purification rite (misogi): the evil influences to be purged were ritually infused into hitokata that were then sent floating away down the stream.

  74. From the sad story of Wang Zhaojun, whom a Chinese Emperor sent as a concubine to a Tartar King. When the Huns threatened the Han capital, the Emperor decided to send their King a woman from the harem, to appease him, and he made his choice from portraits the women had painted for the purpose. All the women except Wang Zhaojun bribed the painters to improve their looks, so that the Emperor would not wish to give them up. As a result, Zhaojun's portrait showed her to be the least favored of them all, hence the most expendable, although in reality she was the great beauty among them. The Emperor discovered the truth when Zhaojun was gone, and he condemned the venal painters to death.

  75. This story has not been traced. It probably concerned a Buddha image so alive that lotus petals fell on it from the skies in homage.

  76. “Had a child by that woman.” Kokin rokujō 3133 (or Gosenshū 1187), by Kanetada no Ason no Haha no Menoto: “Were it not for the child she left behind, where would we pluck the ferns of memory?”

  77. Honzon, the image (sculpted or painted) representing the deity to which a Buddhist rite is addressed.

  78. Kokin rokujō 593 (also Shinkokinshū 757), by Henjō: “The dew on the leaf tip, the drop on the stalk, show how in this world some go and some stay.”

  79. The precise source of this story is unknown. A related one, from a commentary on the Dainichi-kyō identifies the deceased as a beloved wife, while an early Genji commentary cites a Buddhist tale about a child killed by a jealous stepmother.

  80. Kashiwagi.

  81. She is the daughter of Kashiwagi's nurse and was therefore brought up with him.

  82. Where he had presumably been sent as Deputy Governor, since the post of Governor of Hitachi was a sinecure held by a Prince.

  83. Ben was probably in Kyushu when Hachi no Miya had his affair with Chūjō and Ukifune was born.

  84. Nuno, cloth made of hemp, kudzu, or other fibers.

  85. An unidentified vine, apparently one of several species that supply the color still lingering on the trees.

  86. Kokinshū 952: “Where could I live, among what rocks, that I should hear no more of the world and its troubles?”

  87. “You seem sad because of something that you are not telling me.” In poetry the seed plumes of susuki (“plume grass”) are often evoked as beckoning like waving hands, and “to come into plume” (ho ni izu) is a common image for “to say what had been unspoken.” Kokinshū 243, by Ariwara no Muneyana: “Are they the sleeves of the grasses in the autumn fields? For the plume grasses, once in plume, look like beckoning sleeves.” Muneyana's poem suggests the image of someone who, having declared love, beckons to the lover.

  88. He is not wearing gathered trousers, which makes his costume very casual.

  89. “You who no longer care for me, now I know what your feelings are.” The poem relies on a play on aki, “autumn” and “want no more [of something or someone].”

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

  91. From a Chinese couplet by Yuan Zhen (778–831), Wakan rōei shū 267: “It is not that I love the chrysanthemum alone among all flowers, but there are no more blossoms after it has bloomed.”

  92. This was said to have happened to Minamoto no Takaakira (914–82), a son of Emperor Daigo. The angel first explained to Takaakira the true meaning of Yuan Zhen's couplet.

  93. Naoshimono, a supplement to the regular announcement of official appointments (meshina) made at the appointments list (jimoku) ceremony twice a year.

  94. When Yūgiri, who had served concurrently as Left Commander, resigned that post, it was taken up by the then—Right Commander; hence the vacancy filled by Kaoru.

  95. In order to avoid the pollution of childbirth.

  96. Fuzuku, cakes in the five colors, made of five different grains pounded to a paste with amazuru (sweet-vine) syrup.

  97. Ochiba.

  98. Kokinshū 32: “Now that I have plucked them, my very sleeves are perfumed; ah, plum blossoms—perhaps their presence has brought the warbler here to sing!”

  99. Kōbai.

  100. Two sons of Higekuro.

  101. In “The Flute,” Kashiwagi came to Yūgiri in a dream and hinted to him that he wished the flute to go to his son.

  102. On receiving the Emperor's cup, a courtier poured the wine it contained into another cup and returned the Emperor's before drinking it. He then went down the steps into the garden to dance his obeisance (butō), after which he returned to his seat.

  103. Bundai, a low writing table, placed below the steps on a formal occasion such as this one, on which poetry was presented to the host. Each participant went in turn to place his composition on it.

  104. “How great a prize [the Princess] I have won in my zeal to please His Majesty!”

  105. This poem, probably Yūgiri's, seems to be based on Shūshū 1068, by Fujiwara no Kuniaki: “Wisteria blossoms within the palace could easily be mistaken for the purple clouds.” These clouds are the ones seen when a soul is welcomed into Amida's paradise.

  106. An allusion to an exchange of poems between Kaoru and Ben, earlier in the chapter.

  107. The north aisle of the main house, rebuilt after the old one was moved to the temple. “Please make your mistress at home on the south side,” which was the proper place for a guest.

  108. The present Kizu River, between Uji and the Yamato Plain. One crossed it on the road between Kyoto or Uji and Hatsuse.

  109. Ukifune's mother.

  110. In “The Song of Unending Sorrow,” the Emperor sends a Taoist wizard to Hōrai to find his beloved Yang Guifei. The wizard finds her, but he brings back from her only an ornamental hairpin and one or two other things.

  111. Kaoru's poem plays on kaodori, a bird (tori) probably named originally for its cry or song (ka-o). By Heian times, however, its name was understood as meaning “face [kao] bird,” that is, “lovely bird.” Kaodori appears first in Man'yōshū 1902 and, with the wordplay visible here, in Kokin rokujō 4488.

  50: AZUMAYA
r />   1. The literary conceit of this beginning exploits that of Shinkokinshū 1013, a love poem by Minamoto no Shigeyuki: “Mount Tsukuba, foothills and thickly grown hills, thickets everywhere: none of that will stop me from going in to you” (“I love you so much that no obstacle can stop me from going to be with you”). Mount Tsukuba is in Hitachi, the province of which Ukifune's stepfather is the (Deputy) Governor.

  2. Ukifune's stepfather.

  3. A popular belief derived from Chinese religion required people to avoid falling asleep on a kōshin night, which recurred in a sixty-day cycle. They amused themselves instead with poetry, music, and so on. The belief held that everyone's body was inhabited by three “worms,” which on a kōshin night would rise from anyone who slept to report on that person's misdeeds to the Emperor of Heaven. This Emperor would then require the offender's life.

  4. The daughter of Ukifune's mother by the Governor of Hitachi. The household calls her himegimi, which means roughly “eldest daughter.”

  5. Where Ukifune lives.

  6. Commander (Taishō) of the Palace Guards was a third-rank post. The Lieutenant's father belonged to the senior nobility.

  7. Presumably the north side of the chamber in the west wing, the room having apparently been divided into two sections, north and south.

  8. Lengths of coarse-woven Azuma silk (from the Governor's province of Hitachi), tossed in to the Lieutenant under the blinds. They are for the Lieutenant's retainers.

  9. She is a niece of Hachi no Miya's wife.

  10. Kokinshū 867: “Because of a single stem of murasaki, I love all the grasses on Musashi Plain.”

  11. Ukishima (“floating island”) is an utamakura (a poetically recognized place) in the far northern province of Mutsu, where the husband of Ukifune's mother was once posted as Governor. Its name suggests the common wordplay on uki (or ushi, “hateful”). Kokin rokujō 1796 (also Shinkokinshū 1379) plays on the name this way in a particularly elaborate fashion.

  12. Kokinshū 948: “Can the world have always been so hateful a place, or did it become this way just for me?”

  13. As Kaoru called his desired “doll” of Ōigimi in “The Ivy.”

  14. That I had you instead of Ukifune.

  15. “Double” (katashiro) suggests a doll, and “cleansing charm” is nademono. Although in this poem nademono also suggests an object to “stroke” (nade) for pleasure, it principally means a paper doll used for purification. One stroked oneself with the nademono so as to infuse into it the impurities in one's own person; then one dropped it into a stream so that the stream should carry it away. “Shoals” is seze, a word “related” (engo) to nademono because it means the “rapids and shallows” of a stream, although figuratively it means “vicissitudes.”

  16. Kokinshū 706, sent by a woman to Ariwara no Narihira after she had learned that he was visiting many women: “So many hands are tugging at the great purification wand, I who love you can no longer trust you.” The “great purification wand” (ōnusa) is a Shintō ritual object that one passed over one's body in roughly the same manner as one did a nademono.

  17. Kokinshū 792, by Ki no Tomonori: “Although I am like foam on the water that somehow lingers on, as long as the stream bears me, she may trust in me.”

  18. The twenty-third chapter of the Lotus Sutra.

  19. Sandalwood from Oxhead Mountain (Japanese Gozu-san) in India.

  20. Deep in the mountains, as a nun. Kokinshū 535: “Would that she understood the depth of my love, deep as a mountain fastness where one hears no song from the birds of the air.”

  21. Kokinshū 952: “Where should I choose to live, among what rocks, so as to hear no more of the miseries of the world?”

  22. Shūishū 662, by a woman responding to a lover who had accused her of seeing someone else: “You who assured me you would always love me, do not accuse me falsely: just forget me.”

  23. Ise shū 55: “Behind jeweled blinds I slept on, oblivious of the dawn, yet never thought I would never see you even in my dreams.”

  24. A woman could wash her hair only on a lucky day as defined by the almanac, and the ninth month was one of abstinence. The tenth month, the kaminashi month, is usually written and understood to be the one “without gods,” but kami (with a different character) also means “hair,” hence the prohibition referred to.

  25. The aisle space on the west side of the wing. Ukifune occupies the north end of it.

  26. Presumably one of Naka no Kimi's women.

  27. Another of Naka no Kimi's gentlewomen.

  28. Of Niou's.

  29. Probably a younger brother of Niou.

  30. Gōma: one of the eight stages of the life of the Buddha Shakyamuni, when he sat beneath the Bodhi Tree and quelled the demonic forces that would have prevented him from reaching enlightenment.

  31. She cannot wear more layers or colors because her hair is still wet.

  32. Genji monogatari kochūshakusho in'yō waka 394 includes the same expression (aitemo awanu, “together yet not together”), but the poem does not seem to fit, since it suggests that the lovers were in fact “together” (made love), however briefly.

  33. A suspicious, anxious disposition.

  34. She is a niece of Naka no Kimi's mother.

  35. Shūishū 183, by Ise, written to go on a painted screen: “Ah, dew that might well break the autumn hagi fronds, when one mourns just to see them fade!”

  36. The “little hagi plant” (kohagi) is Ukifune and the dew the Lieutenant.

  37. “If I had known she was a Prince's daughter…” Miyagi Moor (Miyagino), a place-name associated with hagi in poetry, contains the syllables miya, “Prince.”

  38. Shūishū 506: “How I long for somewhere not in the world at all to hide the many years that burden me!”

  39. A mountain (3,049 feet) just northwest of Kyoto. It is unclear whether “holy men” is meant to be singular or plural.

  40. Iga is a province in central Japan, but it is not really clear what Iga tōme means. An old woman matchmaker is the interpretation of the eighteenth-century scholar Motoori Norinaga.

  41. Man'yōshū 267, by Naganoimiki Okimaro: “Alas that it should now be raining, when on Miwa Cape there is not one house at Sano ford!”

  42. Kaoru's poem incorporates words and phrases from the saibara song “The Eastern Cottage.”

  43. The best carpenters were thought to come from the province of Hida, in the mountains of central Japan. There was not normally a wooden sliding door (yarido) between the chamber and the aisle.

  44. An inauspicious month for a marriage.

  45. In other words, the first day of winter. If true (it is possible in the lunar calendar), this might make the moment less inauspicious.

  46. A temple built by Fujiwara no Tadahira in 925 on the site of present Tōfukuji, east of the Kamo River and a little way south of the City.

  47. Into a front compartment for Kaoru and Ukifune and a rear one for Ben and Jijū.

  48. The two colors together suggest futaai (a violet or blue-gray), which reminds Kaoru of mourning.

  49. Kokinshū 488: “My love seems to fill all the vast, empty heavens; though I seek to dispel it, it has nowhere else to go.”

  50. As a wife.

  51. The wagon, also known as azuma-goto (“Eastern koto”). “Ah, my darling!” (aware waga tsuma) seems to be a nickname for it, derived from the closing words of the saibara song “The Eastern Cottage.”

  52. A wordplay: “How should I know how to play the Eastern koto, when I never even learned Yamato kotoba [“Yamato speech”] properly?” Yamato speech is the language of the court: proper Japanese, so to speak, not a dialect like the language of the East.

  53. From a couplet in Chinese, Wakan rōei shū 380, by Minamoto no Shitagō: “In Lady Ban's chamber, whiteness of an autumn fan; on the terrace of the King of So, music of an evening kin.”

  54. The couplet evokes the sad story of Lady Han (Chinese Ban), who was abandoned by the King of So (Chinese Chu) like a
summer fan in autumn. To cool the flames of hurt and jealousy she had herself fanned with a large white fan, and Ukifune's fan, too, is white. It is not a good omen, hence Kaoru's dismay in the next sentence.

  55. Thick writing, presumably characteristic of an old woman like Ben.

  56. The “change of color” alludes to Kaoru's shift of feeling from Ōigimi to Ukifune, and the moon to Kaoru himself. There is a wordplay on sumeru (“shine brightly” and “live”).

  57. “The name of this place” is Uji, which according to a conventional wordplay means also “hateful” to one bent on renunciation. In other words, “The profane world is still as hateful to me as it has always been…”

  51: UKIFUNE

  1. Kaoru has not recognized Ukifune as a wife.

  2. Ise monogatari 131 (section 71): “If you love me, then come to me—the journey is not one the gods forbid you.”

  3. Probably copper green with verdigris.

  4. She does not observe kotoimi, the avoidance of words like “unsuitable” (“I do not think it suits my lady very well”), “nervous,” “fearful,” and so on.

  5. The red berries of the yamatachibana (modern Japanese yabukōji), which grows wild in the hills.

  6. Ukifune's poem plays on mataburi (“fork”) and madafuri[nu] (“not yet old”); and on matsu (“pine” and “await [a bright future]”).