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?”
27. The colors of the autumn leaves.
28. In East Asian lore a katsura tree (resembling a laurel) grows in the moon; and the word plays on the name of the place (Katsura) where Genji is. The poem also hints that the katsura tree is Genji.
29. From the source poem for Genji's message to the Emperor, Kokinshū 968 by Ise, also written at Katsura: “Since this village [Katsura, see note above] grows in the heavens, all my trust here is in their light [i.e., in the imperial favor].”
30. Genji remembers his view of Awaji across a moonlit sea and goes on to recall the same poem that he thought of then (Shinkokinshū 1515, by Ōshikōchi no Mitsune): “The moon that on Awaji seemed so sadly distant, tonight—it must be the setting—seems very near.” He weeps with joy at the contrast between then, when he was in exile, and now, when the Emperor is “very near” and regards him highly.
31. Genji is thinking of his poem in “Akashi,” “Ah, how grand a sight…”
32. The moon this time is Genji.
33. This moon is the Kiritsubo Emperor (His Late Eminence).
34. A saibara song suitable for a gentleman's departure on horseback: “That horse of mine wants his feed, yes, wants his feed. I'll bring him his grass, yes, I'll fetch his water, I'll bring him his grass.”
35. Ōi and Katsura were about 2.5 miles apart.
36. In her third year. He may also mean here that his daughter needs special support to “stand on her own feet.”
37. Genji wants to give her a “donning of the trousers” (hakama gi), a rite of passage in which a child was first dressed in hakama trousers. The tying on of the trousers was central to the ceremony, and to perform it was to act as a sort of formal sponsor.
19: USUGUMO
1. From Gosenshū 705, the complaint of a woman whose fate was what the lady from Akashi fears. When her lover, who hardly ever came anymore, told her that she simply lived too far away, she moved closer: “Though I moved and I waited, he still failed to come—ah, how many miseries there are to suffer!” Also Shūishū 985: “If, even after I am wronged, he wrongs me again, what will tears avail me to give voice to my pain?”
2. Akikonomu, a year younger than Murasaki.
3. Not quite a Minister, so that his daughter was never appointed Consort.
4. Not one of the other women by whom he may have had children, and with whom his relationship commands less social recognition.
5. By a diviner, according to the almanac.
6. “Her bright future is ours as well.” The seedling pine is the little girl. The Takekuma pine, which grew near the government outpost in the far northern province of Mutsu, was (according to Gosbūishū 1041, by Tachibana no Suemichi) a single pine with twin trunks (aioi no matsu), a happy emblem of conjugal felicity. Genji refers to himself and the lady from Akashi as a couple.
7. A girl received a dagger (mihakashi) at birth, as a protective talisman. Another protective device was the godchild (amagatsu), a doll that served the same purpose as the purification doll described near the end of “Suma.” The child was supposed to transfer into the doll any evil influence that could harm her. A child retained the godchild until roughly her third year.
8. For promotions and appointments that they owed to his patronage.
9. Hanachirusato, the lady of Falling Flowers.
10. From a saibara song: “[The husband] Stay your boat, O cherry blossom man, I've to see to my fields on the island, and I'll be back tomorrow, yes, I'll be back tomorrow! [The wife] Tomorrow, you say, but he who has a woman there won't really be back tomorrow, no, not really back tomorrow.”
11. Genji monogatari kochūshakusho in yō waka 148: “Is this world of ours a tossing bridge crossed in dreams, that crossing it should call up such sorrows?” “Dreams” suggests erotic liaisons, and yo no naka (“this world of ours”) alludes to matters of love. The uki of ukikihashi (“tossing bridge”) means both “floating” and “sad.”
12. Genji's former father-in-law, previously the Minister of the Left.
13. Genji is currently Palace Minister and Regent (Sesshō), and he had entrusted the duties of the Regent to his late father-in-law.
14. The natural disasters are a warning of grave disorder in government: the present Emperor's (Reizei's) reign is illegitimate, since he is actually Genji's son.
15. The Kiritsubo Emperor, his purported father.
16. A particularly dangerous “year of trouble” (yakudoshi) for a woman, according to a still-current belief.
17. Measures to promote long life, such as fasting, purification, and prayer.
18. Of his paternity.
19. She is speaking to a gentlewoman who will relay her words to Genji.
20. Tsukasa, kōburi, and mifu. Tsukasa means income to the court derived from fees paid by persons appointed to sinecures; this income was redistributed to high-ranking officeholders, including women. Kōburi had a similar source. Mifu means income attached to court rank and derived from the labor of a set number of households.
21. Yamabushi, a low-ranking Buddhist practitioner, often a healer, who might not be fully ordained and whose practice was centered on sacred mountains.
22. Twelve years before, in “Under the Cherry Blossoms.”
23. From Kōkinshū 832, by Kamutsuke no Mineo, lamenting the death of Fujiwara no Mototsune: “O cherry trees upon Fukakusa Moor, if you are kind, just for this year, I beg, blossom in gray!”
24. Gray is the main color of mourning. The sun setting behind the mountains reminds Genji of Amida's paradise.
25. He had performed rites and practices that the Emperor had vowed to have done.
26. An important duty of the Chaplain was to remain in attendance through the night, in a room close to where his patron slept, so that the patron should enjoy while sleeping the beneficent influence of his prayers. In the palace, priests performed this function in a small space (futama) separated by a partition from the Emperor's pillow.
27. Because the Emperor would then continue to honor the wrong man as his father, thus disturbing the proper order of the human realm and inviting consequent perturbations in the realms of heaven and earth.
28. The Prelate might retain a grudge because of never having been sufficiently promoted. There were two ranks above Prelate, although in the tenth century promotion to them was still rare.
29. In Esoteric Buddhism (mikkyō), most teachings are to pass from a master only to a properly prepared disciple, and Esoteric texts warn against giving them to the uninitiated.
30. The Kiritsubo Emperor and Fujitsubo.
31. The deities who guard the enlightened buddhas.
32. “Because the responsibility for telling you falls on me alone.” Ōmyōbu, formerly Fujitsubo's gentle-woman, is the person through whom Genji gained access to Fujitsubo. As a woman, she would never speak and cannot be considered responsible in the same way.
33. Perhaps a reference to the exile of Sugawara no Michizane, which occurred in the Engi era (901–22), in the sage reign of Emperor Daigo.
34. The deaths of the Chancellor and of His Highness of Ceremonial.
35. Because matters of history and government are not for a woman to discuss.
36. An imperial son who, like the Genji of the tale, had bee
n made a commoner and excluded from the line of succession.
37. An early commentary (Kakaishō, fourteenth century) cites Emperors Kōnin (709–81, reigned 770–81), Kanmu (737–806, reigned 781–806), Kōkō (830–87, reigned 884–87), and Uda (867–931, reigned 887–97).
38. It was common to refuse appointment to extremely high office (Chancellor or Regent) once or twice before accepting it. Genji is instead promoted from second rank (suitable for his post as Palace Minister) to first rank, junior grade, the normal rank for a Chancellor. Permission to enter the palace grounds in an ox-drawn carriage was granted to a Prince, a Regent, a very senior Minister, or a very high member of the Buddhist ecclesiastical hierarchy.
39. This sentence has also been read as meaning that Ōmyōbu herself has been appointed Mistress of the Wardrobe. Either way it is curious to find her in service at the palace when she became a nun long ago, at the same time as Fujitsubo.
40. He may mean his ambition to see his daughter (now four) become Empress and bear an imperial heir.
41. Japanese poetry, especially Shūishū 511.
42. To her mother. Kokinshū 546: “All times are equal for I love you in them all, yet, on an autumn evening, O how strangely more!”
43. Goshūishū 82: “How gladly I would have cherry blossoms that smell like plum blossoms open on spring willow fronds!”
44. His recent promotion has once more limited his freedom of movement.
45. Kagaribi, wood fires contained in iron cages that the cormorant fishermen on the river held aloft to attract fish.
46. From Kokin rokujō 1726.
20: ASAGAO
1. Asagao's father, His Highness of Ceremonial, died in the previous chapter.
2. Momozono is thought to have been a spot north of Ichijō (“First Avenue”) and west of Ōmiya avenue. The Fifth Princess is her aunt (her father's younger sister).
3. Aoi's mother (Ōmiya). Asagao, Genji, and Aoi are cousins, but Asagao is a Princess because she is the recognized daughter of a Prince, while Aoi, the daughter of a Princess, was a commoner because her father was one.
4. The Kiritsubo Emperor's death or Genji's exile.
5. Aoi's mother, Ōmiya.
6. Yūgiri, the son of Genji and Aoi.
7. That Genji had never married his daughter, Asagao.
8. Asagao has just spoken of it being, literally, “difficult to decide” (sadamegataku haberu ni) whether or not to give Genji the freedom he feels is his due; now Genji picks up the same word, but in a fixed expression (sadamegataki yo) quite different in implication and tone.
9. Kokinshū 501 (or Ise monogatari 119, section 65): “So as to love no more, I sought in the Mitarashi River purification that the gods at last did not accept.”
10. Genji monogatari kochūhakusho in yō waka 157: “As I pass your gate now, come forth and see what has become of the man who loves you.”
11. Each is a Prince's daughter.
12. Because the court was in mourning for Fujitsubo.
13. “I thought you might be a bit tired of seeing me all the time.” Genji alludes to the poetic lore of the lovelorn saltmaker girl, whose “salt-burner's robe” (shioyaki-goromo) is also, by a play of words, her erotic longing.
14. The gatekeeper's words recall a line in a poem by Bai Juyi (Hakushi monjū 2392).
15. “This passing lodging” is the spirit's temporary fleshly abode in this life, but it is unclear what “thirty or more years ago” refers to. Perhaps the original expression was proverbial for the swiftness with which a death recedes into the past (“His Highness died this summer, and already his gate is rusted shut”).
16. Shūishū 1350, attributed to Prince Shōtoku: “Alas for the traveler, a poor orphan, who lies there starving on Kataoka Mountain!”
17. “Although I am old, you are older, too [and so we are both now in the same boat].” Genji monogatari kochūshakusho in'yō waka 160: “I always complained of my sad lot, yet now I must groan for yours.”
18. Both poems play on “Honorable Granny” by alluding to Shūishū 545, which contains the words oya no oya (“mother's mother”). While a certain lady was in Ōmi, just east of the capital, her grandson passed by, on his way back to the capital from the eastern provinces. When he did not even stop to see her, claiming to be in too much of a hurry, she sent him, “You would have called on me, if you thought of me as your mother's mother; perhaps you are not really my child's child.”
19. “Actually” (nakanaka) because the season for beautiful nights is supposed conventionally to be spring or autumn.
20. To marry her to Genji. She did not wish to suffer the fate of Rokujō, and for a Princess the ideal was to remain unmarried.
21. Nakatsukasa shū 249: “If I love, the fault is mine, I know, and so I suffer and know not what to do.”
22. Kokinshū 1108 plays on the syllables of this name (that of a river in Ōmi Province) to seal a lover's lips after a stolen night together.
23. Away from contact with Buddhist teaching or practice. The Kamo Priestess, like the Ise Priestess, could have nothing to do with Buddhist things.
24. In Kokinshū 1025 the poet discovers that an experimental separation from his beloved (to see how it might feel) is “no joke at all.”
25. Akome, a robe worn by adult men between the shift (hitoe) and the train-robe (shitagasane), but by children on top.
26. Even a little girl was supposed to keep her face hidden behind her fan.
27. “You have so much of her, despite not having grown up with your father [her brother].” In “Young Murasaki” the dye plant and color (purple) known as murasaki was first associated by Genji with Fujitsubo because of its use in poetry; then the association passed to the little girl, who became Murasaki.
28. Oborozukiyo. What happened is the scandal over her and Genji.
29. Genji's strikingly dismissive discussion of the lady from Akashi contains no polite language at all.
30. The water is Murasaki, the moon Genji.
31. The beautiful mandarin duck, which adorned many gardens like Genji's, mates for life, and in East Asia it is therefore the emblem of conjugal fidelity.
32. In Amida's paradise. The soul was reborn there enthroned on a lotus flower that rose from the lake before Amida and his palace, and it became a commonplace for lovers to wish to be reborn there on the same lotus throne.
33. The River of Three Fords (mitsu no se, usually sanzu no kawa), which encircles the afterworld. Those who crossed it did so via one of three fords—shallow, middling, or deep, according to the gravity of their sins.
21: OTOME
1. The change to summer clothes on the first day of the fourth month.
2. “Can you have imagined that when the Day of Purification came round again you would play no part in it as Kamo Priestess, and that your only purification would be that associated with coming out of mourning?” The death of her father had obliged Asagao to step down as Priestess and wear mourning, and the change back from mourning to ordinary colors involved its own purification ritual. “Mourning gray” translates fujigoromo (“wisteria clothing”); in early times, mourning presumably involved wearing rough clothing woven of wisteria-bark fiber. The fuji (“wisteria”) of fujigoromo is connected to the wisteria blossoms to which the note is tied.
3. Regretted your becoming the Kamo Priestess so that he could not have Genji as a son-in-law.
4. Ōmiya (the Third Princess), Aoi's mother, Yūgiri's grandmother, and the sister of the Fifth Princess.
5. Tō no Chūjō and his half brothers.
6. The rank conventionally given to the son of a Prince or to a first-generation Genji (Minamoto) after his coming of age. Yūgiri is a second-generation Genji, but his father's exceptional power and prestige make the fourth rank (lower grade) obvious for him, too.
7. Asagi, a bright but quite light blue worn by the sixth rank. Yūgiri has apparently been serving as a privy page.
8. A young man at the Academy was not on the ladder of offi
cial promotion.
9. “Learning” (zae) means study of the Chinese classics (literature, philosophy, law). Yamato-damashii (“Japanese wit”) centuries later became the more exalted “Japanese spirit.” This is its earliest occurrence in surviving Japanese literature.
10. Saemon no Kami, presumably a younger half brother of Tō no Chūjō. The incumbent normally held the junior fourth rank.
11. These cousins of Yūgiri would have been appointed to the fifth rank on coming of age.
12. The speaker's language, strikingly different from that of the courtiers, includes words and locutions that must have been peculiar to the Academy.
13. Tsuridono, a pavilion built on stilts over the garden lake of a Heian dwelling and joined to the rest of the house by an open walkway. It was used for relaxing pastimes.
14. The poetic form assigned to the professionals consists of four rhyming couplets of five characters each; the form given the amateurs consists of four lines of either five or seven characters.
15. The assigned topic (dai) was normally worded as a five-character line of poetry.
16. The incumbent in this office, which required an education in Chinese literature, held the fifth rank, upper grade.
17. Two hallowed Chinese examples of devotion to study. One young man who cannot afford oil for his lamp reads at night in summer by the light of fireflies caught in a gauze bag, and the other reads in winter by light reflected off snow.
18. Nyūgaku, a formal event in which the new student presented gifts to his teacher.
19. His grandmother.
20. When he received his academic style.
The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Junichiro Breakdown of Genji) Page 154
