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]”).
7. In the middle or toward the end of the first month.
8. The hour of the Boar was roughly 9:00 to 11:00 P.M., that of the Rat between 11:00 P.M. and 1:00 A.M.
9. He is probably in a hunting cloak, a level of dress far below the one proper for him.
10. Through the break in the reed fence.
11. Mama, a familiar term (presumably used first by Ukifune as a child) for the woman to whom the last speaker referred as otodo, a polite appellation suitable for use by one gentlewoman speaking of another.
12. The temple at the southern end of Lake Biwa where, according to legend, Murasaki Shikibu conceived The Tale of Genji. Like Hatsuse (Hasedera), it is dedicated to Kannon.
13. Kokinshū 684, by Ki no Tomonori: “Like cherry blossoms on the hills, seen through trailing spring mists, dear, I will never have my fill of looking at you.”
14. Being (as far as Niou knows) close relatives.
15. Kokinshū 992, by Michinoku: “Perhaps my soul went in among the sleeves I still desire, for I feel as though it is gone from me.”
16. As though the warm clothes they had spread over each other as they lay together were all cold, now that they were apart. The expression ono ga kinuginu (“his clothes and hers”) appears in Kokinshū 637, though it is difficult to translate it the same way: “When the light of dawn begins slowly to fill the sky, there is such sorrow in the parting of our clothes!”
17. The second.
18. Kaoru's long absences from Uji.
19. Kokinshū 689: “Lonely sleeves spread on her narrow mat, tonight again does she await me, the maiden of Uji Bridge?”
20. Kokinshū 41, by Ōshikōchi no Mitsune: “On a night in spring, darkness covers all; plum blossoms remain unseen, but their scent cannot be hidden.” The reference is to Kaoru's personal scent.
21. “Two or three more years” is puzzling. As far as one can tell from “Spring Shoots II” and “The Oak Tree,” Niou is roughly a half year older than Kaoru.
22. To linger on only so as to greet the next fall of snow. The conceit is derived from two poems. (1) Yakamochi shū 284, by Ōtomo no Yakamochi: “Upon the plum tree's boughs white snow, indistinguishable from the blossoms, lingers as though awaiting a friend.” (2) Kokin rokujō 4131 (also Tsurayuki shū 60), by Ki no Tsurayuki: “In the Yoshino hills, where they know nothing of plum trees in bloom, they must be watching the snow that only awaits a friend.”
23. The moon shines in the dawn sky around the twentieth of the lunar month, and Niou's expedition to Uji therefore seems to be about ten days after the Chinese poetry party.
24. Tachibana (“orange”) trees, a broadleaf evergreen. The island no longer exists.
25. Shūishū 1243, by Hitomaro: “Though there was a horse at Kohata village in Yamashina, I came on foot for love of you.”
26. Her phrase suggests a fear that he will abandon her.
27. Shūishū 895, by Hitomaro: “Caught in a cocoon like one of my parents' silkworms, O how I miss you, darling, when we cannot meet!”
28. Uji, “this village's name,” plays on ushi, “hateful.” The double meaning was made famous by Kokinshū 983, by Kisen Hōshi: “My hut is southeast of the City: I live with the deer in the Uji hills, where they say, I reject the world.”
29. Probably a phrase from a poem, although no convincing source has been identified. Ukifune's poem suggests to some that she wishes never to have to decide between Kaoru and Niou, and to others that she wishes to rise into the sky as a cloud of smoke from her own funeral pyre.
30. Ukifune's poem draws on Kokinshū 617, by Fujiwara no Toshiyuki, for the image of lonely tears swelling into a river that wets the speaker's sleeves (namidagawa); and on Kokinshū 705, by Ariwara no Narihira, for that of a rain of tears shed by the speaker in acknowledgment of an unhappy lot (mi o shiru ame). Both poems also appear in Ise monogatari, section 107.
31. “I have always been interested in religion, and I had not meant to marry.”
32. The paintings will go on the sliding panels. The men officially assigned to guard such ranking nobles as Kaoru were often skilled in the arts.
33. Kokinshū 938, by Ono no Komachi: “I am forlorn, a drifting waterweed cut off at the root: should a current call, O I would go.”
34. Ukifunes half sister by Hitachi.
35. Genji monogatari kochūshakusho in'yō waka 983: “Though you hide in the mountains where eightfold clouds rise, once my mind was made up, would I not come to find you?”
36. The “prayers” are Buddhist and the “purifications” what is now called Shinto.
37. How her daughter longed to rid herself of her unwanted passion for Niou. Kokinshū 501: “I purified myself in a lustration stream, that I might love no more; but the gods, it seems, did not accept my prayer.”
38. An allusion to the saibara song “Where the Road Begins” (“Michi no kuchi”). Takefu was the capital of the province of Echizen, on the Japan Sea. Murasaki Shikibu had lived there for two years with her father. A passage in the song could be translated, “Go and tell my mother I am here in Takefu…”
39. Now that you will soon be here yourself.
40. Ise monogatari 193 (section 112; also Kokinshū 708): The wind is so strong, the smoke from the fire of the saltmaker girl at Suma is blowing in a surprising direction” (“The girl is in love with someone unexpected”).
41. The northeast quarter of Rokujō, formerly occupied by Hanachirusato.
42. To light his way back to his Sanjō residence.
43. A future wife.
44. As a husband to Nakanobu's daughter.
45. Kokinshū 1093: “If I ever leave you and love another, waves will wash over the pine-clad hill of Sue!” The image of waves washing over Sue no Matsuyama (a hill near the coast in present Miyagi Prefecture) appears in many an accusing poem like Kaoru's.
46. Udoneri, one of about a hundred men affiliated with the Bureau of Central Affairs and selected from the families of men of the fourth and fifth ranks. Assigned to guard the highest nobles, they could be arrogant and rough.
47. Ukon no Taifu, an Aide of the Right Guards (Ukon no Zō, a sixth-rank post), exceptionally promoted to the fifth rank. Kaoru himself is Commander of the Right Guards.
48. The verb form indicates that the Constable is talking to Kaoru through an intermediary.
49. Kokin rokujō 3962: “I who, like a pine tree, pine for our next meeting to come soon, find the moss around my base these days all ravaged with longing.” The poem plays on matsu, “pine tree” and “await.”
50. A particularly famous legend on this theme is found in Man'yōshū 1813ff., Yamato monogatari 147, and elsewhere.
51. Kokinshū 488: “My love seems to fill all the vast, empty heavens; though I seek to dispel it, it has nowhere else to go.”
52. Shūishū 1217: “There can, I know, be no mountain not overspread by wandering, white clouds.” The poem plays on shira[zu] (“know not”) and shirakumo (“white clouds”); and on naku (“is / are not” and “weep”).
53. A sheep walking slowly to be slaughtered; the figure of speech is from the Nehan-gyō.
54. Gosenshū 640, by Chūjō no Kōi: “I would die after today, but then, even in dream, where, love, would you go to seek my grave?”
55. According to a treatise on dream reading cited in an early commentary, to dream of someone being ill announces that the person is going to die.
56. She fears the jealousy of Kaoru's wife.
57. A paper sent back by the temple, listing the titles of sutras read and the number of scrolls.
52: KAGERŌ
1. A scripture tells how Taishaku (Indra) brought a man (a previous incarnation of the Buddha) back to life in answer to the prayers of the man's mother. T
he tale was known in Japan particularly, thanks to the Buddhist tale collection Sanbōe.
2. China.
3. To avoid the pollution of death.
4. Ise monogatari 6 tells a particularly famous story about a demon who ate a hapless young woman “in one gulp.” Tales of magic foxes who take the form of a beautiful young woman to lead men astray are common in the folklore of the period, although there are no obvious surviving examples of a fox abducting a young woman.
5. Kaoru's wife, the Second Princess.
6. The corpse would normally be laid on these for cremation.
7. The Right Guards Commissioner, a son-in-law of the Constable who appeared in the last chapter.
8. The Nakanobu mentioned in the previous chapter.
9. A common motif in poetry; the bird would probably be a cuckoo (hototogisu) in spring or a wild goose (kari) in autumn.
10. The entire second half of the sentence (“he was touched as well…”) is in the original simply makibashira aware nari, more literally, “the pillar of fine wood was touching.”
11. Derived from a poem by Bai Juyi (Hakushi monjū 0160).
12. Or Her Highness, Naka no Kimi.
13. The fourth.
14. Kokinshū 855: “Should you visit her where she has gone, O cuckoo, tell her that I ever lift my voice in lamentation.”
15. As suggested by the poem in the previous note, the cuckoo was held in poetry to pass back and forth between the world of the living and the land of the dead, crying its low cry, shinobine: the word used also for stifled sobs of secret grief. It could therefore also be assimilated to shide no taosa (“master of the paddy fields in the realm of the dead”), a shadowy figure widely encountered in Japanese folklore. Kaoru supposes that, like the cuckoo he has just heard, Niou is crying his shinobine, and that Niou's heart, like the cuckoo, goes to Ukifune among the dead.
16. Ōigimi and Ukifune.
17. Kokinshū 1061: “If we all drowned ourselves when life tries us too sorely, the abyss would all too soon be filled.”
18. A “stone belt” adorned with rhinoceros horn was worn by a gentleman of the fourth or fifth rank.
19. His son-in-law's.
20. She is in mourning for her adoptive mother Murasaki's father, the late Lord of the Bureau of Ceremonial. Mourning for an uncle (the period lasted three months) was defined as “light,” in contrast to that for a parent.
21. “If I had died, rather than Ukifune, [you would not feel it so much].” Kozaishō's phrase (kaetaraba) may be from the second half of Gosenshū 1364, by Teiji no In (Emperor Uda).
22. The expounding of the fifth scroll of the Lotus Sutra provided the occasion for the assembly to process around the garden lake (assimilating it to the lake in paradise) while bearing bundles of firewood, buckets of water, and offerings attached to artificial gold or silver branches. The scene is briefly evoked in “The Green Branch.”
23. Ice cut in the winter was kept though the summer in specially insulated rooms or caves (himuro).
24. From the waist up, at least; the material is all but transparent.
25. Kaoru is supposed to be the Empress's younger half brother.
26. To the First Princess's gentlewomen, behind the blinds.
27. This tale has not survived.
28. Se (the rapids, shoals, or shallow places of a stream) is commonly used, figuratively, to mean “moment,” “occasion,” “passage of time,” and so on.
29. Niou could not just place her there; she had to appeal to someone already on the Empress's staff, someone with whom she could claim a connection, to introduce her.
30. Being a gentlewoman after all, she has to be given a meshina, a “service name,” like all the others. Miya no Kimi means something like “His Highness's girl.”
31. A gentlewoman on duty would properly wear both a train and a Chinese jacket, but Miya no Kimi, who is not really like the other gentlewomen, wears only the train.
32. Kokinshū 229, by Ono no Yoshiki: “Were I to linger in a meadow filled with maidenflowers in bloom, I would quite unjustly harm my name.”
33. “No doubt your lover will be here soon.”
34. From a poem by Bai Juyi (Hakushi monjū 0790).
35. Niou for obvious reasons, and the First Princess because of his unrequited infatuation.
36. Kaoru alludes, as does Chūjō just below, to a passage in the Tang Chinese story You xian ku (Cavern of the Disporting Fairies). The hero is drawn by koto music to a fairy maiden said to resemble her maternal uncle and her elder brother, both famously handsome men.
37. Kaoru's mother, Onna San no Miya, is the daughter of Emperor Suzaku and a Consort, not his Empress.
38. Kokin rokujō 2640: “How I wish to find some other word than omou, that I might use it only for my love for you!” Omou, which means “dwell fondly on someone in one's thoughts,” is a very common verb that in proper context can correspond to “love.”
39. Miya no Kimi and Kaoru are supposed to be cousins.
40. Kokinshū 909, by Fujiwara no Okikaze: “In all the world, whom am I to call a friend? Alas, the very Takasago Pine, of old, stood me no company.” Lamenting the loneliness of old age, the poet evokes himself rhetorically as even older than the Takasago Pine, famed for its immemorial age.
41. Gosenshū 1264: “That which they call this world lasts just the little while a mayfly lives, so briefly it might not be there at all.”
53: TENARAI
1. One of the three major sectors of the great monastic complex on Mount Hiei.
2. A stretch of low hills north of Nara, between Nara and the Kizu River.
3. The pollution of death will taint him if the old nun dies in his house, and he will be unable to make his pilgrimage to Mitake, a sacred mountain south of Nara.
4. There is evidence that the historical Suzaku actually visited such a place at Uji. The precise location of this one is a matter of conjecture, but it was probably near the north bank of the Uji River, the side toward the City.
5. Troublesome creatures or spirits.
6. Foxes were seen as shape-changers in both China and Japan. They particularly favored the shape of a beautiful young woman.
7. Get her outside the wall surrounding the grounds so that her death should not pollute the house and all in it.
8. The Heart Sutra, which was recited before a healing ritual (kitō) proper in order to repel evil influences and attract good ones.
9. She looks for kizu: in part physical “wounds,” but perhaps, even more, defects that would show that the girl is not really human.
10. The speaker cannot be identified.
11. The one occupied also by the Prelate's sister.
12. Perform the purificatory fire ritual (goma), during which poppy seeds were thrown onto the sacred fire.
13. Probably a woman he employed for the purpose.
14. Not a scholar monk (gakusō), but one whose principal occupation was religious practice.
15. Ise monogatari 63 (section 30): “I seem to be in love with grizzled locks a year short of one hundred, for their image lingers in my mind.”
16. As did Kaguya-hime, the heroine of The Old Bamboo Cutter. This allusion becomes explicit below.
17. Ōkagami 14 (the “Tokihira-den” section), by Sugawara no Michizane: “I am now the unwanted plaything of the waters: make yourself a weir, I beg you, and detain me!”
18. One (Jijū) is a gentlewoman and the other a page girl.
19. “City people.” Miyako-dori, a kind of gull, appears in Ise monogatari 13 (section 9; Kokinshū 411), by Ariwara no Narihira: “Are you true to your name? Then, city birds, I put you this question: the one I love—does she live or does she die?”
20. Shūishū 506: “How I long for somewhere not in the world at all to hide the many years that burden me!”
21. Shūishū 1098, by Sōjō Henjō (a priest), written when he saw young women visiting his temple garden: “How come the maidenflowers to bloom so beautifully here, when in this wor
ld people have such evil tongues?”
22. “Do not yield to anyone else's blandishments, because I want you for my own.” The name Adashino (actually, a burning ground northwest of the City) suggests ada, erotic frivolity.
23. Kotakagari, done in autumn for small birds such as quail. Tsurayuki shū 15 (Kokin rokujō 1201), by Ki no Tsurayuki, associates kotakagari with the hunter's request to a “maidenflower” to give him lodging for the night.
24. “I think she may be in love with someone else.” Komachi shū 98 (Shinkokinshū 336), by Ono no Komachi: “Whom do you await, O maidenflower, on Mount Matsuchi? For you seem plighted to a lover this autumn.”
25. His present wife, the daughter of the Fujiwara Counselor.
26. Another phrase from the “Mount Matsuchi” poem, above.
27. The word matsumushi (“pine cricket”) allows a familiar play on matsu (“pine” and “await”); moreover, a Chinese story known in Japan tells of a man drawn deep into the forest by the pine cricket's beckoning call, only to lose his way and never come out again. The “dew” refers to tears.
28. Kokinshū 214, by Mibu no Tadamine: “In a mountain village autumn is the loneliest time, when one is awoken by the belling of the stag.”
29. Kokinshū 955, by Mononobe no Yoshina: “When I seek to escape into mountains untouched by worldly cares, the one I love holds me back still!”
The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Junichiro Breakdown of Genji) Page 166
