The Tale of Genji- A Visual Companion

by Melissa McCormick

  the scuffl

  e. Notice how the other carriages in the

  now pregnant with Genji’s child (his son Yūgiri),

  image have shafts that rest neatly on stands with

  decides at the last minute to view one of the prelim-

  red rope coiled around their ends. Without a stand,

  inary events. She ventures out to see the customary

  Rokujō’s men must rest the shafts on the wheel hub

  procession of the newly appointed priestess of the

  of a neighboring carriage, lest they lower them to

  Kamo Shrines heading to her purifi cation ritual at

  the ground and risk their Lady tumbling forward

  the Kamo River. The Kamo Shrines (Kamigamo and

  due to the resulting incline. The whole episode is

  Shimogamo Shrines), located north of the imperial

  unbearable for someone of Rokujō’s status; she is

  palace along the banks of the Kamo River and near

  the widow of an imperial prince, and the mother of

  the sacred Tadasu Forest, housed deities who pro-

  a princess, who at that very moment is preparing for

  tected the capital city against malevolent forces. her role as Shrine Priestess at Ise, a counterpart to An unmarried princess, often a daughter of the the Kamo Priestess and an honor rarely bestowed.

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  This humiliation at the hands of Aoi, her younger

  niece by marriage, sets the subsequent events of

  the chapter in motion. Rokujō’s longing for Genji

  becomes obsessive, and her heart is thrown into so

  much turmoil that her feelings take the form of a

  wrathful spirit that torments her rival. The spirit

  attacks when Aoi is most vulnerable — as she goes

  into labor with Genji’s son — and it displays a tenac-

  ity and ferocity that presents the exorcists and spirit

  mediums with an unprecedented challenge. Rokujō

  seems to be a victim of her own excessive passions

  as she recollects in horror a dream in which she

  violently attacks Genji’s wife. The identity of the

  malignant spirit reveals itself to Genji while he sits

  at the bedside of his wife, who lies with her belly

  distended and in the throes of suff ering. He hears

  the chilling voice of Rokujō emerging f rom Aoi’s

  mouth, asking him to call off the exorcists. The full

  force of the spirit-taming community is mobilized,

  Rokujō has long worried that her aff air with the

  and somehow Aoi survives to deliver a healthy

  dashing young Genji, seven years her junior, with-

  baby boy. Days later, when the family assumes Aoi

  out the recognition of marriage, would destroy her

  is recovering and all is well, they leave her unat-

  reputation and leave her a laughingstock. The poem

  tended, allowing the evil spirit to swoop in and deal

  in the calligraphic excerpt paired with the painting

  one fi nal, fatal blow to the young woman. Heart-

  in the album gives voice to Rokujō’s despair as she

  wrenching scenes of parental grief and spousal

  sits in the carriage. She expresses her sadness that

  mourning follow. The Minister of the Left and his

  Genji is as inaccessible to her as the fl eeting refl ec-

  wife Ōmiya must deal not only with the loss of their

  tion across the waters of “the cleansing stream” of

  only daughter but with the inevitable disappearance

  the Kamo River, reminiscent of her own miserable

  of Genji f rom their household as his visits become

  fate ( mi no uki).

  few and far between.

  Chapter 9 | Leaves of Wild Ginger | 59

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  The fence of the gods

  On hearing this Genji replied:

  Has no signpost cedar tree

  When I remembered

  Standing by its gate;

  Here was where the maiden dwelt,

  How then can you have strayed here

  Drawn by my longing

  To break this sakaki branch?

  I sought and broke the sakaki

  For the f ragrance of its leaves.

  cranston, p. 741

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  10

  A Branch

  of Sacred

  Evergreen

  Sakaki

  Kamigaki wa

  to kikoetamaeba,

  Shirushi no sugi mo

  Otomego ga

  Naki mono o

  Atari to omoeba

  Ika ni magaete

  Sakakiba no

  Oreru sakaki zo

  Ka o natsukashimi

  Tomete koso ore

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  Despite all that transpired in the previous chapter,

  hair hinting at her presence. In response to Genji’s

  Chapter Ten begins with the general assumption

  gesture, she speaks the fi rst of two poems inscribed

  that, given her status, Rokujō will be appointed on the album leaf, hers beginning with the word for Genji’s offi

  cial wife, replacing the deceased Aoi. “deity” ( kami

  ) brushed at the highest point on the

  Having encountered the chilling voice of his lover

  green-colored sheet. The darkly brushed character

  emerging f rom the possessed body of his wife, how-

  appears on the same visual register as the shrine gate

  ever, Genji makes no such overtures, and Rokujō

  in the upper left corner of the painting and acts as its

  decides that the only course open to her is to leave

  graphic counterpart, establishing a sacred perimeter

  the capital. She begins making plans to accompany

  around the text-image pairing. The word sakaki ( )

  her young daughter, newly appointed as the High

  appears at the top of the third line, highly visible on

  Priestess of Ise, to the faraway shrine, which is ded-

  an undecorated portion of the paper just below the

  icated to the goddess Amaterasu. Rokujō spends

  decorative border. Its placement at the head of a col-

  months at the “shrine in the fi elds” ( nonomiya), a

  umn despite the lack of a natural break in the poetry

  temporary lodging just west of the capital, where,

  is the calligrapher’s way of announcing the word’s

  according to custom, her daughter is to engage in

  thematic importance. This particular logograph,

  rites of purifi cation before her departure to Ise. The

  which combines the radical for “tree” and the graph

  stage is thus set amid this hushed, sacred precinct for

  for “deity,” resona
tes with the fi rst character in the

  a fi nal encounter between Genji and Rokujō, one of

  excerpt. Another option for the calligrapher would

  the most celebrated scenes in the tale, immortalized

  have been to express the word sakaki phonetically, as

  in Noh plays f rom the fi fteenth century onward.

  it appears at the bottom of the fourth line in Genji’s

  Genji crosses the plains of Sagano and basks in the

  poem, through two separate kana and the character

  austere scenery on that moonlit night — the withered

  for “tree” (

  ). Instead, the visually dense logo-

  autumn fl owers and thickets of satin-tail grass on

  graph in the center of the sheet calls attention both

  route, the chirping of crickets and the sparse strains of

  a koto carried on the wind. The simple wooden struc-

  tures of the shrine soon come into view surrounded

  by low-lying brushwood fences and rough-hewn

  shrine gates made of tree trunks with their bark still

  intact. The main gate appears in the upper left corner

  of the album painting, a pictorial motif that makes

  this famous scene immediately identifi able. It stands

  amid a dense fi eld of autumn wildfl owers — maiden

  fl owers ( ominaeshi), bush clover ( hagi), and pampas

  grass ( susuki). A delicate vine of green ivy winds

  its way around the dark brown gateposts. Affi

  xed

  to the crossbeam is a branch of sakaki and a cluster

  of white paper streamers used for purifi cation and

  blessing. This is one of four representations of sakaki

  in this pair of album leaves if both text and image are

  taken into account. The most conspicuous extends

  from Genji’s hand as he leans in toward Rokujō,

  off ering her the evergreen and likening its unfading

  color to his unchanging feelings for her. Rokujō sits

  behind a brightly patterned red curtain, only the

  edge of her white robe and a curling strand of black

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  to the word’s sacrality and its “thingness,” triggering

  dignity and to tame her angry spirit. As dawn breaks

  the viewer to search for the object it signifi es in the

  they exchange poems of parting, and Genji tenderly

  image to the left. There, the painted sakaki branch

  takes her hand, hesitating to leave, sensing this will

  appears at the culmination of a descending diagonal

  be the last time they see each other. The scene ends

  that begins with the sloping tops of the calligraphy

  with a touching image of Rokujō, her heart full of

  and continues with the white borders of the tatami.

  regret, staring at the empty place where her lover sat

  Both the graphic and pictorial representations of the

  just moments before.

  sakaki branch function as centripetal presences in

  Once Lady Rokujō and her daughter have

  their respective leaves.

  departed for Ise, Chapter Ten takes a dramatic

  Genji’s foray into a hallowed precinct of the kami

  turn, becoming one of the most politically conse-

  and his off ering of a sacred branch in the opening

  quential chapters in the book. Genji’s father, the

  scene of this chapter functions as a kind of purifi ca-

  retired Emperor, passes away and the political cen-

  tion after the death and haunting spirit possession of

  ter of gravity radically shifts in the direction of the

  Chapter Nine, and specifi cally of the malignancies

  faction of the Minister of the Right and his daugh-

  associated with Lady Rokujō. By this point Rokujō

  ter Kokiden, the mother of the reigning emperor.

  has been rejected by her young lover, subjected to

  The court becomes a hostile, even treacherous

  public humiliation and gossip, and she has suff ered

  place for Genji, and with his status in f ree-fall, he

  viscerally while her tormented psyche took malevo-

  acts up more recklessly than ever. He forces his

  lent shape to lash out against Aoi. In a culminating

  way into the quarters of Fujitsubo, the widowed

  scene of the dramatic arc of her story in the last

  Empress, risking the exposure of their previous

  chapter, she fi nds herself reeking of the poppy seeds

  aff air and thence the legitimacy of the imperial line.

  characteristically burned at an exorcism, realizes in

  Fujitsubo so fears that people will realize that the

  horror what her wandering spirit has been up to,

  Crown Prince is their son that she takes Buddhist

  and tries but fails to wash the smoky smell f rom

  vows. Meanwhile, Genji continues his aff air with

  her hair and clothing. The representation of Rokujō

  Kokiden’s sister, Oborozukiyo, who is promised to

  in this painting by a small portion of a white robe

  the reigning Emperor Suzaku, leading to a farcical

  hints at her previous incarnation as a spirit, but also

  scene in which the Minister of the Right discovers

  communicates her general reserve, her contrition,

  Genji sprawled out brazenly inside his daughter’s

  and her hesitation to meet with Genji. At the same

  curtained bed. At the same time, the tale’s master-

  time, her decision to remove herself f rom the cap-

  ful use of references to ancient Chinese history and

  ital allows for a recasting of the pair’s relationship

  classical fi gures lends weight to the court intrigue in

  that puts Genji in the position of the rejected lover

  this chapter, as well as Genji’s attempts at resistance,

  while allowing Rokujō to recuperate a modicum of

  and the events about to unfold.

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  In nostalgia

  For the scent of orange bloom

  The cuckoo comes,

  Visiting with its inquiries

  The village where the fl owers fall.

  cranston, p. 753

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  11

  The Lady

  at the

  Villa of

  Scattering

  Orange

  Blossoms

  Hanachirusato

  Tachibana no

  Ka o natsukashimi

  Hototogisu

  Hana chiru sato o

  Tazunete zo tou

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  In waka poetry, and in prose passages i
n The Tale of

  covered in previous chapters even though no such

  Genji, the invocation of the fragrance of the orange

  liaisons were ever described. Likewise, the chapter

  blossoms was often associated with a remembrance

  refers in its fi rst lines to even more women from

  of things past, especially of lost loved ones. As if

  Genji’s past who were never fully introduced, a nar-

  attempting to lure the viewer into a scent-triggered

  rative shorthand implying that Genji’s aff airs have

  state of wistfulness, the calligraphic excerpt for this

  outpaced Murasaki Shikibu’s ability to record them.

  chapter begins toward the edge of the paper on the

  Rather than Genji’s romantic encounter with

  lower right with the words, “the fragrance of the

  Hanachirusato on this summer night, the album

  orange” ( tachibana no ka

  ). The brushwork

  painting focuses on his conversation with her older

  of the poem gently lilts leftward and leads the eye

  sister Reikeiden, placing the two of them directly in

  directly to an image of an orange tree in the adja-

  the center of the composition, their heads sympa-

  cent painting, where green branches, punctuated by

  thetically tilting toward each other. A soft gold cloud

  delicate white blossoms, create a perfumed canopy

  gently fl oats above the pair and leads our eye upward

  over the couple below who converse about their to the night sky where a waning gibbous moon, once longing for the past. Genji sits in the center of the

  silver and now blackened from oxidation, appears

  room addressing a former consort of his father, a

  between parted clouds. The fi fth-month moon rises

  woman who occupied the Reikeiden quarters at the

  late, in utter darkness, its small size providing only

  palace, and who was thus on par with the Kokiden

  faint illumination. Both poem and picture play with

  Consort. The lady of the Reikeiden bore no children

  the idea of darkness creating a heightened sense of

  to succeed to the throne, however, and following the

  smell and sound; the smell of the orange blossom

  emperor’s abdication and his recent death, has been

  wafts in through the blinds and is evoked in the cal-

  living in relative isolation, her once grand life at court

  ligraphy, while above, the hototogisu spreads its wings