no to naraba | If it becomes a moor |
uzura to narite | I will become a quail |
nakioramu | and cry. |
kari ni dani ya wa | Would you then come back, |
kimi wa kozaramu | even for a while, as a hunter? |
Moved by her reply, the man gave up the thought of leaving her.
The Road All Must Travel (125)
In the past, a man fell ill and felt that he would soon die.
tsui ni yuku | I had heard |
michi to wa kanete | there is a path |
kikishikado | that all must follow |
kinō kyō to wa | but didn’t think yesterday |
omowazarishi o | that I’d be going today … 124 |
[Introduction and translations by Jamie Newhard and Lewis Cook] | |
Sei Shōnagon (b. 965?) was the daughter of Kiyohara no Motosuke, a noted waka poet and one of the editors of the Gosenshū, the second imperial waka anthology. (The Sei in Sei Shōnagon’s name comes from the Sino-Japanese reading for the Kiyo in Kiyohara.) Around 981, Sei Shōnagon married Tachibana no Norimitsu, the first son of the noted Tachibana family, but after she bore him a child the next year, they were separated.
In 990 Fujiwara no Kaneie, the husband of the author of the Kagerō Diary, stepped down from his position as regent (kanpaku) and gave it to his son Fujiwara no Michitaka, who was referred to as middle regent (naka no kanpaku). Michitaka married his daughter Teishi to Emperor Ichijō (r. 986–1011) in 990, and she soon became a high consort (nyōgo) and then empress (chūgū). Sei Shōnagon became a lady-in-waiting to Teishi in 993, the year that Michitaka became prime minister (daijō daijin). In 994 Korechika, Michitaka’s eldest son and the apparent heir to the regency, became palace minister (naidaijin). In 995 Michitaka died in an epidemic, and in the following year Korechika was exiled in a move engineered by Michitaka’s younger brother and rival Michinaga, and Teishi was forced to leave the imperial palace. Sei Shōnagon continued to serve Teishi until Teishi’s death in childbirth in 1000. In the meantime, in 999, Shōshi, Michinaga’s daughter and Murasaki Shikibu’s mistress, became the chief consort to Emperor Ichijō, marking Michinaga’s ascent to the pinnacle of power.
Political context for Sei Shōnagon
THE PILLOW BOOK (MAKURA NO SŌSHI, CA. 1000)
The Pillow Book, which was finished after the demise of Teishi’s salon, focuses mainly on the years 993 and 994, when the Michitaka family and Teishi were at the height of their glory, leaving unmentioned the subsequent tragedy. Almost all the major works by women of this time were written by women in Empress Shōshi’s salon: Murasaki Shikibu, Izumi Shikibu, and Akazome’emon. Only Sei Shōnagon’s Pillow Book represents the rival salon of Empress Teishi. Like many other diaries by court women, The Pillow Book can be seen as a memorial to the author’s patron, specifically, an homage to the Naka no Kanpaku family and a literary prayer to the spirit of the deceased empress Teishi. One of the few indirect references to the sad circumstances that befell Teishi’s family is “The Cat Who Lived in the Palace,” about the cruel punishment, sudden exile, and ignominious return of the dog Okinamaro, who, like Korechika, secretly returned to the capital and later was pardoned.
The three hundred discrete sections of The Pillow Book can be divided into three different types—lists, essay, and diary—that sometimes overlap. The list sections consist of noun sections (mono wa), which describe particular categories of things like “Flowering Trees,” “Birds,” and “Insects” and tend to focus on nature or poetic topics, and adjectival sections (monozukushi), which describe a particular state, such as “Depressing Things,” and contain interesting lists and often are (particularly in the case of negative adjectives) humorous and witty. The diary sections, such as “The Sliding Screen in the Back of the Hall,” describe specific events and figures in history, particularly those related to Empress Teishi and her immediate family.
The essay sections sometimes focus on a specific season or month, but unlike the diary sections, they bear no historical dates. The textual variants of The Pillow Book treat these three section types differently. The Maeda and Sakai variants separate them into three large groups. By contrast, the Nōin variant and the Sankan variant, which is translated here and has become the canonical version, mix the different types of sections. The end result is that The Pillow Book appears ahistorical; events are not presented in chronological order but instead move back and forth in time, with no particular development or climax, creating a sense of a world suspended in time, a mode perhaps suitable for a paean to Teishi’s family.
Another category, which overlaps with the others and resembles anecdotal literature, is the “stories heard” (kikigaki)—that is, stories heard from one’s master or mistress—which provided knowledge and models of cultivation. Indeed, much of The Pillow Book is about aristocratic women’s education, especially the need for aesthetic awareness as well as erudition, allusiveness, and extreme refinement in communication. Sei Shōnagon shows a particular concern for delicacy and harmony, for the proper combination of object, sense, and circumstance, usually a fusion of human and natural worlds. Incongruity and disharmony, by contrast, become the butt of humor and of Sei Shōnagon’s sharp wit. The Pillow Book is often read as a personal record of accomplishments, with a number of the sections about incidents that display the author’s talent. Indeed, much of the interest of The Pillow Book has been in the strong character and personality of Sei Shōnagon.
The Pillow Book is noted for its distinctive prose style: its rhythmic, quick-moving, compressed, and varied sentences, often set up in alternating couplets. Although the typical Japanese sentence ends with the predicate, the phrases and sentences in The Pillow Book often end with nouns or eliminate the exclamatory and connective particles so characteristic of Heian women’s literature. The compact, forceful, bright, witty style stands in contrast to the soft, meandering style found in The Tale of Genji and other works by Heian women. Indeed, the adjectival sections in particular have a haikai-esque (comic linked verse) quality, marked by witty, unexpected juxtaposition.
The Pillow Book is now considered one of the twin pillars of Heian vernacular court literature, but unlike the Kokinshū, The Tales of Ise, and The Tale of Genji, which had been canonized by the thirteen century, The Pillow Book was not a required text for waka poets (perhaps because it contained relatively little poetry) and was relatively neglected in the Heian and medieval periods. But The Pillow Book became popular with the new commoner audience in the Tokugawa (Edo) period and was widely read for its style, humor, and interesting lists. By the modern period, The Pillow Book was treated as an exemplar of the zuihitsu (meanderings of the brush) or miscellany genre, centered on personal observations and musings. Since then, it has been regarded in modern literary histories as the generic predecessor of An Account of a Ten-Foot-Square Hut (Hōjōki) and Essays in Idleness (Tsurezuregusa).
In spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful. As the light creeps over the hills, their outlines are dyed a faint red, and wisps of purplish cloud trail over them.
In summer the nights. Not only when the moon shines but on dark nights, too, as the fireflies flit to and fro, and even when it rains, how beautiful it is!
In autumn the evenings, when the glittering sun sinks close to the edge of the hills and the crows fly back to their nests in threes and fours and twos; more charming still is a file of wild geese, like specks in the distant sky. When the sun has set, one’s heart is moved by the sound of the wind and the hum of the insects.
In winter the early mornings. It is beautiful indeed when snow has fallen during the night, but splendid too when the ground is white with frost; or even when there is no snow or frost, but it is simply very cold and the attendants hurry from room to room stirring up the fires and bringing charcoal, how well this fits the season’s mood! But as noon approaches and the cold wears off, no one bothers to keep the braziers alight, and soon nothing remains but piles of white ashes.
The Cat Who Lived in the Palace (8)
The cat who lived in the palace had been awarded the headdress of nobility125 and was called Lady Myōbu. She was a very pretty cat, and His Majesty saw to it that she was treated with the greatest care.
One day she wandered onto the veranda, and Lady Uma, the nurse in charge of her, called out, “Oh, you naughty thing! Please come inside at once.” But the cat paid no attention and went on basking sleepily in the sun. Intending to give her a scare, the nurse called for the dog, Okinamaro.
“Okinamaro, where are you?” she cried. “Come here and bite Lady Myōbu!” The foolish Okinamaro, believing that the nurse was in earnest, rushed at the cat, who, startled and terrified, ran behind the blind in the imperial dining room, where the emperor happened to be sitting. Greatly surprised, His Majesty picked up the cat and held her in his arms. He summoned his gentlemen-in-waiting. When Tadataka, the chamberlain,126 appeared, His Majesty ordered that Okinamaro be chastised and banished to Dog Island. All the attendants started to chase the dog amid great confusion. His Majesty also reproached Lady Uma. “We shall have to find a new nurse for our cat,” he told her. “I no longer feel I can count on you to look after her.” Lady Uma bowed; thereafter she no longer appeared in the emperor’s presence.
The imperial guards quickly succeeded in catching Okinamaro and drove him out of the palace grounds. Poor dog! He used to swagger about so happily. Recently, on the third day of the Third Month,127 when the controller first secretary paraded him through the palace grounds, Okinamaro was adorned with garlands of willow leaves, peach blossoms on his head, and cherry blossoms around his body. How could the dog have imagined that this would be his fate? We all felt sorry for him. “When Her Majesty was having her meals,” recalled one of the ladies-in-waiting, “Okinamaro always used to be in attendance and sit across from us. How I miss him!”
It was about noon, a few days after Okinamaro’s banishment, that we heard a dog howling fearfully. How could any dog possibly cry so long? All the other dogs rushed out in excitement to see what was happening. Meanwhile, a woman who served as a cleaner in the palace latrines ran up to us. “It’s terrible,” she said. “Two of the chamberlains are flogging a dog. They’ll surely kill him. He’s being punished for having come back after he was banished. It’s Tadataka and Sanefusa who are beating him.” Obviously the victim was Okinamaro. I was absolutely wretched and sent a servant to ask the men to stop, but just then the howling finally ceased. “He’s dead,” one of the servants informed me. “They’ve thrown his body outside the gate.”
That evening, while we were sitting in the palace bemoaning Okinamaro’s fate, a wretched-looking dog walked in; he was trembling all over, and his body was fearfully swollen.
“Oh dear,” said one of the ladies-in-waiting. “Can this be Okinamaro? We haven’t seen any other dog like him recently, have we?”
We called to him by name, but the dog did not respond. Some of us insisted that it was Okinamaro; others that it was not. “Please send for Lady Ukon,” said the empress, hearing our discussion. “She will certainly be able to tell.” We immediately went to Ukon’s room and told her she was wanted on an urgent matter.
“Is this Okinamaro?” the empress asked her, pointing to the dog.
“Well,” said Ukon, “it certainly looks like him, but I cannot believe that this loathsome creature is really our Okinamaro. When I called Okinamaro, he always used to come to me, wagging his tail. But this dog does not react at all. No, it cannot be the same one. And besides, wasn’t Okinamaro beaten to death and his body thrown away? How could any dog be alive after being flogged by two strong men?” Hearing this, Her Majesty was very unhappy.
When it got dark, we gave the dog something to eat, but he refused it, and we finally decided that this could not be Okinamaro.
On the following morning I went to attend the empress while her hair was being dressed and she was performing her ablutions. I was holding up the mirror for her when the dog we had seen on the previous evening slunk into the room and crouched next to one of the pillars. “Poor Okinamaro!” I said. “He had such a dreadful beating yesterday. How sad to think he is dead! I wonder what body he has been born into this time. Oh, how he must have suffered!”
At that moment the dog lying by the pillar started to shake and tremble and shed a flood of tears. It was astounding. So this really was Okinamaro! On the previous night it was to avoid betraying himself that he had refused to answer to his name. We were immensely moved and pleased. “Well, well, Okinamaro!” I said, putting down the mirror. The dog stretched himself flat on the floor and yelped loudly, so that the empress beamed with delight. All the ladies gathered round, and Her Majesty summoned Lady Ukon. When the empress explained what had happened, everyone talked and laughed with great excitement.
The news reached His Majesty, and he too came to the empress’s room. “It’s amazing,” he said with a smile. “To think that even a dog has such deep feelings!” When the emperor’s ladies-in-waiting heard the story, they too came along in a great crowd. “Okinamaro!” we called, and this time the dog rose and limped about the room with his swollen face. “He must have a meal prepared for him,” I said. “Yes,” said the empress, laughing happily, “now that Okinamaro has finally told us who he is.”
The chamberlain, Tadataka, was informed, and he hurried along from the Table Room.128 “Is it really true?” he asked. “Please let me see for myself.” I sent a maid to him with the following reply: “Alas, I am afraid that this is not the same dog after all.” “Well,” answered Tadataka, “whatever you say, I shall sooner or later have occasion to see the animal. You won’t be able to hide him from me indefinitely.”
Before long, Okinamaro was granted an imperial pardon and returned to his former happy state. Yet even now, when I remember how he whimpered and trembled in response to our sympathy, it strikes me as a strange and moving scene; when people talk to me about it, I start crying myself.
The Sliding Screen in the Back of the Hall (11)
The sliding screen in the back of the hall in the northeast corner of Seiryō Palace is decorated with paintings of the stormy sea and of the terrifying creatures with long arms and long legs that live there.129 When the doors of the empress’s room were open, we could always see this screen. One day we were sitting in the room, laughing at the paintings and remarking how unpleasant they were. By the balustrade of the veranda stood a large celadon vase, full of magnificent cherry branches; some of them were as much as five feet long, and their blossoms overflowed to the very foot of the railing. Toward noon the major counselor, Fujiwara no Korechika,130 arrived. He was dressed in a cherry-color court cloak, sufficiently worn to have lost its stiffness, a white underrobe, and loose trousers of dark purple; from beneath the cloak shone the pattern of another robe of dark red damask. Since His Majesty was present, Korechika knelt on the narrow wooden platform in front of the door and reported to him on official matters.
A group of ladies-in-waiting was seated behind the bamboo blinds. Their cherry-color Chinese jackets hung loosely over their shoulders with the collars pulled back; they wore robes of wisteria, golden yellow, and other colors, many of which showed beneath the blind covering the half shutter. Presently the noise of the attendants’ feet told us that dinner was about to be served in the Daytime Chamber, and we heard cries of “Make way. Make way.”
The bright, serene day delighted me. When the chamberlains had brought all the dishes into the chamber, they came to announce that dinner was ready, and His Majesty left by the middle door. After accompanying the emperor, Korechika returned to his previous place on the veranda beside the cherry blossoms. The empress pushed aside her curtain of state and came forward as far as the threshold. We were overwhelmed by the whole delightful scene. It was then that Korechika slowly intoned the words of the old poem,
The days and the months flow by,
but Mount Mimoro lasts forever.131
Deeply impressed, I wished that all this might indeed continue for a thousand years.
As soon as the ladies serving in the Daytime Chamber had called for the gentlemen-in-waiting to remove the trays, His Majesty returned to the empress’s room. Then he told me to rub some ink on the inkstone. Dazzled, I felt that I should never be able to take my eyes off his radiant countenance. Next he folded a piece of white paper. “I should like each of you,” he said, “to copy down on this paper the first ancient poem that comes into your head.”
“How am I going to manage this?” I asked Korechika, who was still out on the veranda.
“Write your poem quickly,” he said, “and show it to His Majesty. We men must not interfere in this.” Ordering an attendant to take the emperor’s inkstone to each of the women in the room, he told us to make haste. “Write down any poem you happen to remember,” he said. “The Naniwazu132 or whatever else you can think of.”
For some reason I was overcome with timidity; I blushed and had no idea what to do. Some of the other women managed to put down poems about the spring, the blossoms, and such suitable subjects; then they handed me the paper and said, “Now it’s your turn.” Picking up the brush, I wrote the poem that goes,
The years have passed
and age has come my way.
Yet I need only look at this fair flower
for all my cares to melt away.
I altered the third line, however, to read, “Yet I need only look upon my lord.”133
When he had finished reading, the emperor said, “I asked you to write these poems because I wanted to find out how quick you really were.
“A few years ago,” he continued, “Emperor En’yū ordered all his courtiers to write poems in a notebook. Some excused themselves on the grounds that their handwriting was poor; but the emperor insisted, saying that he did not care in the slightest about their handwriting or even whether their poems were suitable for the season. So they all had to swallow their embarrassment and produce something for the occasion. Among them was His Excellency, our present chancellor, who was then middle captain of the third rank. He wrote down the old poem,
Like the sea that beats
upon the shores of Izumo
as the tide sweeps in,
deeper it grows and deeper—
the love I bear for you.
“But he changed the last line to read, ‘The love I bear my lord!,’ and the emperor was full of praise.”
When I heard His Majesty tell this story, I was so overcome that I felt myself perspiring. It occurred to me that no younger woman would have been able to use my poem, and I felt very lucky. This sort of test can be a terrible ordeal: it often happens that people who usually write fluently are so overawed that they actually make mistakes in their characters.
Next the empress placed a notebook of Kokinshū poems in front of her and started reading out the first three lines of each one, asking us to supply the remainder. Among them were several famous poems that we had in our minds day and night; yet for some strange reason we were often unable to fill in the missing lines. Lady Saishō, for example, could manage only ten, which hardly qualified her as knowing her Kokinshū. Some of the other women, even less successful, could remember only about half a dozen poems. They would have done better to tell the empress quite simply that they had forgotten the lines; instead they came out with great lamentations like “Oh dear, how could we have done so badly in answering the questions that Your Majesty was pleased to put to us?”—all of which I found rather absurd.
When no one could complete a particular poem, the empress continued reading to the end. This produced further wails from the women: “Oh, we all knew that one! How could we be so stupid?”
“Those of you,” said the empress, “who had taken the trouble to copy out the Kokinshū several times would have been able to complete every single poem I have read. In the reign of Emperor Murakami there was a woman at court known as the Imperial Lady of Sen’yō Palace. She was the daughter of the minister of the left who lived in the Smaller Palace of the First Ward, and of course you all have heard of her. When she was still a young girl, her father gave her this advice: ‘First you must study penmanship. Next you must learn to play the seven-string zither better than anyone else. And also you must memorize all the poems in the twenty volumes of the Kokinshū.’
“Emperor Murakami,” continued Her Majesty, “had heard this story and remembered it years later when the girl had grown up and become an imperial consort. Once, on a day of abstinence,134 he came into her room, hiding a notebook of Kokinshū poems in the folds of his robe. He surprised her by seating himself behind a curtain of state; then, opening the book, he asked, ‘Tell me the verse written by such-and-such a poet, in such-and-such a year and on such-and-such an occasion.’ The lady understood what was afoot and that it was all in fun, yet the possibility of making a mistake or forgetting one of the poems must have worried her greatly. Before beginning the test, the emperor had summoned a couple of ladies-in-waiting who were particularly adept in poetry and told them to mark each incorrect reply by a go stone. What a splendid scene it must have been! You know, I really envy anyone who attended that emperor even as a lady-in-waiting.
“Well,” Her Majesty went on, “he then began questioning her. She answered without any hesitation, just giving a few words or phrases to show that she knew each poem. And never once did she make a mistake. After a time the emperor began to resent the lady’s flawless memory and decided to stop as soon as he detected any error or vagueness in her replies. Yet, after he had gone through ten books of the Kokinshū, he had still not caught her out. At this stage he declared that it would be useless to continue. Marking where he had left off, he went to bed. What a triumph for the lady!
“He slept for some time. On waking, he decided that he must have a final verdict and that if he waited until the following day to examine her on the other ten volumes, she might use the time to refresh her memory. So he would have to settle the matter that very night. Ordering his attendants to bring up the bedroom lamp, he resumed his questions. By the time he had finished all twenty volumes, the night was well advanced; and still the lady had not made a mistake.
“During all this time His Excellency, the lady’s father, was in a state of great agitation. As soon as he was informed that the emperor was testing his daughter, he sent his attendants to various temples to arrange for special recitations of the scriptures. Then he turned in the direction of the imperial palace and spent a long time in prayer. Such enthusiasm for poetry is really rather moving.”
The emperor, who had been listening to the whole story, was much impressed. “How can he possibly have read so many poems?” he remarked when Her Majesty had finished. “I doubt whether I could get through three or four volumes. But of course things have changed. In the old days even people of humble station had a taste for the arts and were interested in elegant pastimes. Such a story would hardly be possible nowadays, would it?”
The ladies in attendance on Her Majesty and the emperor’s own ladies-in-waiting who had been admitted into Her Majesty’s presence began chatting eagerly, and as I listened I felt that my cares had really “melted away.”
A dog howling in the daytime. A wickerwork fishnet in spring.135 A red plum-blossom dress136 in the Third or Fourth Month. A lying-in room when the baby has died. A cold, empty brazier. An ox driver who hates his oxen. A scholar whose wife has one girl child after another.137
One has gone to a friend’s house to avoid an unlucky direction,138 but nothing is done to entertain one; if this should happen at the time of a seasonal change, it is still more depressing.
A letter arrives from the provinces, but no gift accompanies it. It would be bad enough if such a letter reached one in the provinces from someone in the capital; but then at least it would have interesting news about goings-on in society, and that would be a consolation.
One has written a letter, taking pains to make it as attractive as possible, and now one impatiently awaits the reply. “Surely the messenger should be back by now,” one thinks. Just then he returns; but in his hand he carries not a reply but one’s own letter, still twisted or knotted139 as it was sent, but now so dirty and crumpled that even the ink mark on the outside has disappeared. “Not at home,” announces the messenger, or else, “They said they were observing a day of abstinence and would not accept it.” Oh, how depressing!
Again, one has sent one’s carriage to fetch someone who had said he would definitely pay one a visit on that day. Finally it returns with a great clatter, and the servants hurry out with cries of “Here they come!” But next one hears the carriage being pulled into the coach house, and the unfastened shafts clatter to the ground. “What does this mean?” one asks. “The person was not at home,” replies the driver, “and will not be coming.” So saying, he leads the ox back to its stall, leaving the carriage in the coach house.
With much bustle and excitement a young man has moved into the house of a certain family as the daughter’s husband. One day he fails to come home, and it turns out that some high-ranking court lady has taken him as her lover. How depressing! “Will he eventually tire of the woman and come back to us?” his wife’s family wonder ruefully.
The nurse who is looking after a baby leaves the house, saying that she will be back soon. Soon the child starts crying for her. One tries to comfort it with games and other diversions and even sends a message to the nurse telling her to return immediately. Then comes her reply: “I am afraid that I cannot be back this evening.” This is not only depressing; it is no less than hateful. Yet how much more distressed must be the young man who has sent a messenger to fetch a lady friend and who awaits her arrival in vain!
It is quite late at night and a woman has been expecting a visitor. Hearing finally a stealthy tapping, she sends her maid to open the gate and lies waiting excitedly. But the name announced by the maid is that of someone with whom she has absolutely no connection. Of all the depressing things, this is by far the worst.
With a look of complete self-confidence on his face an exorcist prepares to expel an evil spirit from his patient. Handing his mace, rosary, and other paraphernalia to the medium who is assisting him, he begins to recite his spells in the special shrill tone that he forces from his throat on such occasions. For all the exorcist’s efforts, the spirit gives no sign of leaving, and the Guardian Demon fails to take possession of the medium.140 The relations and friends of the patient, who are gathered in the room praying, find this rather unfortunate. After he has recited his incantations for the length of an entire watch,141 the exorcist is worn out. “The Guardian Demon is completely inactive,” he tells his medium. “You may leave.” Then, as he takes back his rosary, he adds, “Well, well, it hasn’t worked!” He passes his hand over his forehead, then yawns deeply (he of all people!), and leans back against a pillar for a nap.
Most depressing is the household of some hopeful candidate who fails to receive a post during the period of official appointments. Hearing that the gentleman was bound to be successful, several people have gathered in his house for the occasion; among them are a number of retainers who served him in the past but who since then have either been engaged elsewhere or moved to some remote province. Now they all are eager to accompany their former master on his visit to the shrines and temples, and their carriages pass to and fro in the courtyard. Indoors there is a great commotion as the hangers-on help themselves to food and drink. Yet the dawn of the last day of the appointments arrives, and still no one has knocked at the gate. The people in the house are nervous and prick up their ears.
Presently they hear the shouts of forerunners and realize that the high dignitaries are leaving the palace. Some of the servants were sent to the palace on the previous evening to hear the news and have been waiting all night, trembling with cold; now they come trudging back listlessly. The attendants who have remained faithfully in the gentleman’s service year after year cannot bring themselves to ask what has happened. His former retainers, however, are not so diffident. “Tell us,” they say, “what appointment did His Excellency receive?” “Indeed,” murmur the servants, “His Excellency was governor of such-and-such a province.” Everyone was counting on his receiving a new appointment and is desolated by this failure. On the following day the people who had crowded into the house begin to slink away in twos and threes. The old attendants, however, cannot leave so easily. They walk restlessly about the house, counting on their fingers the provincial appointments that will become available in the following year. Pathetic and depressing in the extreme!
One has sent a friend a verse that turned out fairly well. How depressing when there is no reply poem! Even in the case of love poems, people should at least answer that they were moved at receiving the message or something of the sort; otherwise they will cause the keenest disappointment.
Someone who lives in a bustling, fashionable household receives a message from an elderly person who is behind the times and has very little to do; the poem, of course, is old-fashioned and dull. How depressing!
One needs a particularly beautiful fan for some special occasion and instructs an artist, in whose talents one has full confidence, to decorate one with an appropriate painting. When the day comes and the fan is delivered, one is shocked to see how badly it has been painted. Oh, the dreariness of it!
A messenger arrives with a present at a house where a child has been born or where someone is about to leave on a journey. How depressing for him if he gets no reward! People should always reward a messenger, though he may bring only herbal balls or hare sticks.142 If he expects nothing, he will be particularly pleased to be rewarded. On the other hand, what a terrible letdown if he arrives with a self-important look on his face, his heart pounding in anticipation of a generous reward, only to have his hopes dashed!
A man has moved in as a son-in-law; yet even now, after some five years of marriage, the lying-in room has remained as quiet as on the day of his arrival.
An elderly couple who have several grown-up children, and who may even have some grandchildren crawling about the house, are taking a nap in the daytime. The children who see them in this state are overcome by a forlorn feeling, and for other people it is all very depressing.
To take a hot bath when one has just woken is not only depressing; it actually puts one in a bad humor.
Persistent rain on the last day of the year.
One has been observing a period of fast but neglects it for just one day—most depressing.
A white underrobe in the Eighth Month.143
A wet nurse who has run out of milk.
One is in a hurry to leave, but one’s visitor keeps chattering away. If it is someone of no importance, one can get rid of him by saying, “You must tell me all about it next time”; but should it be the sort of visitor whose presence commands one’s best behavior, the situation is hateful indeed.
One finds that a hair has got caught in the stone on which one is rubbing one’s inkstick, or again that gravel is lodged in the inkstick, making a nasty, grating sound.
Someone has suddenly fallen ill, and one summons the exorcist. Since he is not at home, one has to send messengers to look for him. After one has had a long fretful wait, the exorcist finally arrives, and with a sigh of relief one asks him to start his incantations. But perhaps he has been exorcising too many evil spirits recently; for hardly has he installed himself and begun praying when his voice becomes drowsy. Oh, how hateful!
A man who has nothing in particular to recommend him discusses all sorts of subjects at random as though he knows everything.
An elderly person warms the palms of his hands over a brazier and stretches out the wrinkles. No young man would dream of behaving in such a fashion; old people can really be quite shameless. I have seen some dreary old creatures actually resting their feet on the brazier and rubbing them against the edge while they speak. These are the kinds of people who, when visiting someone’s house, first use their fans to wipe away the dust from the mat and, when they finally sit on it, cannot stay still but are forever spreading out the front of their hunting costume144 or even tucking it up under their knees. One might suppose that such behavior was restricted to people of humble station, but I have observed it in quite well-bred people, including a senior secretary of the fifth rank in the Ministry of Ceremonial and a former governor of Suruga.
I hate the sight of men in their cups who shout, poke their fingers in their mouths, stroke their beards, and pass on the wine to their neighbors with great cries of “Have some more! Drink up!” They tremble, shake their heads, twist their faces, and gesticulate like children who are singing, “We’re off to see the governor.” I have seen really well-bred people behave like this and I find it most distasteful.
To envy others and to complain about one’s own lot; to speak badly about people; to be inquisitive about the most trivial matters and to resent and abuse people for not telling one, or, if one does manage to worm out some facts, to inform everyone in the most detailed fashion as if one had known all from the beginning—oh, how hateful!
One is just about to be told some interesting piece of news when a baby starts crying.
A flight of crows circle about with loud caws.
An admirer has come on a clandestine visit, but a dog catches sight of him and starts barking. One feels like killing the beast.
One has been foolish enough to invite a man to spend the night in an unsuitable place—and then he starts snoring.
A gentleman has visited one secretly. Although he is wearing a tall, lacquered hat,145 he nevertheless wants no one to see him. He is so flurried, in fact, that upon leaving he bangs into something with his hat. Most hateful! It is annoying too when he lifts up the Iyo blind146 that hangs at the entrance of the room, then lets it fall with a great rattle. If it is a head blind, things are still worse, for, being more solid, it makes a terrible noise when it is dropped. There is no excuse for such carelessness. Even a head blind does not make any noise if one lifts it up gently on entering and leaving the room; the same applies to sliding doors. If one’s movements are rough, even a paper door will bend and resonate when opened; but if one lifts the door a little while pushing it, there need be no sound.
One has gone to bed and is about to doze off when a mosquito appears, announcing himself in a reedy voice. One can actually feel the wind made by his wings, and slight though it is, one finds it hateful in the extreme.
A carriage passes with a nasty, creaking noise. Annoying to think that the passengers may not even be aware of this! If I am traveling in someone’s carriage and I hear it creaking, I dislike not only the noise but also the owner of the carriage.
One is in the middle of a story when someone butts in and tries to show that he is the only clever person in the room. Such a person is hateful, and so, indeed, is anyone, child or adult, who tries to push himself forward.
One is telling a story about old times when someone breaks in with a little detail that he happens to know, implying that one’s own version is inaccurate—disgusting behavior!
Very hateful is a mouse that scurries all over the place.
Some children have called at one’s house. One makes a great fuss of them and gives them toys to play with. The children become accustomed to this treatment and start to come regularly, forcing their way into one’s inner rooms and scattering one’s furnishings and possessions. Hateful!
A certain gentleman whom one does not want to see visits one at home or in the palace, and one pretends to be asleep. But a maid comes to tell one and shakes one awake, with a look on her face that says, “What a sleepyhead!” Very hateful.
A newcomer pushes ahead of the other members in a group; with a knowing look, this person starts laying down the law and forcing advice on everyone—most hateful.
A man with whom one is having an affair keeps singing the praises of some woman he used to know. Even if it is a thing of the past, this can be very annoying. How much more so if he is still seeing the woman! (Yet sometimes I find that it is not as unpleasant as all that.)
A person who recites a spell himself after sneezing.147 In fact I detest anyone who sneezes, except the master of the house.
Fleas, too, are very hateful. When they dance about under someone’s clothes, they really seem to be lifting them up.
The sound of dogs when they bark for a long time in chorus is ominous and hateful.
I cannot stand people who leave without closing the panel behind them.
How I detest the husbands of nursemaids! It is not so bad if the child in the maid’s charge is a girl, because then the man will keep his distance. But, if it is a boy, he will behave as though he were the father. Never letting the boy out of his sight, he insists on managing everything. He regards the other attendants in the house as less than human, and if anyone tries to scold the child, he slanders him to the master. Despite this disgraceful behavior, no one dare accuse the husband; so he strides about the house with a proud, self-important look, giving all the orders.
I hate people whose letters show that they lack respect for worldly civilities, whether by discourtesy in the phrasing or extreme politeness to someone who does not deserve it. This sort of thing is, of course, most odious if the letter is for oneself, but it is bad enough even if it is addressed to someone else.
As a matter of fact, most people are too casual, not only in their letters, but in their direct conversation. Sometimes I am quite disgusted at noting how little decorum people observe when talking to each other. It is particularly unpleasant to hear some foolish man or woman omit the proper marks of respect when addressing a person of quality; and when servants fail to use honorific forms of speech in referring to their masters, it is very bad indeed. No less odious, however, are those masters who, in addressing their servants, use such phrases as “When you were good enough to do such-and-such” or “As you so kindly remarked.” No doubt there are some masters who, in describing their own actions to a servant, say, “I presumed to do so-and-so”!
Sometimes a person who is utterly devoid of charm will try to create a good impression by using very elegant language, yet he succeeds only in being ridiculous. No doubt he believes this refined language to be just what the occasion demands, but when it goes so far that everyone bursts out laughing, surely something must be wrong.
It is most improper to address high-ranking courtiers, imperial advisers, and the like simply by using their names without any titles or marks of respect; but such mistakes are fortunately rare.
If one refers to the maid who is in attendance on some lady-in-waiting as “Madam” or “that lady,” she will be surprised, delighted, and lavish in her praise.
When speaking to young noblemen and courtiers of high rank, one should always (unless their majesties are present) refer to them by their official posts. Incidentally, I have been very shocked to hear important people use the word “I” while conversing in their majesties’ presence.148 Such a breach of etiquette is really distressing, and I fail to see why people cannot avoid it.
A man who has nothing in particular to recommend him but who speaks in an affected tone and poses as being elegant.
An inkstone with such a hard, smooth surface that the stick glides over it without leaving any deposit of ink.
Ladies-in-waiting who want to know everything that is going on.
Sometimes one greatly dislikes a person for no particular reason—and then that person goes and does something hateful.
A gentleman who travels alone in his carriage to see a procession or some other spectacle. What sort of a man is he? Even though he may not be a person of the greatest quality, surely he should have taken along a few of the many young men who are anxious to see the sights. But no, there he sits by himself (one can see his silhouette through the blinds), with a proud look on his face, keeping all his impressions to himself.
A lover who is leaving at dawn announces that he has to find his fan and his paper.149 “I know I put them somewhere last night,” he says. Since it is pitch dark, he gropes about the room, bumping into the furniture and muttering, “Strange! Where on earth can they be?” Finally he discovers the objects. He thrusts the paper into the breast of his robe with a great rustling sound; then he snaps open his fan and busily fans away with it. Only now is he ready to take his leave. What charmless behavior! “Hateful” is an understatement.
Equally disagreeable is the man who, when leaving in the middle of the night, takes care to fasten the cord of his headdress. This is quite unnecessary; he could perfectly well put it gently on his head without tying the cord. And why must he spend time adjusting his cloak or hunting costume? Does he really think someone may see him at this time of night and criticize him for not being impeccably dressed?
A good lover will behave as elegantly at dawn as at any other time. He drags himself out of bed with a look of dismay on his face. The lady urges him on: “Come, my friend, it’s getting light. You don’t want anyone to find you here.” He gives a deep sigh, as if to say that the night has not been nearly long enough and that it is agony to leave. Once up, he does not instantly pull on his trousers. Instead he comes close to the lady and whispers whatever was left unsaid during the night. Even when he is dressed, he still lingers, vaguely pretending to be fastening his sash.
Presently he raises the lattice, and the two lovers stand together by the side door while he tells her how he dreads the coming day, which will keep them apart; then he slips away. The lady watches him go, and this moment of parting will remain among her most charming memories.
Indeed, one’s attachment to a man depends largely on the elegance of his leave-taking. When he jumps out of bed, scurries about the room, tightly fastens his trouser sash, rolls up the sleeves of his court cloak, overrobe, or hunting costume, stuffs his belongings into the breast of his robe, and then briskly secures the outer sash—one really begins to hate him.
A son-in-law who is praised by his father-in-law; a young bride who is loved by her mother-in-law.
A silver tweezer that is good at plucking out the hair.
A servant who does not speak badly about his master.
A person who is in no way eccentric or imperfect, who is superior in both mind and body, and who remains flawless all his life.
People who live together and still manage to behave with reserve toward each other. However much these people may try to hide their weaknesses, they usually fail.
To avoid getting ink stains on the notebook into which one is copying stories, poems, or the like. If it is a very fine notebook, one takes the greatest care not to make a blot; yet somehow one never seems to succeed.
When people, whether they be men or women or priests, have promised each other eternal friendship, it is rare for them to stay on good terms until the end.
A servant who is pleasant to his master.
One has given some silk to the fuller, and when he sends it back, it is so beautiful that one cries out in admiration.
While entertaining a visitor, one hears some servants chatting without any restraint in one of the back rooms. It is embarrassing to know that one’s visitor can overhear. But how to stop them?
A man whom one loves gets drunk and keeps repeating himself.
To have spoken about someone not knowing that he could overhear. This is embarrassing even if it is a servant or some other completely insignificant person.
To hear one’s servants making merry. This is equally annoying if one is on a journey and staying in cramped quarters or at home and hears the servants in a neighboring room.
Parents, convinced that their ugly child is adorable, pet him and repeat the things he has said, imitating his voice.
An ignoramus who in the presence of some learned person puts on a knowing air and converses about men of old.
A man recites his own poems (not especially good ones) and tells one about the praise they have received—most embarrassing.
Lying awake at night, one says something to one’s companion, who simply goes on sleeping.
In the presence of a skilled musician, someone plays a zither just for his own pleasure and without tuning it.
A son-in-law who has long since stopped visiting his wife runs into his father-in-law in a public place.
Things That Give a Hot Feeling (78)
The hunting costume of the head of a guards escort.
A patchwork surplice.
The captain in attendance at the imperial games.
An extremely fat person with a lot of hair.
A zither bag.
A holy teacher performing a rite of incantation at noon in the Sixth or Seventh Month. Or at the same time of the year a coppersmith working in his foundry.
Things That Have Lost Their Power (80)
A large boat that is high and dry in a creek at ebb tide.
A woman who has taken off her false locks to comb the short hair that remains.
A large tree that has been blown down in a gale and lies on its side with its roots in the air.
The retreating figure of a sumo wrestler who has been defeated in a match.150
A man of no importance reprimanding an attendant.
An old man who removes his hat, uncovering his scanty topknot.
A woman, who is angry with her husband about some trifling matter, leaves home and goes somewhere to hide. She is certain that he will rush about looking for her; but he does nothing of the kind and shows the most infuriating indifference. Since she cannot stay away forever, she swallows her pride and returns.
One has gone to a house and asked to see someone; but the wrong person appears, thinking that it is he who is wanted; this is especially awkward if one has brought a present.
One has allowed oneself to speak badly about someone without really intending to do so; a young child who has overheard it all goes and repeats what one has said in front of the person in question.
Someone sobs out a pathetic story. One is deeply moved; but it so happens that not a single tear comes to one’s eyes—most awkward. Although one makes one’s face look as if one is going to cry, it is no use: not a single tear will come. Yet there are times when, having heard something happy, one feels the tears streaming out.
The face of a child drawn on a melon.151
A baby sparrow that comes hopping up when one imitates the squeak of a mouse; or again, when one has tied it with a thread round its leg and its parents bring insects or worms and pop them in its mouth—delightful!
A baby of two or so is crawling rapidly along the ground. With his sharp eyes he catches sight of a tiny object and, picking it up with his pretty little fingers, takes it to show to a grown-up person.
A child, whose hair has been cut like a nun’s,152 is examining something; the hair falls over his eyes, but instead of brushing it away he holds his head to the side. The pretty white cords of his trouser skirt are tied round his shoulders, and this too is most adorable.
A young palace page, who is still quite small, walks by in ceremonial costume.
One picks up a pretty baby and holds him for a while in one’s arms; while one is fondling him, he clings to one’s neck and then falls asleep.
The objects used during the Display of Dolls.
One picks up a tiny lotus leaf that is floating on a pond and examines it. Not only lotus leaves, but little hollyhock flowers, and indeed all small things, are most adorable.
An extremely plump baby, who is about a year old and has lovely white skin, comes crawling toward one, dressed in a long gauze robe of violet with the sleeves tucked up.
A little boy of about eight who reads aloud from a book in his childish voice.
Pretty, white chicks who are still not fully fledged and look as if their clothes are too short for them; cheeping loudly, they follow one on their long legs or walk close to the mother hen.
Duck eggs.
An urn containing the relics of some holy person.
Wild pinks.
Finding a large number of tales that one has not read before. Or acquiring the second volume of a tale whose first volume one has enjoyed. But often it is a disappointment.
Someone has torn up a letter and thrown it away. Picking up the pieces, one finds that many of them can be fitted together.
One has had an upsetting dream and wonders what it can mean. In great anxiety one consults a dream interpreter, who informs one that it has no special significance.
A person of quality is holding forth about something in the past or about a recent event that is being widely discussed. Several people are gathered round him, but it is oneself that he keeps looking at as he talks.
A person who is very dear to one has fallen ill. One is miserably worried about him even if he lives in the capital and far more so if he is in some remote part of the country. What a pleasure to be told that he has recovered!
I am most pleased when I hear someone I love being praised or being mentioned approvingly by an important person.
A poem that someone has composed for a special occasion or written to another person in reply is widely praised and copied by people in their notebooks. Although this is something that has never yet happened to me, I can imagine how pleasing it must be.
A person with whom one is not especially intimate refers to an old poem or story that is unfamiliar. Then one hears it being mentioned by someone else and one has the pleasure of recognizing it. Still later, when one comes across it in a book, one thinks, “Ah, this is it!” and feels delighted with the person who first brought it up.
I feel very pleased when I have acquired some Michinoku paper or some white, decorated paper or even plain paper if it is nice and white.
A person in whose company one feels awkward asks one to supply the opening or closing line of a poem. If one happens to recall it, one is very pleased. Yet often on such occasions one completely forgets something that one would normally know.
I look for an object that I need at once, and I find it. Or again, there is a book that I must see immediately; I turn everything upside down, and there it is. What a joy!
When one is competing in an object match153 (it does not matter what kind), how can one help being pleased at winning?
I greatly enjoy taking in someone who is pleased with himself and who has a self-confident look, especially if he is a man. It is amusing to observe him as he alertly waits for my next repartee; but it is also interesting if he tries to put me off my guard by adopting an air of calm indifference as if there were not a thought in his head.
I realize that it is very sinful of me, but I cannot help being pleased when someone I dislike has a bad experience.
It is a great pleasure when the ornamental comb that one has ordered turns out to be pretty.
I am more pleased when something nice happens to a person I love than when it happens to myself.
Entering the empress’s room and finding that ladies-in-waiting are crowded round her in a tight group, I go next to a pillar that is some distance from where she is sitting. What a delight it is when Her Majesty summons me to her side so that all the others have to make way!
One Day, When the Snow Lay Thick on the Ground (157)
One day, when the snow lay thick on the ground and it was so cold that all the lattices had been closed, I and the other ladies were sitting with Her Majesty, chatting and poking the embers in the brazier.
“Tell me, Shōnagon,” said the empress, “how is the snow on Mount Xianglu?”154
I told the maid to raise one of the lattices and then rolled up the blind all the way. Her Majesty smiled. I was not alone in recognizing the Chinese poem she had quoted; in fact all the ladies knew the lines and had even rewritten them in Japanese. Yet no one but me had managed to think of it instantly.
“Yes indeed,” people said when they heard the story. “She was born to serve an empress like ours.”
It is getting so dark that I can scarcely go on writing, and my brush is all worn out. Yet I should like to add a few things before I end.
I wrote these notes at home when I had a good deal of time to myself and thought no one would notice what I was doing. Everything that I have seen and felt is included. Since much of it might appear malicious and even harmful to other people, I was careful to keep my book hidden. But now it has become public, which is the last thing I expected.
One day Lord Korechika, the minister of the center, brought the empress a bundle of notebooks. “What shall we do with them?” Her Majesty asked me. “The emperor has already made arrangements for copying the ‘Records of the Historian.’”155
“Let me make them into a pillow,”156 I said.
“Very well,” said Her Majesty. “You may have them.”
I now had a vast quantity of paper at my disposal, and I set about filling the notebooks with odd facts, stories from the past, and all sorts of other things, often including the most trivial material. On the whole I concentrated on things and people that I found charming and splendid; my notes also are full of poems and observations about trees and plants, birds and insects. I was sure that when people saw my book they would say, “It’s even worse than I expected. Now one can really tell what she is like.” After all, it is written entirely for my own amusement and I put things down exactly as they came to me. How could my casual jottings possibly bear comparison with the many impressive books that exist in our time? Readers have declared, however, that I can be proud of my work. This has surprised me greatly; yet I suppose it is not so strange that people should like it, for, as will be gathered from these notes of mine, I am the sort of person who approves of what others abhor and detests the things they like.
Whatever people may think of my book, I still regret that it ever came to light.
[Adapted from a translation by Ivan Morris]
Murasaki Shikibu (d. ca. 1014) belonged to the northern branch of the Fujiwara lineage, the same branch that produced the regents. In fact, both sides of her family can be traced back to Fujiwara no Fuyutsugu (775–826), whose son Yoshifusa became the first regent (sesshō). Murasaki Shikibu’s family line, however, subsequently declined and by her grandfather’s generation had settled at the provincial governor, or zuryō, level. Murasaki Shikibu’s father, Fujiwara no Tametoki (d. 1029), although eventually appointed governor of Echizen and then Echigo, had an undistinguished career as a bureaucrat. He was able, however, to make a name for himself as a scholar of Chinese literature and a poet.
Murasaki Shikibu was probably born sometime between 970 and 978, and in 996 she accompanied her father to his new post as provincial governor in Echizen, on the coast of the Japan Sea. A year or two later, she returned to the capital to marry Fujiwara no Nobutaka, a mid-level aristocrat who was old enough to be her father. She had a daughter named Kenshi, probably in 999, and Nobutaka died a couple of years later, in 1001. It is generally believed that Murasaki Shikibu started writing The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari) after her husband’s death, perhaps in response to the sorrow it caused her, and it was probably the reputation of the early chapters that resulted in her being summoned to the imperial court around 1005 or 1006. She became a lady-in-waiting (nyōbō) to Empress Shōshi, the chief consort of Emperor Ichijō and the eldest daughter of Fujiwara no Michinaga (966–1027), who had become regent. At least half of Murasaki Shikibu’s Diary (Murasaki Shikibu nikki) is devoted to a long-awaited event in Michinaga’s career—the birth of a son to Empress Shōshi in 1008—which would make Michinaga the grandfather of a future emperor.
Murasaki Shikibu was the sobriquet given to the author of The Tale of Genji when she was a lady-in-waiting at the imperial court and is not her actual name, which is not known. The name Shikibu probably comes from her father’s position in the Shikibu-shō (Ministry of Ceremonial), and Murasaki may refer to the lavender color of the flower of her clan (Fujiwara, or Wisteria Fields), or it may have been borrowed from the name of the heroine of The Tale of Genji.
THE TALE OF GENJI (GENJI MONOGATARI)
The title of The Tale of Genji comes from the surname of the hero (the son of the emperor reigning at the beginning of the narrative), whose life and relationships with various women are described in the first forty-one chapters. The Tale of Genji is generally divided into three parts. The first part, consisting of thirty-three chapters, follows Genji’s career from his birth through his exile and triumphant return to his rise to the pinnacle of society, focusing equally, if not more, on the fate of the various women with whom he becomes involved. The second part, chapters 34 to 41, from “New Herbs” (Wakana) to “The Wizard” (Maboroshi), explores the darkness that gathers over Genji’s private life and that of his great love Murasaki, who eventually succumbs and dies, and ends with Genji’s own death. The third part, the thirteen chapters following Genji’s death, is concerned primarily with the affairs of Kaoru, Genji’s putative son, and the three sisters (Ōigimi, Nakanokimi, and Ukifune) with whom Kaoru becomes involved. In the third part, the focus of the book shifts dramatically from the capital and court to the countryside and from a society concerned with refinement, elegance, and the various arts to an other-worldly, ascetic perspective—a shift that anticipates the movement of mid-Heian court culture toward the eremetic, religious literature of the medieval period.
The Tale of Genji both follows and works against the plot convention of the Heian monogatari in which the heroine, whose family has declined or disappeared, is discovered and loved by an illustrious noble. This association of love and inferior social status appears in the opening line of Genji and extends to the last relationship between Kaoru and Ukifune. In the opening chapter, the reigning emperor, like all Heian emperors, is expected to devote himself to his principal consort (the Kokiden lady), the lady with the highest rank, and yet he dotes on a woman of considerably lower status, a social and political violation that eventually results in the woman’s death. Like the protagonist of The Tales of Ise, Genji pursues love where it is forbidden and most unlikely to be found or attained. In “Lavender” (Wakamurasaki), chapter 5, Genji discovers the young Murasaki, who has lost her mother and is in danger of losing her only guardian until Genji takes her into his home.
In Murasaki Shikibu’s day, it would have been unheard of for a man of Genji’s high rank to take a girl of Murasaki’s low position into his own residence and marry her. In the upper levels of Heian aristocratic society, the man usually lived in his wife’s residence, in either her parents’ house or a dwelling nearby (as Genji does with Aoi, his principal wife). The prospective groom had high stakes in the marriage, for the bride’s family provided not only a residence but other forms of support as well. When Genji takes into his house a girl (like the young Murasaki) with no backing or social support, he thus is openly flouting the conventions of marriage as they were known to Murasaki Shikibu’s audience. In the monogatari tradition, however, this action becomes a sign of excessive, romantic love.
Some of the other sequences—involving Yūgao, the Akashi lady, Ōigimi, and Ukifune—start on a similar note. All these women come from upper- or middle-rank aristocratic families (much like that of the author herself) that have, for various reasons, fallen into social obscurity and must struggle to survive. The appearance of the highborn hero implies, at least for the attendants surrounding the woman, an opportunity for social redemption. Nonetheless, Murasaki Shikibu, much like her female predecessor, the author of the Kagerō Diary, concentrates on the difficulties that the woman subsequently encounters, in either dealing with the man or failing to make the social transition between her own social background and that of the highborn hero. The woman may, for example, be torn between pride and material need or between emotional dependence and a desire to be more independent, or she may feel abandoned and betrayed—all conflicts explored in The Tale of Genji. In classical Japanese poetry, such as that by Ono no Komachi, love has a similar fate: it is never about happiness or the blissful union of souls. Instead, it dwells on unfulfilled hopes, regretful partings, fears of abandonment, and lingering resentment.
The Tale of Genji is remarkable for how well it absorbs the psychological dimension of the Kagerō Diary and the social romance of the early monogatari into a deeply psychological narrative revolving around distinctive characters. Despite closely resembling the modern psychological novel, The Tale of Genji was not conceived and written as a single work and then distributed to a mass audience, as novels are today. Instead, it was issued in very short installments, chapter by chapter or sequence by sequence, to an extremely circumscribed, aristocratic audience over an extended period of time.
As a result, The Tale of Genji can be read and appreciated as Murasaki Shikibu’s oeuvre, or corpus, as a closely interrelated series of texts that can be read either individually or as a whole and that is the product of an author whose attitudes, interests, and techniques evolved significantly with time and experience. For example, the reader of the Ukifune narrative can appreciate this sequence both independently and as an integral part of the previous narrative. Genji can also be understood as a kind of multiple bildungsroman in which a character is developed through time and experience not only in the life of a single hero or heroine but also over different generations, with two or more characters. Genji, for example, attains an awareness of death, mutability, and the illusory nature of the world through repeated suffering. By contrast, Kaoru, his putative son, begins his life, or rather his narrative, with a profound grasp and acceptance of these darker aspects of life. In the second part, in the “New Herbs” chapters, Murasaki has long assumed that she can monopolize Genji’s affections and act as his principal wife. But Genji’s unexpected marriage to the Third Princess (Onna san no miya) crushes these assumptions, causing Murasaki to fall mortally ill. In the last ten chapters, the Uji sequence, Ōigimi never suffers in the way that Murasaki does, but she quickly becomes similarly aware of the inconstancy of men, love, and marriage and rejects Kaoru, even though he appears to be an ideal companion.
Murasaki Shikibu probably first wrote a short sequence of chapters, perhaps beginning with “Lavender,” and then, in response to her readers’ demand, wrote a sequel or another related series of chapters, and so forth. Certain sequences, particularly the Broom Tree sequence (chapters 2–4, 6) and its sequels (chapters 15 and 16), which appear to have been inserted later, focus on women of the middle and lower aristocracy, as opposed to the main chapters of the first part, which deal with Fujitsubo and other upper-rank women related to the throne. The Tamakazura sequence (chapters 22–31), which is a sequel to the Broom Tree sequence, may be an expansion of an earlier chapter no longer extant. The only chapters whose authorship has been questioned are the three chapters following the death of Genji. The following selections are from the third part, after Genji’s death, beginning with “The Lady at the Bridge” (chap. 45) and the story of the Eighth Prince, his daughters, and Kaoru.
Main Characters
AKASHI EMPRESS: Consort and later empress of the emperor reigning at the end of the tale. Mother of numerous princes and princesses, including Prince Niou.
BENNOKIMI: daughter of Kashiwagi’s wet nurse, and later attendant to the Eighth Prince and the Uji princesses. Confidante of Kaoru.
CAPTAIN: former son-in-law of Ono nun. Unsuccessfully courts Ukifune.
EIGHTH PRINCE: eighth son of the first emperor to appear in the tale. Genji’s half brother. Father of Ōigimi, Nakanokimi, and Ukifune. Ostracized by court society for his part in Kokiden’s plot to supplant the crown prince (the future Reizei emperor). Retreats to Uji, where he raises Ōigimi and Nakanokimi and devotes himself to Buddhism.
EMPEROR: The fourth and last emperor in the tale, ascending to the throne after the Reizei emperor. Father of Niou.
GENJI: son of the first emperor by the Kiritsubo lady and the protagonist of the first and second parts.
JIJŪ: attendant to Ukifune.
KAORU: thought by the world to be Genji’s son by the Third Princess but really Kashiwagi’s son. Befriends the Eighth Prince and falls in love with his daughter Ōigimi but fails to make her his wife. Subsequently pursues his other daughters, Nakanokimi and Ukifune. Marries the Second Princess.
KASHIWAGI: eldest son of Tō no Chūjō. Falls in love and has an illicit affair with the Third Princess. Later dies a painful death. Father of Kaoru.
KOJIJŪ: attendant to the Third Princess and helps Kashiwagi’s secret affair with the Third Princess.
MURASAKI: Genji’s great love. Daughter of Prince Hyōbu by a low-ranking wife, and niece of Fujitsubo.
NAKANOKIMI: second Uji princess, daughter of the Eighth Prince. Marries Niou and is installed by him at Nijō mansion. Bears him a son.
NIOU, PRINCE: beloved third son of the last emperor and the Akashi empress. Looked after by Murasaki until her death. Marries Nakanokimi and later Rokunokimi. Pursues Ukifune.
ŌIGIMI: eldest daughter of the Eighth Prince. Loved by Kaoru but refuses to marry him.
ONO NUN: sister of the bishop of Yokawa. Takes care of Ukifune after her disappearance from Uji and attempts to marry her to the captain, her former son-in-law.
REIZEI EMPEROR: thought to be the son of the first emperor and Fujitsubo but actually Genji’s son.
ROKUNOKIMI: sixth daughter of Yūgiri. Becomes Niou’s principal wife.
SECOND PRINCESS: Second daughter of the fourth and last emperor. Principal wife of Kaoru.
TŌ NO CHŪJŌ: son of the Minister of the Left and brother of Aoi. Genji’s chief male companion in his youth. Son-in-law of the Minister of the Right. Father of Kashiwagi.
TOKIKATA: Niou’s retainer.
UKIFUNE: unrecognized daughter of the Eighth Prince by an attendant. Half sister of Ōigimi and Nakanokimi. Raised in the East. Pursued by Kaoru and Niou. Tries to commit suicide but is saved by the bishop of Yokawa and taken to a convent at Ono, where she becomes a nun.
UKON: attendant to Ukifune.
YOKAWA, BISHOP OF: high priest of Yokawa and brother of Ono nun. Discovers Ukifune, looks after her, and gives her the tonsure.
YŪGIRI: son of Genji by Aoi. Becomes the most powerful figure at court after Genji’s death. Marries his daughter Rokunokimi to Niou.
There was in those years a prince of the blood, an old man, left behind by the times. His mother was of the finest lineage. There had once been talk of seeking a favored position for him; but there were disturbances and a new alignment of forces,157 at the end of which his prospects were in ruins. His supporters, embittered by this turn of events, were less than steadfast: they made their various excuses and left him. And so in his public life and in his private, he was quite alone, blocked at every turn. His wife, the daughter of a former minister, had fits of bleakest depression at the thought of her parents and their plans for her, now of course in ruins. Her consolation was that she and her husband were close as husbands and wives seldom are. Their confidence in each other was complete.
But here too there was a shadow: the years went by and they had no children. If only there were a pretty little child to break the loneliness and boredom, the prince would think—and sometimes give voice to his thoughts. And then, surprisingly, a very pretty daughter was in fact born to them. She was the delight of their lives. Years passed, and there were signs that the princess was again with child. The prince hoped that this time he would be favored with a son, but again the child was a daughter. Though the birth was easy enough, the princess fell desperately ill soon afterward, and was dead before many days had passed. The prince was numb with grief. The vulgar world had long had no place for him, he said, and frequently it had seemed quite unbearable; and the bond that had held him to it had been the beauty and the gentleness of his wife. How could he go on alone? And there were his daughters. How could he, alone, rear them in a manner that would not be a scandal?—for he was not, after all, a commoner. His conclusion was that he must take the tonsure. Yet he hesitated. Once he was gone, there would be no one to see to the safety of his daughters.
So the years went by. The princesses grew up, each with her own grace and beauty. It was difficult to find fault with them, they gave him what pleasure he had. The passing years offered him no opportunity to carry out his resolve.
The serving women muttered to themselves that the younger girl’s very birth had been a mistake, and were not as diligent as they might have been in caring for her. With the prince it was a different matter. His wife, scarcely in control of her senses, had been especially tormented by thoughts of this new babe. She had left behind a single request: “Think of her as a keepsake, and be good to her.”
The prince himself was not without resentment at the child, that her birth should so swiftly have severed their bond from a former life, his and his princess’s.
“But such was the bond that it was,” he said. “And she worried about the girl to the very end.”
The result was that if anything he doted upon the child to excess. One almost sensed in her fragile beauty a sinister omen.
The older girl was comely and of a gentle disposition, elegant in face and in manner, with a suggestion behind the elegance of hidden depths. In quiet grace, indeed, she was the superior of the two. And so the prince favored each as each in her special way demanded. There were numerous matters which he was not able to order as he wished, however, and his household only grew sadder and lonelier as time went by. His attendants, unable to bear the uncertainty of their prospects, took their leave one and two at a time. In the confusion surrounding the birth of the younger girl, there had not been time to select a really suitable nurse for her. No more dedicated than one would have expected in the circumstances, the nurse first chosen abandoned her ward when the girl was still an infant. Thereafter the prince himself took charge of her upbringing.
Years pass, and the prince refuses to marry again, despite the urging of the people around him. He spends much of his time in religious observances but cannot bring himself to renounce the world. His daughters are his principal companions. As they grow up, he notices that although both are quiet and reserved, the elder, Ōigimi, tends to be moody, and the younger, Nakanokimi, possesses a certain shy gaiety.
He was the Eighth Prince, a younger brother of the shining Genji. During the years when the Reizei emperor was crown prince, the mother of the reigning emperor had sought in that conspiratorial way of hers to have the Eighth Prince named crown prince, replacing Reizei. The world seemed hers to rule as she wished, and the Eighth Prince was very much at the center of it. Unfortunately his success irritated the opposing faction. The day came when Genji and presently Yūgiri had the upper hand, and he was without supporters. He had over the years become an ascetic in any case, and he now resigned himself to living the life of the sage and hermit.
There came yet another disaster. As if fate had not been unkind enough already, his mansion was destroyed by fire. Having no other suitable house in the city, he moved to Uji, some miles to the southeast, where he happened to own a tastefully appointed mountain villa. He had renounced the world, it was true, and yet leaving the capital was a painful wrench indeed. With fishing weirs near at hand to heighten the roar of the river, the situation at Uji was hardly favorable to quiet study. But what must be must be. With the flowering trees of spring and the leaves of autumn and the flow of the river to bring repose, he lost himself more than ever in solitary meditation. There was one thought even so that never left his mind: how much better it would be, even in these remote mountains, if his wife were with him!
“She who was with me, the roof above are smoke.
And why must I alone remain behind?”
So much was the past still with him that life scarcely seemed worth living.
Mountain upon mountain separated his dwelling from the larger world. Rough people of the lower classes, woodcutters and the like, sometimes came by to do chores for him.158 There were no other callers. The gloom continued day after day, as stubborn and clinging as “the morning mist on the peaks.”159
There happened to be in those Uji mountains an abbot,160 a most saintly man. Though famous for his learning, he seldom took part in public rites. He heard in the course of time that there was a prince living nearby, a man who was teaching himself the mysteries of the Good Law. Thinking this a most admirable undertaking, he made bold to visit the prince, who upon subsequent interviews was led deeper into the texts he had studied over the years. The prince became more immediately aware of what was meant by the transience and uselessness of the material world.
“In spirit,” he confessed, quite one with the holy man, “I have perhaps found my place upon the lotus of the clear pond; but I have not yet made my last farewells to the world because I cannot bring myself to leave my daughters behind.”
The abbot was an intimate of the Reizei emperor and had been his preceptor as well. One day, visiting the city, he called upon the Reizei emperor to answer any questions that might have come to him since their last meeting.
“Your honored brother,” he said, bringing the Eighth Prince into the conversation, “has pursued his studies so diligently that he has been favored with the most remarkable insights. Only a bond from a former life can account for such dedication. Indeed, the depth of his understanding makes me want to call him a saint who has not yet left the world.”
“He has not taken the tonsure? But I remember now—the young people do call him ‘the saint who is still one of us.’”
Kaoru chanced to be present at the interview. He listened intently. No one knew better than he the futility of this world, and yet he passed useless days, his devotions hardly so frequent or intense as to attract public notice. The heart of a man who, though still in this world, was in all other respects a saint—to what might it be likened?
The abbot continued: “He has long wanted to cut his last ties with the world, but a trifling matter made it difficult for him to carry out his resolve. Now he has two motherless children whom he cannot bring himself to leave behind. They are the burden he must bear.”161
The abbot himself had not entirely given up the pleasures of the world: he had a good ear for music. “And when their highnesses deign to play a duet,” he said, “they bid fair to outdo the music of the river, and put one in mind of the blessed musicians above.”
The Reizei emperor smiled at this rather fusty way of stating the matter. “You would not expect girls who have had a saint for their principal companion to have such accomplishments. How pleasant to know about them—and what an uncommonly good father he must be! I am sure that the thought of having to leave them is pure torment. It is always possible that I will live longer than he, and if I do perhaps I may ask to be given responsibility for them.”
He was himself the tenth son of the family, younger than his brother at Uji. There was the example of the Suzaku emperor, who had left his young daughter in Genji’s charge. Something similar might be arranged, he thought. He would have companions to relieve the monotony of his days.
Kaoru was less interested in the daughters than in the father. Quite entranced with what he had heard, he longed to see for himself that figure so wrapped in the serenity of religion.
“I have every intention of calling on him and asking him to be my master,” he said as the abbot left. “Might I ask you to find out, unobtrusively, of course, how he would greet the possibility?”
“And tell him, please,” said the Reizei emperor, “that I have been much affected by your description of his holy retreat.” And he wrote down a verse to be delivered to the Eighth Prince.
“Wearily, my soul goes off to your mountains,
and cloud upon circling cloud holds my person back?”
With the royal messenger in the lead, the abbot set off for Uji, thinking to visit the Eighth Prince on his way back to the monastery. The prince so seldom heard from anyone that he was overjoyed at these tidings. He ordered wine for his guests and side dishes peculiar to the region.
This was the poem he sent back to his brother:
“I am not as free as I seem. From the gloom of the world
I retreat only briefly to the Hill of Gloom.”162
He declined to call himself one of the truly enlightened. The vulgar world still called up regrets and resentments, thought the Reizei emperor, much moved.163
The abbot also spoke of Kaoru, who, he said, was of a strongly religious bent. “He asked me most earnestly to tell you about him: to tell you that he has longed since childhood to give himself up to study of the scriptures; that he has been kept busy with inconsequential affairs, public and private, and has been unable to leave the world; that since these affairs are trivial in any case and no one could call his career a brilliant one, he could hardly expect people to notice if he were to lock himself up in prayers and meditation; that he has had an unfortunate way of letting himself be distracted. And when he had entrusted me with all this, he added that, having heard through me of your own revered person, he could not take his mind from you, and was determined to be your pupil.”
“When there has been a great misfortune,” said the prince, “when the whole world seems hostile—that is when most people come to think it a flimsy facade, and wish to have no more of it. I can only marvel that a young man for whom everything lies ahead, who has had everything his way, should start thinking of other worlds. In my own case, it often seems to me, the powers deliberately arranged matters to give my mind such a turn, and so I came to religion as if it were the natural thing. I have managed to find a certain amount of peace, I suppose; but when I think of the short time I have left and of how slowly my preparations creep forward, I know that what I have learned comes to nothing and that in the end it will still be nothing. No, I am afraid I would be a scandalously bad teacher. Let him think of me as a fellow seeker after truth, a very humble one.”
Kaoru and the prince exchanged letters and presently Kaoru paid his first visit.
It was an even sadder place than the abbot’s description had led him to expect. The house itself was like a grass hut put up for a few days’ shelter, and as for the furnishings, everything even remotely suggesting luxury had been dispensed with. There were mountain villages that had their own quiet charm; but here the tumult of the waters and the wailing of the wind must make it impossible to have a moment free of sad thoughts. He could see why a man on the way to enlightenment might seek out such a place as a means of cutting his ties with the world. But what of the daughters? Did they not have the usual fondness for delicate, ladylike things?
A sliding partition seemed to separate the chapel from their rooms. A youth of more amorous inclinations would have approached and made himself known, curious to see what his reception would be. Kaoru was not above feeling a certain excitement at being so near; but a show of interest would have betrayed his whole purpose, which was to be free of just such thoughts, here in distant mountains. The smallest hint of frivolity would have denied the reason for the visit.
Deeply moved by the saintly figure before him, he offered the warmest avowals of friendship. His visits were frequent thereafter. Nowhere did he find evidence of shallowness in the discourses to which he was treated; nor was there a suggestion of pompousness in the prince’s explanations of the scriptures and of his profoundly significant reasons, even though he had stopped short of taking the tonsure, for living in the mountains.
The world was full of saintly and learned men, but the stiff, forbidding bishops and patriarchs164 who were such repositories of virtue had little time of their own, and he found it far from easy to approach them with his questions. Then there were lesser disciples of the Buddha. They were to be admired for observing the discipline, it was true; but they tended to be vulgar and obsequious in their manner and rustic in their speech, and they could be familiar to the point of rudeness. Since Kaoru was busy with official duties in the daytime, it was in the quiet of the evening, in the intimacy of his private chambers, that he liked to have company. Such people would not do.
Now he had found a man who combined great elegance with a reticence that certainly was not obsequious, and who, even when he was discussing the Good Law, was adept at bringing plain, familiar similes into his discourse. He was not, perhaps, among the completely enlightened, but people of birth and culture have their own insights into the nature of things. After repeated visits Kaoru came to feel that he wanted to be always at the prince’s side, and he would be overtaken by intense longing when official duties kept him away for a time.
Impressed by Kaoru’s devotion, the Reizei emperor sent messages; and so the Uji house, silent and forgotten by the world, came to have visitors again. Sometimes the Reizei emperor sent lavish gifts and supplies. In pleasant matters having to do with the seasons and the festivals and in practical matters as well, Kaoru missed no chance to be of service.
Three years went by. It was the end of autumn, and the time had come for the quarterly reading of the scriptures.165 The roar of the fish weirs was more than a man could bear, said the Eighth Prince as he set off for the abbot’s monastery, there to spend a week in retreat.
The princesses were lonelier than ever. It had been weighing on Kaoru’s mind that too much time had passed since his last visit. One night as a late moon was coming over the hills he set out for Uji, his guard as unobtrusive as possible, his caparison of the simplest. He could go on horseback and did not have to worry about a boat, since the prince’s villa was on the near side of the Uji River. As he came into the mountains the mist was so heavy and the underbrush so thick that he could hardly make out the path; and as he pushed his way through thickets the rough wind would throw showers of dew upon him from a turmoil of falling leaves. He was very cold, and, though he had no one to blame but himself, he had to admit that he was also very wet. This was not the sort of journey he was accustomed to. It was sobering and at the same time exciting.
“From leaves that cannot withstand the mountain wind
the dew is falling. My tears fall yet more freely.”
He forbade his outrunners to raise their usual cries, for the woodcutters in these mountains could be troublesome. Brushing through a wattle fence, crossing a rivulet that meandered down from nowhere, he tried as best he could to silence the hoofs of his colt. But he could not keep that extraordinary fragrance from wandering off on the wind, and more than one family awoke in surprise at “the scent of an unknown master.”166
As he drew near the Uji house, he could hear the plucking of he did not know what instrument, unimaginably still and lonely. He had heard from the abbot that the prince liked to practice with his daughters, but somehow had not found occasion to hear that famous koto. This would be his chance. Making his way into the grounds, he knew that he had been listening to a lute, tuned to the ōjiki mode.167 There was nothing unusual about the melody. Perhaps the strangeness of the setting had made it seem different. The sound was cool and clean, especially when a string was plucked from beneath. The lute fell silent and there were a few quiet strokes on a koto. He would have liked to listen on, but he was challenged by a man with a somewhat threatening manner, one of the guards, it would seem.
The man immediately recognized him and explained that, for certain reasons, the prince had gone into seclusion in a mountain monastery. He would be informed immediately of the visit.
“Please do not bother,” said Kaoru. “It would be a pity to interrupt his retreat when it will be over soon in any case. But do tell the ladies that I have arrived, sodden as you see me, and must go back with my mission unaccomplished; and if they are sorry for me that will be my reward.”
The rough face broke into a smile. “They will be informed.”
But as he turned to depart, Kaoru called him back. “No, wait a minute. For years I have been fascinated by stories I have heard of their playing, and this is my chance. Will there be somewhere that I might hide and listen for a while? If I were to rush in on them they would of course stop, and that would be the last thing I would want.”
His face and manner were such as to quell even the most untamed of rustics. “This is how it is. They are at it morning and night when there is no one around to hear. But let someone come from the city even if he is in rags, and they won’t let you have a twang of it. No one’s supposed to know they even exist. That’s how His Highness wants it.”
Kaoru smiled. “Now there is an odd sort of secret for you. The whole world knows that two specimens of the rarest beauty are hidden here. But come. Show me the way. I have all the best intentions. That is the way I am, I assure you.” His manner was grave and courteous. “It is hard to believe that they can be less than perfect.”
“Suppose they find out, sir. I might be in trouble.”
Nonetheless he led Kaoru to a secluded wing fenced off by wattled bamboo and the guards to the west veranda, where he saw to their needs as best he could.
A gate seemed to lead to the princesses’ rooms. Kaoru pushed it open a little. The blind had been half raised to give a view of the moon, more beautiful for the mist. A young girl, tiny and delicate, her soft robe somewhat rumpled, sat shivering at the veranda. With her was an older woman similarly dressed. The princesses were farther inside. Half hidden by a pillar, one had a lute before her and sat toying with the plectrum.168 Just then the moon burst forth in all its brilliance.
“Well, now,” she said. “This does quite as well as a fan for bringing out the moon.” The upraised face was bright and lively.
The other, leaning against an armrest, had a koto before her. “I have heard that you summon the sun with one of those objects,169 but you seem to have ideas of your own on how to use it.” She was smiling, a melancholy, contemplative sort of smile.
“I may be asking too much, I admit, but you have to admit that lutes and moons are related.”170
It was a charming scene, utterly unlike what Kaoru had imagined from afar. He had often enough heard the young women of his household reading from old romances. They were always coming upon such scenes, and he had thought them the most unadulterated nonsense. And here, hidden away from the world, was a scene as affecting as any in a romance. He was dangerously near losing control of himself. The mist had deepened until he could barely make out the figures of the princesses. Summon it forth again, he whispered—but a woman had come from within to tell them of the caller. The blind was lowered and everyone withdrew to the rear of the house. There was nothing confused, nothing disorderly about the withdrawal, so calm and quiet that he caught not even a rustling of silk. Elegance and grace could at times push admiration to the point of envy.
He slipped out and sent someone back to the city for a carriage.
“I was sorry to find the prince away,” he said to the man who had been so helpful, “but I have drawn some consolation from what you have been so good as to let me see. Might I ask you to tell them that I am here, and to add that I am thoroughly drenched?”
The ladies were in an agony of embarrassment. They had not dreamed that anyone would be looking in at them—and had he even overheard that silly conversation? Now that they thought of it, there had been a peculiar fragrance on the wind; but the hour was late and they had not paid much attention. Could anything be more embarrassing? Impatient at the woman assigned to deliver his message—she did not seem to have the experience for the task—Kaoru decided that there was a time for boldness and a time for reserve; and the mist was in his favor. He advanced to the blind that had been raised earlier and knelt deferentially before it. The countrified maids had not the first notion of what to say to him. Indeed they seemed incapable of so ordinary a courtesy as inviting him to sit down.
“You must see how uncomfortable I am,” he said quietly. “I have come over steep mountains. You cannot believe, surely, that a man with improper intentions would have gone to the trouble. This is not the reward I expected. But I take some comfort in the thought that if I submit to the drenching time after time your ladies may come to understand.”
They were young and incapable of a proper answer. They seemed to wither and crumple. It was taking a great deal of time to summon a more experienced woman from the inner chambers. The prolonged silence, Ōigimi feared, might make it seem that they were being coy.
“We know nothing, nothing. How can we pretend otherwise?” It was an elegantly modulated voice, but so soft that he could scarcely make it out.
“One of the more trying mannerisms of this world, I have always thought, is for people who know its cruelties to pretend that they do not. Even you are guilty of the fault, which I find more annoying than I can tell you. Your honored father has gained deep insights into the nature of things. You have lived here with him. I should have thought that you would have gained similar insights, and that they might now demonstrate their worth by making you see the intensity of my feelings and the difficulty with which I contain them. You cannot believe, surely, that I am the usual sort of adventurer. I fear that I am of a rather inflexible nature and refuse to wander in that direction even when others try to lead me. These facts are general knowledge and will perhaps have reached your ears. If I had your permission to tell you of my silent days, if I could hope to have you come forward and seek some relief from your solitude—I cannot describe the pleasure it would give me.”
Ōigimi, too shy to answer, deferred to an older woman who had at length been brought from her room.
There was nothing reticent about her. “Oh no! You’ve left him out there all by himself! Bring him in this minute. I simply do not understand young people.” The princesses must have found this as trying as the silence. “You see how it is, sir. His Highness has decided to live as if he did not belong to the human race. No one comes calling these days, not even people you’d think would never forget what they owe him. And here you are, good enough to come and see us. I may be stupid and insensitive, but I know when to be grateful. So do my ladies. But they are so shy.”
Kaoru was somewhat taken aback. Yet the woman’s manner suggested considerable polish and experience, and her voice was not unpleasant.
“I had been feeling rather unhappy,” he said, “and your words cheer me enormously. It is good to be told that they understand.”
He had come inside. Through the curtains, the old woman could make him out in the dawn light. It was as she had been told: he had discarded every pretense of finery and come in rough travel garb, and he was drenched. A most extraordinary fragrance—it hardly seemed of this world—filled the air.
“I would not want you to think me forward,” she said, and there were tears in her voice; “but I have hoped over the years that the day might come when I could tell you a little, the smallest bit, of a sad story of long ago.” Her voice was trembling. “In among my other prayers I have put a prayer that the day might come, and now it seems that the prayer has been answered. How I have longed for this moment! But see what is happening. I am all choked up before I have come to the first word.”
He had heard, and it had been his experience, that old people weep easily. This, however, was no ordinary display of feeling.
“I have fought my way here so many times and not known that a perceptive lady like yourself was in residence. Come, this is your chance. Do not leave anything out.”
“This is my chance, and there may not be another. When you are my age you can’t be sure that you will last the night. Well, let me talk. Let me tell you that this old hag is still among the living. I have heard somewhere that Kojijū, the one who waited upon your revered mother—I have heard that she is dead. So it goes. Most of the people I was fond of are dead, the people who were young when I was young. And after I had outlived them all, certain family ties171 brought me back from the far provinces, and I have been in the service of my ladies these five or six years. None of this, I am sure, will have come to your attention. But you may have heard of the young gentleman who was a guards captain when he died. I am told that his brother is now a major counselor.172 It hardly seems possible that we have had time to dry our tears, and yet I count on my fingers and I see that there really have been years enough for you to be the fine young gentleman you are. They seem like a dream, all those years.
“My mother was his nurse. I was privileged myself to wait upon him. I did not matter, of course, but he sometimes told me secrets he kept from others, let slip things he could not keep to himself. And as he lay dying he called me to his side and left a will, I suppose you might call it. There were things in it I knew I must tell you of someday. But no more. You will ask why, having said this much, I do not go on. Well, there may after all be another chance and I can tell you everything. These youngsters are of the opinion that I have said too much already, and they are right.” She was a loquacious old person obviously, but now she fell silent.
It was like a story in a dream, like the unprompted recital of a medium in a trance. It was too odd—and at the same time it touched upon events of which he had long wanted to know more. But this was not the time. She was right. Too many eyes were watching. And it would not do to surrender on the spot and waste a whole night on an ancient story.
“I do not understand everything you have said, I fear, and yet your talk of old times does call up fond thoughts. I shall come again and ask you to tell me the rest of the story. You see how I am dressed, and if the mist clears before I leave I will disgrace myself in front of the ladies. I would like to stay longer but do not see how I can.”
As he stood up to leave, the bell of the monastery sounded in the distance. The mist was heavy. The sadness of these lives poured in upon him, of the isolation enforced by heavy mountain mists. They were lives into which the whole gamut of sorrows had entered, he thought, and he thought too that he understood why they preferred to live in seclusion.
“How very sad.
“In the dawn I cannot see the path I took
to find Oyama of the Pines in mist.”
He turned away, and yet hesitated. Even ladies who saw the great gentlemen of the capital every day would have found him remarkable, and he quite dazzled these rustic maids. Ōigimi, knowing that it would be too much to ask one of them to deliver it for her, offered a reply, her voice soft and shy as before, and with a hint of a sigh in it.
“Our mountain path, enshrouded whatever the season,
is now closed off by the deeper mist of autumn.”
The scene itself need not have detained him, but these evidences of loneliness made him reluctant to leave. Presently, uncomfortable at the thought of being seen in broad daylight, he went to the west veranda, where a place had been prepared for him, and looked out over the river.
“To have spoken so few words and to have had so few in return,” he said as he left the princesses’ wing of the house, “makes it certain that I shall have much to think about. Perhaps when we are better acquainted I can tell you of it. In the meantime, I shall say only that if you think me no different from most young men, and you do seem to, then your judgment in such matters is not what I would have hoped it to be.”
His men had become expert at presiding over the weirs. “Listen to all the shouting,” said one of them. “And they don’t seem to be exactly boasting over what they’ve caught. The fish173 are not cooperating.”
Strange, battered little boats, piled high with brush and wattles, made their way up and down the river, each boatman pursuing his own sad, small livelihood at the uncertain mercy of the waters. “It is the same with all of us,” thought Kaoru to himself. “Am I to boast that I am safe from the flood, calm and secure in a jeweled mansion?”
After his return to the city, Kaoru sends a note to Ōigimi in which he expresses the hope that he might appear before the princesses more freely in the future. The Eighth Prince, seeing the letter, chides Ōigimi for her treatment of the serious young man—he is no trifler, and the Eighth Prince has already hinted to him that he would like him to take care of the princesses after his own death. Kaoru tells his friend Niou, who has a reputation for amorousness and is “always mooning about the possibility of finding a great beauty lost away in the mountains,” about the princesses. Niou is interested.
Kaoru makes another visit to Uji near the beginning of the Tenth Month. He hints to the prince that he would like to hear another sample of the princesses’ music, but they refuse to accommodate him. Again, the prince mentions his concern about what will become of them when he is gone, and Kaoru renews his promise to look out for them.
When the prince had withdrawn for matins, Kaoru summoned the old woman. Her name was Bennokimi, and the Eighth Prince had her in constant attendance upon his daughters. Though in her late fifties, she was still favored with the graces of a considerably younger woman. Her tears flowing liberally, she told him of what an unhappy life “the young captain,” Kashiwagi, had led, of how he had fallen ill and presently wasted away to nothing.
It would have been a very affecting tale of long ago even if it had been about a stranger. Haunted and bewildered through the years, longing to know the facts of his birth, Kaoru had prayed that he might one day have a clear explanation. Was it in answer to his prayers that now, without warning, there had come a chance to hear of these old matters, as if in a sad dream? He too was in tears.
“It is hard to believe—and I must admit that it is a little alarming too—that someone who remembers those days should still be with us. I suppose people have been spreading the news to the world—and I have had not a whisper of it.”
“No one knew except Kojijū and myself. Neither of us breathed a word to anyone. As you can see, I do not matter; but it was my honor to be always with him, and I began to guess what was happening. Then sometimes—not often, of course—when his feelings were too much for him, one or the other of us would be entrusted with a message. I do not think it would be proper to go into the details. As he lay dying, he left the testament I have spoken of. I have had it with me all these years—I am no one, and where was I to leave it? I have not been as diligent with my prayers as I might have been, but I have asked the Blessed One for a chance to let you know of it; and now I think I have a sign that he is here with us. But the testament: I must show it to you. How can I burn it now? I have not known from one day to the next when I might die, and I have worried about letting it fall into other hands. When you began to visit His Highness I felt somewhat better again. There might be a chance to speak to you. I was not merely praying for the impossible, and so I decided that I must keep what he had left with me. Some power stronger than we has brought us together.” Weeping openly now, she told of the illicit affair and of his birth, as the details came back to her.
“In the confusion after the young master’s death, my mother too fell ill and died; and so I wore double mourning. A not very nice man who had had his eye on me took advantage of it all and led me off to the West Country, and I lost all touch with the city. He too died, and after ten years and more I was back in the city again, back from a different world. I have for a very long time had the honor to be acquainted indirectly with the sister of my young master, the lady who is a consort of the Reizei emperor, and it would have been natural for me to go into her service. But there were those old complications, and there were other reasons too. Because of the relationship on my father’s side of the family174 I have been familiar with His Highness’s household since I was a child, and at my age I am no longer up to facing the world. And so I have become the rotted stump you see,175 buried away in the mountains. When did Kojijū die? I wonder. There aren’t many left of the ones who were young when I was young. The last of them all; it isn’t easy to be the last one, but here I am.”
Another dawn was breaking.
“We do not seem to have come to the end of this old story of yours,” said Kaoru. “Go on with it, please, when we have found a more comfortable place and no one is listening. I do remember Kojijū slightly. I must have been four or five when she came down with consumption and died, rather suddenly. I am most grateful to you. If it hadn’t been for you I would have carried the sin176 to my grave.”
The old woman handed him a cloth pouch in which several mildewed bits of paper had been rolled into a tight ball.
“Take these and destroy them. When the young master knew he was dying, he got them together and gave them to me. I told myself I would give them to Kojijū when next I saw her and ask her to be sure that they got to her lady. I never saw her again. And so I had my personal sorrow and the other too, the knowledge that I had not done my duty.”
With an attempt at casualness, he put the papers away. He was deeply troubled. Had she told him this unsolicited story, as is the way with the old, because it seemed to her an interesting piece of gossip? She had assured him over and over again that no one else had heard it, and yet—could he really believe her?
After a light breakfast he took his leave of the prince. “Yesterday was a holiday because the emperor was in retreat, but today he will be with us again. And then I must call on the Reizei princess, who is not well, and there will be other things to keep me busy. But I will come again soon, before the autumn leaves have fallen.”
“For me, your visits are a light to dispel in some measure the shadows of these mountains.”
Back in the city, Kaoru took out the pouch the old woman had given him. The heavy Chinese brocade bore the inscription “For My Lady.”177 It was tied with a delicate thread and sealed with Kashiwagi’s name. Trembling, Kaoru opened it. Inside were multi-hued bits of paper, on which, among other things, were five or six answers by his mother to notes from Kashiwagi.
And, on five or six sheets of thick white paper, apparently in Kashiwagi’s own hand, like the strange tracks of some bird, was a longer letter: “I am very ill, indeed I am dying. It is impossible to get so much as a note to you, and my longing to see you only increases. Another thing adds to the sorrow: the news that you have withdrawn from the world.
“Sad are you, who have turned away from the world,
but sadder still my soul, taking leave of you.
“I have heard with strange pleasure of the birth of the child. We need not worry about him, for he will be reared in security. And yet—
“Had we but life, we could watch it, ever taller,
the seedling pine unseen among the rocks.”
The writing, fevered and in disarray, went to the very edge of the paper. The letter was addressed to Kojijū.
The pouch had become a dwelling place for worms and smelled strongly of mildew; and yet the writing, in such compromising detail, was as clear as if it had been set down the day before. It would have been a disaster if the letter had fallen into the hands of outsiders, he thought, half in sorrow and half in alarm. He was so haunted by this strange affair, stranger than any the future could possibly bring, that he could not persuade himself to set out for court. Instead he went to visit his mother. Youthful and serene, she had a sutra in her hand, which she put shyly out of sight upon his arrival. He must keep the secret to himself, he thought. It would be cruel to let her know of his own new knowledge. His mind jumped from detail to detail of the story he had heard.
In the Second Month of the following year, Niou goes on a pilgrimage to Hatsuse and stops at Uji, hoping to have an opportunity to pay a call on the princesses, but the size of his entourage prevents him from getting away. Kaoru, who is with him, delivers a note on his behalf. The Eighth Prince urges his daughters to reply, albeit cautiously and casually, so as not to excite him, and thus Niou begins a correspondence with Nakanokimi, though he is never sure which of the princesses is responsible for the letters he receives. At this point, Ōigimi is twenty-five and Nakanokimi is twenty-three.
The prince has reached an age that corresponds to a dangerous year and wishes to renounce the world but continues to worry about his daughters. In the autumn, Kaoru visits Uji and promises again to look after the princesses. The Eighth Prince indicates that he suspects his death is near and speaks to his daughters.
With the deepening of autumn, the prince’s gloom also deepened. Concluding that he must withdraw to some quiet refuge where nothing would upset his devotions, he left behind various admonitions.
“Parting is the way of the world. It cannot be avoided: but the grief is easier to bear when you have a companion to share it with. I must leave it to your imagination—for I cannot tell you—how hard it is for me to go off without you, knowing that you are alone. But it would not do to wander lost in the next world because of ties with this one. Even while I have been here with you, I have as good as run away from the world; and it is not for me to say how it should be when I am gone. But please remember that I am not the only one. You have your mother to think of too. Please do nothing that might reflect on her name. Men who are not worthy of you will try to lure you out of these mountains, but you are not to yield to their blandishments. Resign yourselves to the fact that it was not meant to be—that you are different from other people and were meant to be alone—and live out your lives here at Uji. Once you have made up your minds to it, the years will go smoothly by. It is good for a woman, even more than for a man, to be away from the world and its slanders.”
The princesses were beyond thinking about the future. It was beyond them, indeed, to think how they would live if they were to survive their father by so much as a day. These gloomy and ominous instructions left them in the cruelest uncertainty. He had in effect renounced the world already, but for them, so long beside him, to be informed thus suddenly of a final parting—it was not from intentional cruelty that he had done it, of course, and yet in such cases a certain resentment is inevitable.
On the evening before his departure he inspected the premises with unusual care, walking here, stopping there. He had thought of this Uji villa as the most temporary of dwellings, and so the years had gone by. Everything about him suggesting freedom from worldly taints, he turned to his devotions, and thoughts of the future slipped in among them from time to time. His daughters were so very much alone—how could they possibly manage after his death?
He summoned the older women of the household.
“Do what you can for them, as a last favor to me. The world does not pay much attention when an ordinary house goes to ruin. It happens every day. I don’t suppose people pay so very much attention when it happens to one like ours. But if fate seems to have decided that the collapse is final, a man does feel ashamed, and wonders how he can face his ancestors. Sadness, loneliness—they are what life brings. But when a house is kept in a manner that becomes its rank, the appearances it maintains, the feelings it has for itself, bring their own consolation. Everyone wants luxury and excitement; but you must never, even if everything fails—you must never, I beg of you, let them make unsuitable marriages.”
As the moonlight faded in the dawn, he went to take leave of his daughters. “Do not be lonely when I am gone. Be happy, find ways to occupy yourselves. One does not get everything in this world. Do not fret over what has to be.”
He looked back and looked back again as he started up the path to the monastery.
The girls were lonely indeed, despite these admonitions. What would the one do if the other were to go away? The world offers no security in any case; and what could they possibly do for themselves if they were separated? Smiling over this small matter, sighing over that rather more troublesome detail, they had always been together.
It was the morning of the day when the prince’s meditations were to end. He would be coming home. But in the evening a message came instead: “I have been indisposed since this morning. A cold, perhaps—whatever it is, I am having it looked after. I long more than ever to see you.”
The princesses were in consternation. How serious would it be? They hastened to send quilted winter garments. Two and three days passed, and there was no sign of improvement. A messenger came back. The ailment was not of a striking nature, he reported. The prince was generally indisposed. If there should be even the slightest improvement he would brave the discomfort and return home.
The abbot, in constant attendance, sought to sever the last ties with this world. “It may seem like the commonest sort of ailment,” he said, “but it could be your last. Why must you go on worrying about your daughters? Each of us has his own destiny, and it does no good to worry about others.” He said that the prince was not to leave the temple under any circumstances.
It was about the twentieth of the Eighth Month, a time when the autumn skies are conducive to melancholy in any case. For the princesses, lost in their own sad thoughts, there was no release from the morning and evening mists. The moon was bright in the early-morning sky, the surface of the river was clear and luminous. The shutters facing the mountain were raised. As the princesses gazed out, the sound of the monastery bell came down to them faintly—and, they said, another dawn was upon them.
But then came a messenger, blinded with tears. The prince had died in the night.
Not for a moment had the princesses stopped thinking of him; but this was too much of a shock, it left them dazed. At such times tears refuse to come. Prostrate, they could only wait for the shock to pass. A death is sad when, as is the commoner case, the survivors have a chance to make proper farewells. For the princesses, who did not have their father with them, the sense of loss was even more intense. Their laments would not have seemed excessive if they had wailed to the very heavens. Reluctant to accept the thought of surviving their father by a day, they asked what they were to do now. But he had gone a road that all must take, and weeping did nothing to change that cruel fact.
As had been promised over the years, the abbot arranged for the funeral. The princesses sent word that they would like to see their father again, even in death. And what would be accomplished? replied the holy man. He had trained their father to acceptance of the fact that he would not see them again, and now it was their turn. They must train their hearts to a freedom from binding regrets. As he told of their father’s days in the monastery, they found his wisdom somewhat distasteful.
It had long been their father’s most fervent wish to take the tonsure, but in the absence of someone to look after his daughters he had been unable to turn his back on them. Day after day, so long as he had lived, this inability had been at the same time the solace of a sad life and the bond that tied him to a world he wished to leave. Neither to him who had now gone the inevitable road nor to them who must remain behind had fulfillment come.
Kaoru and Niou send notes to the princesses, expressing their condolences. Nakanokimi is too distressed to reply. Ōigimi, reflecting on Niou’s sophistication, is fearful and permits no response to him. Thinking of her father’s last instructions, she resolves to live out her life as a spinster. She replies freely to Kaoru’s earnest letters but remains reserved when he visits, somewhat to his annoyance.
Things become even lonelier for the princesses with the coming of winter, and Kaoru calls again, urging Ōigimi to accept Niou as a suitor for Nakanokimi. Genji’s son Yūgiri, now minister of the right, hopes to arrange a match between Niou and his daughter Rokunokimi, but Niou does not seem interested. In the summer, Kaoru has an opportunity to spy on the princesses through a small hole in a partition, which further whets his interest.
Kaoru visits Uji again in the fall to assist with the memorial services on the anniversary of the Eighth Prince’s death. He indicates to Ōigimi his interest in her and attempts to persuade her to be more friendly. She rebuffs him, citing her father again, but hopes Kaoru will help arrange something for Nakanokimi.
He summoned Bennokimi.
“It was thoughts of the next life that first brought me here; and then, in those last sad days, he left a request with me. He asked me to look after his daughters in whatever way seemed best. I have tried; and now it comes as something of a surprise that they should be disregarding their own father’s wishes. Do you understand it any better than I do? I am being pushed to the conclusion that he had hopes for them which they do not share. I know you will have heard about me, what an odd person I am, not much interested in the sort of things that seem to interest everyone else. And now, finally, I have found someone who does interest me, and I am inclined to believe that fate has had a hand in the matter; and I gather that the gossips already have us married. Well, if that is the case—I know it will seem out of place for me to say so—other things being equal, we might as well do as the prince wished us to, and indeed as everyone else does. It would not be the first case the world has seen of a princess married to a commoner.
“And I have spoken more than once about my friend Niou to your other lady. She simply refuses to believe me when I tell her she needn’t worry about the sort of husband he is likely to make. I wonder if someone might just possibly be working to turn her against her father’s wishes. You must tell me everything you know.”
His remarks were punctuated by many a brooding sigh.
There is a kind of cheeky domestic who, in such situations, assumes a knowing manner and encourages a man in what he wants to believe. Bennokimi was not such a one. She thought the match ideal, but she could not say so.
“My ladies are different from others I have served. Perhaps they were born different. They have never been much interested in the usual sort of thing. We who have been in their service—even while their father was alive, we really had no tree to run to for shelter. Most of the other women decided fairly soon that there was no point in wasting their lives in the mountains, and they went away, wherever their family ties led them. Even people whose families had been close to the prince’s for years and years—they were not having an easy time of it, and most of them gave up and went away. And now that he is gone it is even worse. We wonder from one minute to the next who will be left. The ones who have stayed are always grumbling, and I am sure that my ladies are often hurt by the things they say. Back in the days when the prince was still with us, they say, well, he had his old-fashioned notions, and they had to be respected for what they were. My ladies were, after all, royal princesses, he was always saying, and there came a point at which a suitor had to be considered beneath them, and that was that; and so they stayed single. But now they are worse than single, they are completely alone in the world, and it would take a very cruel person to find fault if they were to do what everyone else does. And really, could anyone expect them to go through their lives as they are now? Even the monks who wander around gnawing pine needles—even they have their different ways of doing things, without forgetting the Good Law. They cannot deny life itself, after all. I am just telling you what these women say. The older of my ladies refuses to listen to a word of it, at least as it has to do with her; but I gather she does hope that something can be found for her sister, some way to live an ordinary, respectable life. She has watched you climb over these mountains year after year and she knows that not many people would have assumed responsibility as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I really do think that she is ready to talk of the details, and all that matters is what you have in mind yourself. As for Prince Niou, she does not seem to think his letters serious enough to bother answering.”
“I have told you of her father’s last request. I was much moved by it, and I have vowed to go on seeing them. You might think that, from my point of view, either of your ladies would do as well as the other, and I really am very flattered that she should have such confidence in me. But you know, even a man who doesn’t have much use for the things that excite most people will find himself drawn to a lady, and when that happens he does not suddenly go running after another—though that would not be too difficult, I suppose, for the victim of a casual infatuation.
“But no. If only she would stop retreating and putting up walls between us. If only I could have her here in front of me, to talk to about the little things that come and go. If so much did not have to be kept back.
“I am all by myself, and I always have been. I have no brother near enough my own age to talk to about the amusing things and the sad things that happen. You will say that I have a sister, but the things I really want to talk about are always an impossible jumble, and an empress is hardly the person to go to with them. You will think of my mother. It is true that she looks young enough to be my sister, but after all she is my mother. All the others seem so haughty and so far away. They quite intimidate me. And so I am by myself. The smallest little flirtation leaves me dumb and paralyzed; and when it seems that the time has come to show my feelings to someone I really care for, I am not up to the smallest gesture. I may be hurt, I may be furious, and there I stand like a post, knowing perfectly well how ridiculous I am.
“But let us talk of Niou. Don’t you suppose that problem could be left to me? I promise that I will do no one any harm.”
It would be far better than this lonely life, thought the old woman, wishing she could tell him to go ahead. But they were both so touchy. She thought it best to keep her own counsel.
Kaoru whiled away the time, thinking that he would like to stay the night and perhaps have the quiet talk of which he had spoken. For Ōigimi the situation was next to intolerable. Though he had made it known only by indirection, his resentment seemed to be rising to an alarming pitch. The most trivial answer was almost more than she could muster. If only he would stay away from that one subject! In everything else he was a man of the most remarkable sympathy, a fact that only added to her agitation. She had someone open the doors to the chapel and stir the lamps, and withdrew behind a blind and a screen. There were also lights outside the chapel. He had them taken away—they were very unsettling, he said, for they revealed him in shameful disorder—and lay down near the screen. She had fruit and sweets brought to him, arranged in a tasteful yet casual manner. His men were offered wine and very tempting side dishes. They withdrew to a corridor, leaving the two alone for what they assumed would be a quiet, intimate conversation.
She was in great agitation, but in her manner there was something poignantly appealing that delighted and—a pity that it should have been so—excited him. To be so near, separated from her only by a screen, and to let the time go by with no perceptible sign that the goal was near—it was altogether too stupid. Yet he managed an appearance of calm as he talked on of this amusing event and that melancholy one. There was much to interest her in what he said, but from behind her blinds she called to her women to come nearer. No doubt thinking that chaperones would be out of place, they pretended not to hear, and indeed withdrew yet further as they lay down to rest. There was no one to replenish the lamps before the holy images. Again she called out softly, and no one answered.
“I am not feeling at all well,” she said finally, starting for an anteroom. “I think a little sleep might do me good. I hope you sleep well.”
“Don’t you suppose a man who has fought his way over mountains might feel even worse? But that’s all right. Just having you here is enough. Don’t go off and leave me.”
He quietly pushed the screen aside. She was in precipitous flight through the door beyond.
“So this is what you mean by a friendly talk,” she said angrily as he caught at her sleeve. Far from turning him away, her anger added to the fascination. “It is not at all what I would have expected.”
“You seem determined not to understand what I mean by friendliness, and so I thought I would show you. Not what you would have expected—and what, may I ask, did you expect? Stop trembling. You have nothing to be afraid of. I am prepared to take my vow before the Blessed One here. I have done everything to avoid upsetting you. No one in the world can have dreamed what an eccentric affair this is. But I am an eccentric and a fool myself, and will no doubt continue to be so.”
He stroked the hair that flowed in the wavering light. The softness and the luster were all that he could have asked for. Suppose someone with more active inclinations were to come upon this lonely, unprotected house—there would be nothing to keep him from having his way. Had the visitor been anyone but himself, matters would by now have come to a showdown. His own want of decision suddenly revolted him. Yet here she was, weeping and wringing her hands, quite beside herself. He would have to wait until consent came of its own accord. Distressed at her distress, he sought to comfort her as best he could.
“I have allowed an almost indecent familiarity, and I have had no idea of what was going through your mind; and I may say that you have not shown a great deal of consideration, forcing me to display myself in these unbecoming colors. But I am at fault too. I am not up to what has to be done, and I am sorry for us both.” It was too humiliating, that the lamplight should have caught her in somber, shabby gray.
“Yes, I have been inconsiderate, and I am ashamed and sorry. They give you a good excuse, those robes of mourning. But don’t you think you might just possibly be making too much of them? You have seen something of me over the years, and I doubt if mourning gives you a right to act as if we had just been introduced. It is clever of you but not altogether convincing.”
He told her of the many things he had found it so hard to keep to himself, beginning with that glimpse of the two princesses in the autumn dawn. She was in an agony of embarrassment. So he had had this store of secrets all along, and had managed to feign openness and indifference!
He now pulled a low curtain between them and the altar and lay down beside her. The smell of the holy incense, the particularly strong scent of anise, stabbed at his conscience, for he was more susceptible in matters of belief than most people. He told himself that it would be ill considered in the extreme, now of all times, when she was in mourning, to succumb to temptation; and he would be going against his own wishes if he failed to control himself. He must wait until she had come out of mourning. Then, difficult though she was, there would surely be some slight easing of the tensions.
Autumn nights are sad in the most ordinary of places. How much sadder in wailing mountain tempests, with the calls of insects sounding through the hedges. As he talked on of life’s uncertain turns, she occasionally essayed an answer. He was touched and pleased. Her women, who had spread their bedclothes not far away, sensed that a happy arrangement had been struck up and withdrew to inner apartments. She thought of her father’s admonitions. Strange and awful things can happen, she saw, to a lady who lives too long. It was as if she were adding her tears to the rushing torrent outside.
The dawn came on, bringing an end to nothing. His men were coughing and clearing their throats, there was a neighing of horses—everything made him think of descriptions he had read of nights on the road. He slid back the door to the east, where dawn was in the sky, and the two of them looked out at the shifting colors. She had come out toward the veranda. The dew on the ferns at the shallow eaves was beginning to catch the light. They would have made a very striking pair, had anyone been there to see them.
“Do you know what I would like? To be as we are now. To look out at the flowers and the moon, and be with you. To spend our days together, talking of things that do not matter.”
His manner was so unassertive that her fears had finally left her. “And do you know what I would like? A little privacy. Here I am quite exposed, and a screen might bring us closer.”
The sky was red, there was a whirring of wings close by as flocks of birds left their roosts. As if from deep in the night, the matin bells came to them faintly.
“Please go,” she said with great earnestness. “It is almost daylight, and I do not want you to see me.”
“You can’t be telling me to push my way back through the morning mists? What would that suggest to people? No, make it look, if you will, as if we were among the proper married couples of the world, and we can go on being the curiosities we in fact seem to be. I promise you that I will do nothing to upset you; but perhaps I might trouble you to imagine, just a little, how genuine my feelings are.”
“If what you say is true,” she replied, her agitation growing as it became evident that he was in no hurry to leave, “then I am sure you will have your way in the future. But please, this morning, let me have my way.” She had to admit that there was little she could do.
“So you really are going to send me off into the dawn? Knowing that it is ‘new to me,’178 and that I am sure to lose my way?”
The crowing of a cock was like a summons back to the city.
“The things by which one knows the mountain village
are brought together in these voices of dawn.”
She replied:
“Deserted mountain depths where no birds sing,
I would have thought. But sorrow has come to visit.”
Seeing her as far as the door to the inner apartments, he returned by the way he had come the evening before, and lay down; but he was not able to sleep. The memories and regrets were too strong. Had his emotions earlier been toward her as they were now, he would not have been as passive over the months. The prospect of going back to the city was too dreary to face.
Ōigimi, in agony at the thought of what her women would have made of it all, found sleep as elusive. A very harsh trial it was, going through life with no one to turn to; and as if that huge uncertainty were not enough, there were these women with all their impossible suggestions. They as good as formed a queue, coming to her with proposals that had nothing to recommend them but the expediency of the moment; and if in a fit of inattention she were to accede to one of them, she would have shame and humiliation to look forward to. Kaoru did not at all displease her. The Eighth Prince had said more than once that if Kaoru should be inclined to ask her hand, he would not disapprove. But no. She wanted to go on as she was. It was her sister, now in the full bloom of youth, who must live a normal life. If the prince’s thoughts in the matter could be applied to her sister, she herself would do everything she could by way of support. But who was to be her own support? She had only Kaoru, and, strangely, things might have been easier had she found herself in superficial dalliance with an ordinary man. They had known each other for rather a long time, and she might have been tempted to let him have his way. His obvious superiority and his aloofness, coupled with a very low view of herself, had left her prey to shyness. In timid retreat, it seemed, she would end her days.
Ōigimi tries to keep Kaoru at arm’s length and even considers offering Nakanokimi as a substitute for herself. One evening Kaoru, with the assistance of the princesses’ attendants, intrudes again behind their screens. In a panic, Ōigimi slips out and leaves the sleeping Nakanokimi behind. Kaoru is aware that he is with the other girl but spends the night beside her anyway—he finds her rather attractive. Nakanokimi believes, incorrectly, that her sister had allowed this to happen deliberately and refuses to speak to her. Kaoru decides to resolve the situation by bringing Niou to Nakanokimi at last. Niou is more than willing. Niou sneaks in to Nakanokimi’s side, much as Kaoru had done, while Kaoru spends another chaste night with Ōigimi, who is aghast at Kaoru’s subterfuge. The young men leave Uji, and Ōigimi convinces Nakanokimi that she had no part in the men’s plan. Niou returns each of the next two nights, thus sealing his marriage with Nakanokimi. The younger sister is won over by his charm. Because of his position and the scrutiny his activities receive in the capital, however, he is unable to visit as much as he would like thereafter. His mother and father, the empress and emperor, disapprove of his nocturnal wanderings. They force him to reside in the palace and to marry Yūgiri’s daughter Rokunokimi. Niou’s heart remains with Nakanokimi, but the princesses are greatly dismayed by rumors of his impending marriage combined with his failure to visit Uji. Kaoru makes plans to bring Ōigimi to the capital, but feeling responsible for leaving her sister prey to Niou’s apparent defection, she stops eating and begins wasting away. Kaoru is very concerned and commissions services for her recovery, but to no avail.
He seldom left Ōigimi’s bedside, and his presence was a comfort to the women of the house. The wind was so high that Nakanokimi was having trouble with her curtains. When she withdrew to the inner rooms the ugly old women followed in some confusion. Kaoru came nearer and spoke to Ōigimi. There were tears in his voice.
“And how are you feeling? I have lost myself in prayers, and I fear they have done no good at all. It is too much, that you will not even let me hear your voice. You are not to leave me.”
Though barely conscious, she was still careful to hide her face. “There are many things I would like to say to you, if I could only get back a little of my strength. But I am afraid—I am sorry—that I must die.”
Tears were painfully near. He must not show any sign of despair—but soon he was sobbing audibly. What store of sins had he brought with him from previous lives, he wondered, that, loving her so, he had been rewarded with sorrow and sorrow only, and that he now must say goodbye? If he could find a flaw in her, he might resign himself to what must be. She became the more sadly beautiful the longer he gazed at her, and the more difficult to relinquish. Though her hands and arms were as thin as shadows, the fair skin was still smooth. The bedclothes had been pushed aside. In soft white robes, she was so fragile a figure that one might have taken her for a doll whose voluminous clothes hid the absence of a body. Her hair, not so thick as to be a nuisance, flowed down over her pillow, the luster as it had always been. Must such beauty pass, quite leave this world? The thought was not to be endured. She had not taken care of herself in her long illness, and yet she was far more beautiful than the sort of maiden who, not for a moment unaware that someone might be looking at her, is forever primping and preening. The longer he looked at her, the greater was the anguish.
“If you leave me, I doubt that I will stay on very long myself. I do not expect to survive you, and if by some chance I do, I will wander off into the mountains. The one thing that troubles me is the thought of leaving your sister behind.”
He wanted somehow to coax an answer from her. At the mention of her sister, she drew aside her sleeve to reveal a little of her face.
“I am sorry that I have been so out of things. I may have seemed rude in not doing as you have wished. I must die, apparently, and my one hope has been that you might think of her as you have thought of me. I have hinted as much, and had persuaded myself that I could go in peace if you would respect this one wish. My one unsatisfied wish, still tying me to the world.”
“There are people who walk under clouds of their own, and I seem to be one of them. No one else, absolutely no one else, has stirred a spark of love in me, and so I have not been able to follow your wishes. I am sorry now; but please do not worry about your sister.”
She was in greater distress as the hours went by. He summoned the abbot and others and had incantations read by well-known healers. He lost himself in prayers. Was it to push a man toward renunciation of the world that the Blessed One sent such afflictions? She seemed to be vanishing, fading away like a flower. No longer caring what sort of spectacle he might make, he wanted to shout out his resentment at his own helplessness. Only half in possession of her senses, Nakanokimi sensed that the last moment had come. She clung to the corpse until that forceful old woman, among others, pulled her away. She was only inviting further misfortunes, they said.
Was it a dream? Kaoru had somehow not accepted the possibility that things would come to this pass. Turning up the light, he brought it to the dead lady’s face. She lay as if sleeping, her face still hidden by a sleeve, as beautiful as ever. If only he could go on gazing at her as at the shell of a locust. The women combed her hair preparatory to having it cut, and the fragrance that came from it, sad and mysterious, was that of the living girl. He wanted to find a flaw, something to make her seem merely ordinary. If the Blessed One meant by all this to bring renunciation and resignation, then let him present something repellent, to drive away the regrets. So he prayed; but no relief was forthcoming. Well, he said presently, nothing was left but to commit the body to flames, and so he set about the sad duty of making the funeral arrangements. He walked unsteadily beside the body, scarcely feeling the ground beneath his feet. In a daze, he made his way back to the house. Even the last rites had been faltering, insubstantial; very little smoke had risen from the pyre.
Kaoru remains in Uji for some time, lost in grief. Niou receives permission from his mother to bring Nakanokimi to the capital and to install her in the Nijō mansion (which he had inherited from Genji and Murasaki). She moves in the Second Month of the following year. Kaoru wishes he could make Nakanokimi a substitute for her sister and berates himself for having let Niou have her. Niou settles down happily with Nakanokimi, who eventually bears him a son. Plans are made for Kaoru to marry the Second Princess, a daughter of the reigning emperor and half sister of Niou, but he is unenthusiastic about the match, still longing for Ōigimi, and makes advances toward Nakanokimi, who is rather distressed by the finalization of Niou’s marriage to Yūgiri’s daughter Rokunokimi. Nakanokimi manages to distract Kaoru by telling him about a half sister whom she has just met, the result of the Eighth Prince’s affair with one of his attendants. The girl, Ukifune, was never recognized by her father and had been living in the eastern provinces with her mother and stepfather, the governor of Hitachi. Told that she greatly resembles Ōigimi, Kaoru is intrigued. He catches a glimpse of her at the Uji bridge, on her way back from a pilgrimage to Hatsuse and, struck by her similarity to the princesses, resolves to have her.
Ukifune’s boorish stepfather becomes angered by her mother’s partiality to the girl over his own children and disrupts her impending marriage to a guards lieutenant. The mother asks Nakanokimi to take the girl in, and Nakanokimi allows her to hide in the west wing of her house. The girl is shy and somewhat countrified, hut Nakanokimi is much moved by her resemblance to Ōigimi. The women of the household attempt to keep her presence there secret from Niou, but the incorrigible prince discovers her and makes advances to her. Nakanokimi’s women manage to thwart him, but Ukifune’s mother is horrified and moves the girl secretly to another residence. With the assistance of Bennokimi, Kaoru whisks Ukifune off to Uji and leaves her there while he prepares a house for her in the capital.
Niou has been unable to forget the girl, and tries desperately to find out who she is. Eventually he succeeds in intercepting a letter from Ukifune to Nakanokimi and learns that Kaoru has a lady hidden at Uji. He sneaks off to Uji and gains admittance to the girl by pretending to be Kaoru. He notes Ukifune’s resemblance to Nakanokimi but is unable to discover her identity. Smitten, he spends two nights with her.
Kaoru, meanwhile, having a brief respite from his duties, set off in his usual quiet way for Uji. He went first to pay his respects and offer a prayer at the monastery. In the evening, after distributing gifts to the monks whom he had put to invoking the holy name, he went on to the Uji villa. Though incognito might have been appropriate, he had made no attempt to hide his rank. In informal but careful court dress, he was the embodiment of calm nobility. How could she possibly receive him? thought Ukifune, in near panic. The very skies seemed to reproach her. The dashing figure of his rival came back to her. Could she see him179 again? Niou had said that she had every chance of driving all his other ladies away and capturing his affections for herself alone. She had heard that he was ill and had sharply curtailed his affairs, and that his house echoed with services for his recovery. How hurt he would be when he learned of this visit! Kaoru was very different. He had an air as of unsounded depths and a quiet, meditative dignity. He used few words as he apologized for his remissness and he said almost nothing that suggested loneliness and deprivation. Yet he did say, choosing his words most carefully, that he had wanted to see her, and his controlled earnestness moved her more than any number of passionate avowals could have. He was very handsome; but that aside, she was sure that he would be a more reliable support, over long years, than Niou. It would be a great loss if he were to catch word of the strange turn her affections had taken. Niou’s improbable behavior had left its mark, and she had to thank him for it; but he was altogether too impetuous. She could expect nothing of an enduring nature from him. She would be very sad indeed if Kaoru were to fling her away in anger.
She was a sad little figure, lost in the turmoil of her thoughts. She had matured, acquired new composure, over the months. No doubt, in the boredom of country life, she had had time for meditation.
“The house I am building is almost finished.” His tone was more intimate and affectionate than usual. “I went to see it the other day. The waters are gentle, as different as they can be from this wild river, and the garden has all the flowers of the city. It is very near my Sanjō place. Nothing need keep us from seeing each other every day. I’d like to move you there in the spring, I think, if you don’t mind.”
Niou could scarcely have known of his friend’s plans when, in a letter the day before, he had spoken of finding a quiet place for her. She was very sorry, but she should not yield further, she knew, to his advances. And yet his image did keep floating before her eyes. What a wretched predicament to be in!
“Life was much easier and much pleasanter,” said Kaoru, “back in the days when you were not quite so given to tears. Has someone been talking about me? Would a person in my position come over such a long and difficult road if he had less than the best intentions?”
He went to the veranda railing and sat gazing at the new moon. They were both lost in thoughts, he of the past, of days and people now gone, she of the future and her growing troubles. The scene was perfection: the hills were veiled in a mist, and crested herons had gathered at a point along the frozen strand. Far down the river, where the Uji bridge cut its dim arc, faggot-laden boats were weaving in and out. All the details peculiar to the place were brought together. When he looked out upon the scene it was always as if events of old were fresh before his eyes. Even had he been with someone for whom he cared nothing, the air of Uji would have brought on strange feelings of intimacy. How much more so in the company of a not unworthy substitute for Ōigimi. Ukifune was gaining all the while in assurance and discernment, in her awareness of how city people behaved, and she was more beautiful each time he saw her. At a loss to console her, for it seemed that her tears were about to spill over, he offered a poem:
“No need to grieve. The Uji bridge stands firm.
They too stand firm, the promises I have made you.
“I am sure that you know what I mean.”
She replied:
“The bridge has gaps, one crosses gingerly.
Can one be sure it will not rot away?”
He found it more difficult than ever to leave her. But people talked, and he would have his fill of her company once he had moved her to the city. He left at dawn. These evidences of improvement added to the sorrow of parting.
Toward the middle of the Second Month the court assembled to compose Chinese poetry. Both Niou and Kaoru were present. The music was appropriate to the season, and Niou was in fine voice as he sang “A Branch of Plum.”180 Yes, he was the most accomplished of them all, everyone said. His one failing, not an easy one to forgive, was a tendency to lose himself in amorous dalliance of an unworthy sort.
It began to snow and a wind had come up. The festivities were quickly halted and everyone withdrew to Niou’s rooms, where a light repast was served. Kaoru was called out to receive a message. The snow, now deeper, was dimly lit by the stars. The fragrance which he sent back into the room made one think how uselessly “the darkness of the spring night” was laboring to blot it out.181
“Does she await me?”182 he said to himself, able somehow to infuse even such tiny, disjointed fragments of poetry with sudden life.
Of all the poems he could have picked, thought Niou. His heart racing, he pretended to be asleep. Clearly his friend’s feelings for Ukifune passed the ordinary. He had hoped that the lady at the bridge had spread her cloak for him alone, and it was sad and annoying that Kaoru should have similar hopes. Drawn to such a man, could the girl possibly shift her affections to a trifler like himself?
The next day, with snow drifted high outside, the courtiers appeared in the imperial presence to read their poems. Niou was very handsome, indeed at his youthful best. Kaoru, perhaps because he was two or three years older, seemed the calmer and more mature of the two, the model of the personable, cultivated young aristocrat. Everyone agreed that the emperor could not have found a better son-in-law. He had unusual literary abilities and a good head for practical matters as well. Their poems read, the courtiers withdrew. The assembly was loud in proclaiming the superiority of Niou’s, but he was not pleased. How easygoing they were, he said to himself, how fortunate to have room in their heads for such trivia.
Some days later, unsettled still at Kaoru’s behavior that snowy evening, Niou made elaborate excuses and set out for Uji. In the capital only traces of snow remained, as if awaiting a companion,183 but in the mountains the drifts were gradually deeper. The road was even more difficult than he had remembered it. His men were near tears from apprehension and fatigue. The secretary who had been his guide to Uji was also vice-minister of rites. Both positions carried heavy responsibilities, and it was ridiculous to see him hitching up his trousers like any ordinary foot soldier.
The people at Uji had been warned, but were sure that he would not brave the snow. Then, late in the night, word was brought in to Ukon of his arrival. So he really was fond of her, thought Ukifune. Ukon’s worries—how would it all end? she had been asking herself—dropped away, at least for the night. There was no way of turning him back, and she concluded that someone else must now be made a partner in the conspiracy. She chose the woman Jijū, who was another of Ukifune’s special favorites, and who could be trusted not to talk.
“It is most improper, I know,” said Ukon, “but we must stand together and keep it from the others.”
They led him inside. The perfume from his wet robes, flooding into the deepest corners of the hall, could have been troublesome; but they told everyone, convincingly enough, that their visitor was Kaoru. To go back before dawn would be worse than not to have come at all; yet someone was certain to spy him out in the morning light. He had therefore asked Tokikata to have a certain house beyond the river made ready. Tokikata, who had gone on ahead to see to the arrangements, returned late in the night and reported that everything was in the best of order. Ukon too was wondering how he meant to keep the escapade a secret. She had been awakened from deep slumber and she was trembling like a child lost in the snow.
Without a word, he took Ukifune up in his arms and carried her off. Jijū followed after and Ukon was left to watch the house. Soon they were aboard one of the boats that had seemed so fragile out on the river. As they rowed into the stream, she clung to Niou, frightened as an exile to some hopelessly distant shore. He was delighted. The moon in the early-morning sky shone cloudless upon the waters. They were at the Islet of the Oranges,184 said the boatman, pulling up at a large rock over which evergreens trailed long branches.
“See,” said Niou, “they are fragile pines, no more, but their green is so rich and deep that it lasts a thousand years.
“A thousand years may pass, it will not waver,
this vow I make in the lee of the Islet of Oranges.”
What a very strange place to be, thought the girl.
“The colors remain, here on the Islet of Oranges.
But where go I, a boat upon the waters?”
The time was right, and so was the girl, and so was her poem: for him, at least, things could not have been more pleasingly arranged.
They reached the far bank of the river. An attendant helped him ashore, the girl still in his arms. No one else was to touch her, he insisted.
The custodian of the house was wondering what sort of woman could have produced such an uncourtly uproar. It was a temporary house, rough and unfinished, which Tokikata’s uncle, the governor of Inaba, had put up on one of his manors. Crude plaited screens such as Niou had not seen before offered almost no resistance to the wind. There were patches of snow at the fence, clouds had come up, bringing new flurries of snow, and icicles glistened at the eaves. In the daylight the girl seemed even prettier than by candlelight. Niou was dressed simply, against the rigors of the journey. A fragile little figure sat huddled before him, for he had slipped off her outer robe. And so here she was, she said to herself, not even properly dressed, before a royal prince. There was nothing, nothing at all, to protect her from his gaze. She was wearing five or six white singlets, somewhat rumpled, soft and lustrous to the hems of the sleeves and skirts, more pleasing, he thought, than any number of colors piled one upon another. He seldom saw women with whom he kept constant company in quite such informal dress. He was enchanted.
And so Jijū too (a pretty young woman) was witness to the scene. Who might she be? Niou had asked when he saw her climbing uninvited into the boat. She must not be told his name. Jijū, for her part, was dazzled. She had not been in the company of such a fine gentleman before.
The custodian made a great fuss over Tokikata, thinking him to be the leader of the party. Tokikata, who had appropriated the next room for himself, was in good form. He made an amusing game of evading the questions the custodian kept putting in reverent tones.
“There have been bad omens, very bad, and I must stay away from the city for a while. No one is to see me.”
And so Niou and Ukifune passed pleasant hours with no fear of being observed. No doubt, thought Niou, once more in the clutches of jealousy, she was equally amiable when she received Kaoru. He let it be known that Kaoru had taken the emperor’s own daughter for his bride and seemed devoted to her. He declined (let us say out of charity) to mention the snatch of poetry he had overheard that snowy evening.
“You seem to be cock of the walk,” he said when Tokikata came with towels and refreshments. “But keep out of sight while you’re about it. Someone might want to imitate you.”
Jijū, a susceptible young lady, was having such a good time. She spent the whole day with Tokikata.
Looking toward the city over the drifting snow, Niou saw forests emerging from and sinking back into the clouds. The mountain above caught the evening glow as in a mirror. He described, with some embroidering, the horror of last night’s journey. A crude rustic inkstone having been brought to him, he set down a poem as if in practice:
“I pushed through snowy peaks, past icy shores,
dauntless all the way—O daunting one!
“It is true, of course, that I had a horse at Kohata.”185
In her answering poem she ventured an objection:186
“The snow that blows to the shore remains there, frozen.
Yet worse my fate: I am caught, dissolve in midair.”
This image of fading in midair rather annoyed him. Yes, she was being difficult, she had to agree, tearing the paper to bits. He was always charming, and he was quite irresistible when he was trying to please.
He had said that he would be in retreat for two days. Each unhurried hour seemed to bring new intimacy. The clever Ukon contrived pretexts for sending over fresh clothes. Jijū smoothed her mistress’s hair and helped her into a robe of deep purple and a cloak of figured magenta lined also with magenta—an unexceptionable combination. Taking up Jijū’s apron,187 he had Ukifune try it on as she ladled water for him. Yes, his sister the First Princess would be very pleased to take such a girl into her service. Her ladies-in-waiting were numerous and wellborn, but he could think of none among them capable of putting the girl to shame.
But let us not look in too closely upon their dalliance.
He told her again and again how he wanted to hide her away, and he tried to extract unreasonable promises from her. “You are not to see him, understand, until everything is arranged.”
That was too much to ask of her. She shed a few silent tears. He, for his part, was almost strangled with jealousy. Even now she was unable to forget Kaoru! He talked on and on, now weeping, now reproaching her.
Late in the night, again in a warm embrace, they started back across the river.
“I doubt if the man to whom you seem to give the top ranking can be expected to treat you as well. You will know what I mean, I trust.”
It was true, she thought, nodding. He was delighted.
Ukon opened the side door and the girl went in, and he was left feeling utterly desolate.
As usual after such expeditions, he returned to Nijō. His appetite quite left him and he grew paler and thinner by the day, to the consternation of the whole court. In the stir that ensued he was unable to get a decent letter off to Uji.
That officious nurse of Ukifune’s had been with her daughter, who was in confinement; but now that she was back Ukifune was scarcely able to glance at such letters as did come. Her mother hated having her off in the wilderness, but consoled herself with the thought that Kaoru would make a dependable patron and guardian. The indications were that he would soon, albeit in secret, move her to a place near his Sanjō mansion. Then they would be able to look the world square in the face! The mother began seeking out accomplished serving women and pretty little girls and sending them off to her daughter. All this was as it should be, Ukifune knew; yet the image of the dashing, impetuous Niou, now reproaching her, now wheedling and cajoling, insisted upon coming back. When she dozed off for a moment, there he would be in her dreams. How much easier for everyone if he would go away!
The rains continued, day after day. Chafing at his inability to travel that mountain road, Niou thought how constricting was “the cocoon one’s parents weave about one”188—and that was scarcely a kind way to characterize the concern his royal parents felt for him. He sent off a long letter in which he set down his thoughts as they came to him.
“I gaze your way in search of the clouds above you.
I see but darkness, so dreary these days of rain.”
His hand was if anything more interesting the less care he took with it. She was still young and rather flighty, and these avowals of love set up increasingly strong tremors in response. Yet she could not forget the other gentleman, a gentleman of undoubted depth and nobility, perhaps because it was he who had first made her feel wanted. Where would she turn if he were to hear of this sordid affair and abandon her? And her mother, who lived for the day when he would give her a home, would certainly be upset, and very angry too. Prince Niou, judging from his letters, burned with impatience; but she had heard a great deal about his volatility and feared that his fondness for her was a matter of the passing moment. Supposing he were indeed to hide her away and number her among his enduring loves—how could she then face Nakanokimi, her own sister? The world kept no secrets, as his success in searching her out after that strange, fleeting encounter in the dusk had demonstrated. Kaoru might bring her into the city, but was it possible that his rival would fail to seek her out there too? And if Kaoru were to turn against her, she knew that she would have herself to blame.
Both men make plans to bring Ukifune to the capital. Eventually Kaoru learns that Niou has been writing to Ukifune, and he hints to her that he knows. Ukifune is in an agony of indecision. Although excited by Niou’s ardor, she feels she owes allegiance to Kaoru. Eventually Niou, frustrated that she has stopped writing to him, rushes off to Uji and attempts to see her. Her women refuse to admit him.
Ashamed of her swollen eyes, she was late in arising the next morning. She put her dress in a semblance of order and took up a sutra. Let my sin be light, she prayed, for going ahead of my mother. She took out the sketch Niou had made for her, and there he was beside her again, handsome, confident, courtly. The sorrow was more intense, she was sure, than if she had seen him the night before. And she was sad too for the other gentleman, the one who had vowed unshakable fidelity, who had said that they would go off to some place of quiet retirement. To be laughed at, called a shallow, frivolous little wench, would be worse than to die and bring sorrow to such an estimable gentleman.
“If in torment I cast myself away,
my sullied name will drift on after me.”
She longed to see her mother again, and even her ill-favored brothers and sisters, who were seldom on her mind. And she thought of Nakanokimi. Suddenly, indeed, the people she would like to see once more seemed to form in troops and battalions. Her women, caught up in preparations for the move, dyeing new robes and the like, would pass by with this and that remark, but she paid no attention. She sat up through the night, ill and half distraught, wondering how she might steal into the darkness unobserved. Looking out over the river in the morning, she felt nearer death than a lamb on its way to the slaughter.
A note came from Niou, telling once more of his unhappiness. Not wishing to compromise herself at this very late date, she sent back only a poem:
“Should I leave no trace behind in this gloomy world,
what target then would you have for your complaints?”
She wanted also to tell Kaoru of her last hours; but the two men were very close friends and the thought of their comparing notes revolted her. It would be better to speak openly of her decision to neither.
A letter came from her mother: “I had a most ominous dream of you last night, and am having scriptures read in several temples. Perhaps because I had trouble getting back to sleep, I have been napping today, and I have had another dream, equally frightening. I waste no time, therefore, in getting off this letter. Do be careful. You are so far away from all of us, the wife of the gentleman who visits you is a disturbingly strong-minded lady, and it worries me terribly that I should have had such a dream at a time when you are not well. I really am very worried. I would like to visit you, but your sister goes on having a difficult time of it. We wonder if she might be in the clutches of some evil spirit, and I have the strictest orders from the governor not to leave the house for a moment. Have scriptures read in your monastery there, please, if you will.”
With the letter were offerings of cloth and a request to the abbot that sutras be read. How sad, thought the girl, that her mother should go to such trouble when it was already too late. She composed her answer while the messenger was off at the monastery. Though there was a great deal that she would have liked to say, she set down only this poem:
“We shall think of meeting in another world
and not confuse ourselves with dreams of this.”
She lay listening to the monastery bells as they rang an accompaniment to the sutras, and wrote down another poem, this one at the end of the list that had come back from the monastery of the sutras to be read:
“Join my sobs to the fading toll of the bell,
to let her know that the end of my life has come.”
The messenger had decided not to return that night. She tied her last poem to a tree in the garden.
“Here I am having palpitations,” said Nurse, “and she says she’s been having bad dreams. Tell the guards to be extra careful. Why will you not have something to eat? Come, a cup of this nice gruel.”
Do please be quiet, Ukifune was thinking. The woman was still alert and perceptive enough, but she was old and hideously wrinkled. Yet another one who should have been allowed to die first—and where would she go now? Ukifune wanted to offer at least a hint of what was about to happen, but she knew that the old woman would shoot bolt upright and begin shrieking to the heavens.
“When you let your worries get the best of you,” sighed Ukon, asking to lie down near her mistress, “they say your soul sometimes leaves your body and goes wandering. I imagine that’s why she has these dreams. Please, my lady, I ask you again: make up your mind one way or the other, and call it fate, whatever happens.”
The girl lay in silence, her soft sleeve pressed to her face.
Ukifune disappears, and the Uji house is in chaos. The women discover her note to her mother and realize what she has done. They inform everyone that she died in the night and hold a hasty funeral for her. Kaoru, Niou, and the girl’s mother all grieve.
The bishop of Yokawa, on Mount Hiei, a holy and learned man, had a mother some eighty years old and a sister in her fifties. In fulfillment of a vow made long ago, they had been on a pilgrimage to Hatsuse. The bishop’s favorite disciple had been with them. Having finished their prayers and offered up images and scriptures, they were climbing the Nara Slope on the return journey when the old woman was taken ill. She was in such discomfort that they could not ask her to go on. What were they to do? An acquaintance had a house at Uji, and it was decided to stop there for a day or two. When the old woman failed to improve, word was sent to the bishop. He had determined to remain in his mountain retreat until the end of the year, not even venturing down to the city, but there seemed a danger that his mother, of such an age that she could go at any time, might die on the journey. He hurried to her side. He himself and certain of his disciples whose ministrations had on other occasions been successful set about prayers and incantations—though one might have told them, and they would not have denied it, that she had lived a long enough life already.
The Uji acquaintance was troubled. “I have plans for a pilgrimage to Mitake, and for a week now I have been fasting and otherwise getting ready. Can I risk having a very old and ailing lady in the house?”
The bishop understood, and the house was in any case small and shabby. They would proceed back toward Hiei by easy stages. Then it was discovered that the stars were against them, and that plan too had to be abandoned. The bishop remembered the Uji villa of the late Suzaku emperor. It would be in the vicinity, and he knew the steward. He sent to ask whether they might use it for a day or two.
The messenger came back to report that the steward and his family had left for Hatsuse the day before.
The caretaker, a most unkempt old man, came with him. “Yes, if it suits your convenience, do please come immediately. The main hall is vacant. Pilgrims are always using it.”
“Splendid.” The bishop sent someone to make an inspection. “It is a public building, you might say, but it should be quiet enough.”
The caretaker, used to guests, had simple accommodations ready.
The bishop went first. The house was badly run-down and even a little frightening. He ordered sutras read. The disciple who had been to Hatsuse and another of comparable rank had lesser clerics, to whom such tasks came naturally, prepare torches. For no very good reason, they wandered around to the unfrequented rear of the main hall. Under a grove of some description, a bleak, forbidding place, they saw an expanse of white. What could it possibly be? They brought their torches nearer and made out a seated human figure.
“A fox? They do sometimes take human shapes, filthy creatures. If we don’t make it come out I don’t know who else will.” One of the lesser monks stepped forward.
“Careful, careful,” said another. “We can be sure it’s up to no good.” Not letting his eyes wander for an instant from the thing, he made motions with his hands toward exorcising it.
The bishop’s favored disciple was sure that his hair would have been standing on end if he had had any. The bold torchbearer, however, advanced resolutely upon the figure. It was a girl with long, lustrous hair. Leaning against the thick and very gnarled root of a tree, she was weeping bitterly.
“Why, this is strange. Maybe we should tell the bishop.”
“Very strange indeed,” said another, running off to report the discovery.
“People are always talking about foxes in human form,” said the bishop, “but do you know I have never seen one?” He came out for a look.
All the available domestics were at work in the kitchen and elsewhere, seeing to the needs of the unexpected guests. These postern regions were deserted save for the half-dozen men watching the thing. No change was to be detected in it. The hours passed, the night seemed endless. Daylight would tell them whether or not it was human, thought the bishop, silently going over appropriate spells, and seeking to quell whatever force it might be with mystic hand motions.
Presently he reached a conclusion. “It is human. It is no monstrous apparition. Go ask her who she is and why she is here. Don’t be afraid. She is no ghost—though possibly a corpse thrown away hereabouts has come back to life.”
“A corpse thrown away at the Suzaku emperor’s own villa? No, Your Reverence. At the very least it is someone a fox spirit or a wood spirit or something of the sort has coaxed away from home and then abandoned. The place will be contaminated, and for our purposes the timing could hardly be worse.”
Someone called for the caretaker, and the summons echoed menacingly across the empty grounds. He came running out, a somewhat ludicrous figure with his cap perched high on his head.
“Do you have any young women living here? Look at this, if you will.”
“Ah, yes. The foxes are at it again. Strange things are always turning up under this tree. Two years or so ago, in the fall it would have been, a little boy, maybe two years old, he lived up the road. They dragged him off and left him right here at the foot of this tree. It happens all the time.” He did not seem in the least upset.
“Had the child been killed?”
“Oh, no. He’s still alive, I’d imagine. Foxes are always after people, but they never do anything really bad.” His manner suggested that such occurrences were indeed commonplace. The emergency domestic arrangements seemed to weigh more heavily on his mind.
“Suppose we watch for a while,” said the bishop, “and see whether or not we observe foxes at work.”
He ordered the brave torchbearer to approach and challenge the strange figure.
“Who are you? Tell us who you are. Devil, fox, god, wood spirit? Don’t think you can hold out against His Reverence. He won’t be cheated. Who are you? Come on, now, tell us who you are.”
He tugged at a sleeve. The girl pressed it to her face and wept all the more bitterly.
“Come on, now. The sensible thing would be to tell us.” He tugged more assertively, though he rather hoped he would not be permitted a view of the face. It might prove to be the hideous mask of the eyeless, noseless she-devil189 he had heard about. But he must give no one reason to doubt his mettle. The figure lay face in arms, sobbing audibly now.
“Whatever it is, it’s not the sort of thing you see just every day.” He peered down at the figure. “But we’re in for a storm.190 She’ll die if we leave her out in it, that’s for sure. Let’s move her in under the fence.”
“She has all the proper limbs,” said the bishop, “and every detail suggests that she is human. We cannot leave her to die before our eyes. It is sad when the fish that swim in the lake or the stag that bays in the hills must die for want of help. Life is fleeting. We must cherish what we have of it, even so little as a day or two. She may have fallen into the clutches of some minor god or devil, or been driven from home, a victim of foul conspiracy. It may be her fate to die an unkind death. But such, even such, are they whom the Blessed One will save. Let us have a try at medicines and seek to revive her. If we fail, we shall still have done our best.”
He had the torchbearer carry her inside.
“Consider what you are doing, sir,” objected one of the disciples. “Your honored mother is dangerously ill and this will do her no good.”
“We do not know what it is,” replied another, “but we cannot leave it here for the rain to pound to death.”
It would be best not to let the servants know. The girl was put to bed in a remote and untenanted part of the hall.
The old nun’s carriage was brought up, amid chatter about the stubbornness of her affliction.
“And how is the other?” asked the bishop when the excitement had somewhat subsided.
“She seems to have lost her very last ounce of strength—sometimes we wonder if she is still breathing—and she has not said a word. Something has robbed her of her faculties.”
“What is this?” asked the younger nun, the bishop’s sister.
“Not in my upward of six decades have I seen anything so odd.” And the bishop described it.
“I had a dream at Hatsuse.” The nun was in tears. “What is she like? Do let me see her.”
“Yes, by all means. You will find her over beyond the east door.”
The nun hurried off. No one was with the girl, who was young and pretty and indefinably elegant. The white damask over her scarlet trousers gave off a subtle perfume.
“My child, my child. I wept for you, and you have come back to me.”
She had some women carry the girl to an inner room. Not having witnessed the earlier events, they performed the task equably.
The girl looked up through half-closed eyes.
She did not seem to understand. The nun forced medicine upon her, but she seemed on the point of fading away.
They must not let her die after she had been through so much. The nun called for the monk who had shown himself to be the most capable in such matters. “I am afraid that she is not far from death. Let her have all your best spells and prayers.”
“I was right in the first place,” he grumbled. “He should have let well enough alone.” But he commenced reading the sutra for propitiating the local gods.
“How is she?” The bishop looked in. “Find out what it is that has been at her. Drive it away, drive it away.”
“She will not live, sir, I am sure of it. And when she dies we’ll be in for a retreat we could perfectly well have avoided. She seems to be of good rank, and we can’t just run away from the corpse. A bother, that is what I call it.”
“You do talk a great deal,” said the nun. “But you are not to tell anyone. If you do you can expect an even worse bother.” She had almost forgotten her mother in the struggle to save the girl. Yes, she was a stranger, nothing to them, if they would have it so; but she was a very pretty stranger. Everyone who saw her joined in prayers that she be spared. Occasionally she would open her eyes, and there would be tears in them.
“What am I to do? The Blessed One has brought you in place of the child I have wept for, I am sure of it, and if you go too, I shall have to weep again. Something from another life has brought us together. I know that too. Speak to me. Please. Say something, anything.”
“I have been thrown out. I have nowhere to go.” The girl barely managed a whisper. “Don’t let anyone see me. Take me out when it gets dark and throw me back in the river.”
“She has spoken to me! But what a terrible thing to say. Why must you say such things? And why were you out there all by yourself?”
The girl did not answer. The nun examined her for wounds, but found none. Such a pretty little thing—but there was a certain apprehension mingled with the pity and sorrow. Might a strange apparition have been dispatched to tempt her, to challenge her calm?
The party remained in seclusion for two days, during which prayers and incantations went on without pause. Everyone was asking who this unusual person might be.
Certain farmers in the neighborhood who had once been in the service of the bishop came to pay their respects.
“There has been a big commotion over at the prince’s place,” one of them remarked by way of apology. “The General of the Right was seeing the prince’s daughter, and then all of a sudden she died, of no sickness at all that anyone could see. We couldn’t come yesterday evening when we heard Your Reverence was here. We had to help with the funeral.”
So that was it. Some demon had abducted the Eighth Prince’s daughter. It scarcely seemed to the bishop that he had been looking at a live human being. There was something sinister about the girl, as if she might at any moment dissolve into thin air.
“The fire last night hardly seemed big enough for a funeral.”
“No, it wasn’t much to look at. They made it as small as they could.” The visitors had been asked to remain outside lest they communicate the defilement.
“But who might it be? The prince’s daughter, you say—but the princess the general was fond of has been dead for some years. He has another princess now, and he is not the sort to go out looking for new wives.”
The old nun was better and the stars no longer blocked the way. Everything that had happened made them want to leave these inhospitable precincts as soon as possible.
“But the young lady is still very weak,” someone objected. “Do you really think she can travel?”
They had two carriages. The old nun and two others were in the first and the girl was in the second, with an attendant.191 They moved at an easy pace with frequent stops. The nuns were from Ono, at the west foot of Mount Hiei. It was very late when they arrived, so exhausted that they regretted not having spent another night along the way. The bishop helped his mother out. With many pauses, the younger nun led the girl into the nunnery. It was a sore trial to have lived so long, the old nun, near collapse, was no doubt saying to herself. The bishop waited until she had recovered somewhat and made his way back up the mountain. Because it had not been proper company for a cleric to find himself in, he kept the story to himself. The younger nun, his sister, also enjoined silence, and was very uneasy lest someone come inquiring after the girl. Why should they have found her all alone in such an unlikely place? Had a malicious stepmother taken advantage of an illness in the course of a pilgrimage, perhaps, and left her by the wayside? “Throw me back in the river,” she had said, and there had been not a word from her since. The nun was deeply troubled. She did so want to see the girl restored to health, but the girl did not seem up to the smallest effort in her own behalf. Perhaps it was, after all, a hopeless case—but the very thought of giving up brought a new access of sorrow. Secretly requesting the presence of the disciple who had offered up the first prayers, the nun told of her dream at Hatsuse and asked that ritual fires be lighted.
And so the Fourth and Fifth months passed. Concluding sadly that her labors had been useless, the nun sent off a pleading letter to her brother: “May I ask that you come down and see what you can do for her? I tell myself that if she had been fated to die she would not have lived this long; and yet whatever has taken possession of her refuses to be dislodged. I would not dream, my sainted brother, of asking that you set foot in the city; but surely it will do you no harm to come this far.”
All very curious, thought the bishop. The girl seemed destined to live—in that matter he had to agree with his sister. And what then would have happened if they had left her at Uji? All that could be affirmed was that a legacy from former lives had dictated a certain course of events. He must do what he could, and if then she died, he could only conclude that her destiny had worked itself out.
Overjoyed to see him, the nun told of all that happened over the months. “A long illness generally shows itself on a person’s face; but she is as fresh and pretty as ever she was.” She was weeping copiously. “So very many times she has seemed on the point of death, and still she has lived on.”
“You are right.” He looked down at the girl. “She is very pretty indeed. I did think all along that there was something unusual about her. Well, let’s see what we can do. She brought a store of grace with her from other lives, we can be sure of that. I wonder what miscalculation might have reduced her to this. Has anything come to you that might offer a clue?”
“She has not said a word. Our Lady of Hatsuse brought her to me.”
“Everything has its cause. Something in another life brought her to you.”
Still deeply perplexed, he began his prayers. He had imposed upon himself so strict a regimen that he refused to emerge from the mountains even on royal command, and it would not do to be found in ministrations for which there was no very compelling reason.
He told his disciples of his doubts. “You must say nothing to anyone. I am a dissolute monk who has broken his vows over and over again, but not once have I sullied myself with a woman. Ah, well. Some people reveal their predilections when they are past sixty, and if I prove to be one of them, I shall call it fate.”
“Oh, consider for a moment, Your Reverence.” His disciples were more upset than he was. “Think what harm you would be doing the Good Law if you were to let ignorant oafs spread rumors.”
Steeling himself for the trials ahead, the bishop committed himself silently to vows extreme even for him. He must not fail. All through the night he was lost in spells and incantations, and at dawn the malign spirit in possession of the girl transferred itself to a medium.
Assisted now by his favorite disciple, the bishop tried all manner of spells toward identifying the source of the trouble; and finally the spirit, hidden for so long, was forced to announce itself.
“You think it is this I have come for?” it shouted. “No, no. I was once a monk myself, and I obeyed all the rules; but I took away a grudge that kept me tied to the world, and I wandered here and wandered there, and found a house full of beautiful girls. One of them died, and this one wanted to die too. She said so, every day and every night. I saw my chance and took hold of her one dark night when she was alone. But Our Lady of Hatsuse was on her side through it all, and now I have lost out to His Reverence. I shall leave you.”192
But the medium was tiring rapidly and no more information was forthcoming.
The girl was now resting comfortably. Though not yet fully conscious, she looked up and saw ugly, twisted old people, none of whom she recognized. She was assailed by intense loneliness, like a castaway on a foreign shore. Vague, ill-formed images floated up from the past, but she could not remember where she had lived or who she was. She had reached the end of the way, and she had flung herself in—but where was she now? She thought and thought, and was aware of terrible sorrows. Everyone had been asleep, she had opened the corner doors and gone out. The wind was high and the waters were roaring savagely. She sat trembling on the veranda. What should she do? Where was she to go now? To go back inside would be to rob everything of meaning. She must destroy herself. “Come, evil spirits, devour me. Do not leave me to be discovered alive.” As she sat hunched against the veranda, her mind in a turmoil, a very handsome man came up and announced that she was to go with him, and (she seemed to remember) took her in his arms. It would be Prince Niou, she said to herself.
And what had happened then? He carried her to a very strange place and disappeared. She remembered weeping bitterly at her failure to keep her resolve, and she could remember nothing more. Judging from what these people were saying, many days had passed. What a sodden heap she must have been when they found her! Why had she been forced against her wishes to live on?
She had eaten little through the long trance, and now she would not take even a drop of medicine.
“You do seem bent on destroying all my hopes,” said the younger nun, the bishop’s sister, not for a moment leaving her side. “Just when I was beginning to think the worst might be over. Your temperature has gone down—you were running a fever all those weeks—and you seemed a little more yourself.”
Everyone in the house was delighted with her and quite unconditionally at her service. What happiness for them all that they had rescued her! The girl wanted to die; but the indications were that life had a stubborn hold on her. She began to take a little nourishment. Strangely, she continued to lose weight.
“Please let me be one of you,” she said to the nun, who was ecstatic at the prospect of a full recovery. “Then I can go on living. But not otherwise.”
“But you are so young and so pretty. How could you possibly want to become a nun?”
The bishop administered token orders, cutting a lock of hair and enjoining obedience to the five commandments.193 Though she was not satisfied with these half measures, she was an unassertive girl and she could not bring herself to ask more.