The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Junichiro Breakdown of Genji)

by Murasaki Shikibu

  His Grace and the Acting Counselor were present at His Majesty's invitation. The Viceroy Prince, too, was there that day.35 Genji must have urged him privately to come, fond as he was of painting, because no general invitation had gone out, and he was at the palace when a word from His Majesty brought him to the gathering. He served as judge. Some of the paintings were truly magnificent, and he found it impossible to decide among them. Those scenes of the four seasons, painted by the old masters so fluently and with so keen an eye, were incomparable, but their scope was limited after all, and it could not convey the full richness of mountains and waters; so that the more ephemeral modern ones, works of human understanding and of the wiles of the brush, proved just as lively and entertaining as the legacy of the past and stood out in their way. What with the debate that raged around them, Left and Right today both gave great pleasure to all.

  Her Cloistered Eminence sat within the doors of the breakfast room.36 Genji was very pleased, considering how deeply versed she must be in such things, and when the judge wavered, she often put in a word or two of her own, exactly as it was proper for her to do. The contest remained undecided on into the night.

  The Left had one more turn, and when the Suma scrolls appeared, the Acting Counselor's heart beat fast. His side, too, had saved something special for last, but this, done at undisturbed leisure by a genius at the art, was beyond anything. Everyone wept, His Highness37 the first among them. Genji's paintings revealed with perfect immediacy, far more vividly than anything they had imagined during those years when they pitied and grieved for him, all that had passed through his mind, all that he had witnessed, and every detail of those shores that they themselves had never seen. He had added here and there lines in running script, Chinese or Japanese, and although these did not yet make it a true diary, there were such moving poems among them that one wanted very much to see more. No one thought of anything else. Emotion and delight prevailed, now that all interest in the other paintings had shifted to these. The question answered itself: the Left had won.

  Holding a wine cup

  Dawn was coming on, and the wine cups were going round, when in a rush of feeling Genji began to talk of the past. “From my earliest youth I put my heart into my studies, and perhaps His Late Eminence believed that I might really acquire some knowledge, because he gave me a warning. He said, ‘What is recognized as learning commands weighty respect, and I expect that that is why those who pursue it to excess so rarely enjoy both good fortune and long life. One born to high station, or at least to an honorable position among his peers, ought not to carry it too far.’ He instructed me in the extra-academic arts, but there I was neither particularly inept nor endowed with any special gift. Painting, though, was different, because I often longed to paint to my heart's content, however odd and idle a pastime it may be, and when all at once I found that I was now a mountain rustic and saw into the truth of the mighty oceans, I rose to heights I had not dreamed of before. However, I remained dissatisfied, since there is a limit to what the brush can convey, and I could not very well have shown you these at all without a suitable occasion. I suppose I may be called conceited for doing so.”

  “No art or learning is to be pursued halfheartedly,” His Highness replied, “but each has its professional teachers, and any art worth learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort made to study it. It is the art of the brush and the game of Go that most startlingly reveal natural talent, because there are otherwise quite tedious people who paint or play very well, almost without training. Still, among the wellborn there are some exceptionally gifted people who seem to love every art and to do wonderfully well at them all. Who among His Late Eminence's Princes and Princesses did not learn several directly from him? And he used to speak of one who most truly repaid his special attention and who mastered every art, one after the other—letters, needless to say, but the kin as well, for which he had a magnificent gift, and the flute, the biwa, and the sō no koto, too. No one would disagree with this appraisal, and I had therefore assumed that you toyed also with the brush, as the spirit moved you, but it is extraordinary to find that you so utterly put to shame the finest artists of the past!” His words tripped over themselves, and perhaps it was the wine that now, at this mention of His Late Eminence, brought tears to every eye.

  The moon rose. It was now past its twentieth day,38 and while the room remained in shadow, the sky was so pretty that His Majesty sent for instruments from the Library. The Acting Counselor received the wagon and played almost as well as Genji himself. His Highness played the sō no koto, Genji the kin, and Shōshō the biwa. His Majesty also called on the best of the privy gentlemen to mark the rhythm.39 It was perfectly lovely. As dawn came on, to the caroling of birds, the colors of flowers and faces emerged from darkness into the light of a beautiful new day. Her Cloistered Eminence provided the gifts for the musicians. His Highness again received a robe.40

  Genji was absorbed then in deciding what to do with these paintings of his. He asked that the scrolls of the shores be presented to Her Cloistered Eminence, and when she asked to see those that came before and after them, he let her know that she would have them later, one by one. He was delighted to see His Majesty, too, so pleased with them.

  With Genji tending the Ise Consort this way, the Acting Counselor must have trembled lest his own daughter's standing suffer. However, he did not really despair, because privately he could see quite well that His Majesty, who had always been fond of her, remained devoted to her even now.

  This was an extraordinarily brilliant reign, for Genji aspired to add new touches to the festivals of the court—ones that would then pass on down the generations—and he carried off in grand style even little amusements of his own. Life still seemed treacherous to him, though, and his deepest wish was surely to renounce the world after all, once he had seen His Majesty mature a little more. All the past examples he knew suggested that those who rise to dizzying heights when young do not endure. In this reign his rank and fame had risen beyond his merit. Yes, he had outlived the annihilation of his painful fall, but he still doubted that his glory would last. His desire to shut himself away in peace, so as to prepare for the life to come and perhaps to prolong this one, moved him (one gathers) to secure a quiet plot in the hills and to have a temple built there and holy texts and icons consecrated; and yet his longing to bring his children up to be what he wished them to be dissuaded him from acting promptly. It is not easy to fathom what he really meant to do.

  18

  MATSUKAZE

  Wind in the Pines

  Matsukaze means “wind in the pines.” The “Akashi” chapter associates the lady from Akashi, her house, and her music with this sound, and the motif reappears when she moves to Oi, near the City, and plays music there. Her mother says,

  “Here at my old home, where I have returned alone and in a changed guise,

  I hear blowing through the pines a familiar-sounding wind.”

  RELATIONSHIP TO EARLIER CHAPTERS

  “Wind in the Pines” takes place during the same year as “The Picture Contest” and during roughly the same time, in the autumn.

  PERSONS

  His Grace, the Palace Minister, Genji, age 31

  The lady of Falling Flowers (Hanachirusato)

  The lady from Akashi, 22 (Akashi no Kimi)

  The Novice, her father, around 64 (Akashi no Nyūdō)

  The caretaker at Ōi

  Koremitsu

  The Nun, the mother of the Akashi lady, 55 or 56 (Akashi no Amagimi)

  Genji's daughter, 3 (Akashi no Himegimi)

  Her nurse

  An Aide in the Gate Watch

  His Majesty, the Emperor, 13 (Reizei)

  The Controller Chamberlain

  The Secretary Captain

  The Left Grand Controller

  The Intendant of the Watch

  Genji's lady, 23 (Murasaki)

  Genji's east pavilion was now finished, and he brought the lady called F
alling Flowers to live there. All along the bridgeway from its west wing1 to the main house he provided suitable accommodation for his household office and retainers. Its east wing he reserved for the lady from Akashi. He had the north wing made especially large and partitioned it into separate lodgings so that he could gather there all the ladies whom his attentions, however fleeting, had encouraged to trust in a lasting tie with him, and each apartment was done up with exquisite charm. He left the main house unoccupied and made sure it was suitably appointed for a residence that he visited often.

  He corresponded constantly with Akashi, and he still urged the lady there to come up to the City, but she remained too acutely aware of where she stood. Having heard how the very greatest ladies could suffer from neglect, even when not yet wholly abandoned, she asked herself what consideration she enjoyed that she should go out into such company, and she feared to make an embarrassing spectacle of her daughter's insignificance. What misery it would be, she thought, to have them all laughing at me for being reduced merely to awaiting the odd visit from him! Still, it would be a great shame if growing up in a place like this were to prevent her daughter from ever being counted among them, and she could never reject Genji's invitation out of hand. Her parents sympathized, and Genji's very eagerness therefore only caused them sharper distress.

  They remembered that long ago her mother's grandfather, Prince Nakatsukasa,2 had owned a property beside the river Ōi,3 one that had fallen to ruin after his time in the absence of any real successor; and they accordingly summoned the caretaker of a sort who had always lived there. “After I decided it was time to give up the world, I grew accustomed to the obscurity I find here,” the Novice told him, “but now, in my old age, an unexpected event requires me again to seek a house in the City, and since sudden exposure to the glare of society would be awkward, and also upsetting for country people, it occurred to me to go to that old house of His Highness's. I shall send up everything required. I should like you please to look after the repairs and to make the place more or less livable.”

  “It has been many years now since any owner has lived there, and the house is so impossibly overgrown that I myself have moved into the servants' hall; besides, the temple His Grace is building nearby has made the place awfully noisy. There are several impressive halls going up, and a large number of men are working on them. If quiet is what you have in mind, I doubt that that is where you will find it.”4

  “No, no, not at all. You see, there is a matter for which I count on His Grace's goodwill. I will of course look after everything connected with doing up the house. I would like you now to lose no time seeing to the preliminary work.”

  “Perhaps I do not own the house,” the caretaker answered with a defiant look and a reddening nose, “but in the absence of any successor I have lived secluded and at peace there for many years. The wet and dry fields of the estate had deteriorated so badly that the late Commissioner of Civil Affairs granted them to me, at my request, and they are mine now, subject to suitable repayment of his kindness.” He feared that his enjoyment of the yield was under threat.

  “I have absolutely no interest in the fields and all that. Consider them yours as before. The deeds and so on are here, but I have given up the world and its ways and have not even tried to find them for years. Now, though, I shall put all this in good order.” His mention of Genji had given the caretaker pause. A great quantity of materials then arrived, and the man began the work promptly.

  Genji knew nothing of all this, and he could not fathom why she was so reluctant to come up to the City. He worried that if his little girl went on living down there that way, all by herself, talk of it later on might easily blight her reputation even more. Only when the work at Ōi was finished did the Novice let Genji know that the place had come to mind. Genji understood then that this business had to do with her unwillingness to mingle with society, and he was impressed by her thoughtful discretion.

  Genji sent Lord Koremitsu there to make sure everything was in good order, since it was Koremitsu who always attended him on his secret outings.

  “The setting is very pretty,” Koremitsu reported, “and it is just as though one looked out from there over the sea.” It struck Genji that the place would not be at all unsuitable for her. The temple he was building was south of Daikakuji,5 and its halls, for example the one beside the waterfall, rivaled in grace those of Daikakuji itself. Meanwhile, in a lovely grove of pines down by the river, a very simple, unpretentious house presented all the charm of a mountain village. Genji saw even to its interior furnishings.

  With great discretion he sent his most intimate retainers down to Akashi. The thought that the time had come, that she could put it off no longer, made her sad to leave this familiar shore, and she felt desperately sorry for her father, who would remain forlornly behind all alone. Sorrow consumed her. She wondered why she seemed destined only to suffer hereafter in so many ways, until she envied those whom Genji's favor had never touched. For her parents the good fortune of this journey, made with such an escort, meant the happy fulfillment of their oldest, fondest prayers, and yet their coming separation still affected her father so unbearably that he spent vacant days and nights saying over and over again, “Will I then never see this little girl again?”

  Her mother, too, was very sad. Who was there to detain her, since it had been many years since she and the Novice last lived under one roof? Still, it was troubling to part from someone she had been with for so long, even if they seldom actually had much to do with each other, and despite that odd head of his and the vagaries of his moods, this was after all where she had meant to live out what remained of her days. The sudden departure was therefore painful. The young gentlewomen who had been so dejected here were happy, of course, but even so, many wet their sleeves with each breaking wave at the thought that they would never return to this beautiful shore.

  It was autumn, and all things seemed to weigh upon the heart. The day came, and the autumn wind blew chill in the dawn, while busy insects cried and the lady sat gazing out to sea. Her father had risen long before the hour for his customary late-night devotions and was now blowing his nose while he did them. They all tried their best to shun ill-omened words, but it really was more than they could bear. To the old man the quite enchanting little girl was like a jewel that illumines the night. He had never allowed her far from him, and she had clung to him fondly; and now his own strange guise repelled him as he wondered, amid unfortunate tears that he could not control, how he would manage to get through a single moment without her.

  “I can hardly bear that for her bright future's sake she must go away,

  and it is beyond my strength to stop these tears of old age!

  Oh, I mustn't, I mustn't!” he said, wiping them away to hide them.

  The Nun replied,

  “You were with me once, when we came from the City—am I then this time

  to make my way all alone along pathways through the moors?”

  No wonder she was weeping. When she thought over all their years together, all their pledges to each other, it seemed so foolish to turn back to the world she had left, just because of someone's casual promises!

  “What have I to hope from a world that keeps from me when I may expect

  in this life, once I have gone, ever to see you again?

  Please at least keep us company there!” his daughter begged, but he explained that one thing and another made that impossible, even as his face revealed how greatly their journey upset him.

  “When I first thought of renouncing the world, it was for you that I came down to this alien land, for I hoped that here I could bring you up day by day exactly as I pleased; but many things then brought home to me how poor my prospects were—not that returning to the City to join the obscure company of former Governors would have cleared any weeds from my pitiful door. No, I shrank from having all and sundry know me merely as a fool and from bringing only shame on my late father. It soon became clear that my d
eparture had meant my giving up everything for good, and I myself believed that I really had done that, until you began to grow up and understand what was going on around you, because the more you did so, the more I asked myself in the endless darkness of a parent's heart how I could have hidden such a treasure here in this miserable wilderness. Yes, I prayed to the buddhas and the gods, and all I ever asked of them was that you, at least, should not be dragged down by your hopeless father to spend your life in a peasant's hut. I still lamented my condition in many, many ways even when wonders began happening out of a blue sky, but then our little girl came into the world with a sound destiny after all,6 and it would be so wrong for a child of such high promise to spend her months and days here like this, by the sea, that it does not matter that I will miss her desperately—after all, I have given up profane life forever. You two, however, are undoubtedly meant to light up the world. Never mind, then, if fate brought her to trouble the heart of a peasant like me: I think of her as one who, born in the heavens, fell back to suffer only briefly the horrors of the Three Paths;7 and in that spirit today I take leave of her forever. Do not trouble yourselves to mourn me even if you hear that I am no more. Do not be shaken by the parting that none can evade!” And his words tumbled on, “Weak as I am, I shall pray for our little girl in all my devotions, day and night, until the very night when I turn to smoke!” His face became contorted with grief.