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

by Murasaki Shikibu

  “I certainly do not intend to give in to him now, you know, when even His Late Highness found me so intractable.” She spoke sternly enough to discourage the Fifth Princess from insisting further. Genji's next move worried her because all the women were on his side, but he was biding his time until his devoted attentions and manifest affection should soften her attitude toward him, and he seems never to have considered forcibly breaking her resistance that way.

  He was preparing for the coming of age of his son by His Late Excellency's daughter, which he meant to hold at Nijō, but Her Highness4 wanted very much to be there, and out of consideration for her he had it at her residence after all. The Commander of the Right and the boy's other uncles5 were all senior nobles high in His Majesty's esteem, and everyone on that side, too, eagerly contributed whatever the event might require. The whole world buzzed and bustled with lavish preparations.

  At first he planned to have his son assume the fourth rank,6 as everyone expected, but then he changed his mind. The boy was very young, and in any case he felt that when he could now do whatever he pleased, the gesture would be all too obvious. Her Highness was aghast, and, poor lady, one can hardly blame her, when her grandson returned to the privy chamber in light blue.7 She brought the matter up the next time Genji called on her.

  “For the moment I prefer not to make too much of a grown-up of him too soon,” he replied. “For various reasons I would rather have him spend some time at the Academy. With two or three more years before he begins his career8 he will come naturally to be capable of serving His Majesty, and by then, you see, he will be a man. I myself grew up in the palace and knew nothing of the world; instead, I spent day and night in waiting on my father and barely learned what was in a few books. I never caught the larger meaning even of what he so graciously taught me himself, and meanwhile, my knowledge of the classics and my mastery of koto or flute left a great deal to be desired. It is very rare for a clever son to outdo a duller father, and what then passes down the generations only wanders more and more perilously astray. This, you understand, is what prompted my decision. The son of a noble house, one who is promoted at his pleasure and who swells with his own glory, is unlikely to feel that it is any business of his to put himself out studying. He prefers to amuse himself, and those who bend to the times fawn on him since he rises in rank as he wishes, although they deride him meanwhile in secret; they curry his favor and do his bidding until by and by he resembles a great man, but once change intervenes and the one to whom he owes it all is gone, his fortunes decline, leaving him scorned and without a friend in the world. After all, learning is what provides a firm foundation for the exercise of Japanese wit.9 He may be impatient now, but if he aspires in the end to become a pillar of the state, he will do well even after I am gone. Never mind if he is none too secure for the present, because as long as this is my way of looking after him, I cannot imagine anyone sneering at him for being one of those poverty-stricken Academy students.”

  Her Highness responded to speeches like this with a sigh. “I understand how thoroughly you have thought it over, but I gather that the Commander, for example, is shaking his head over this extraordinary idea of yours, and the young man himself is miserable, because even the Commander's sons and those of the Intendant of the Left Gate Watch,10 on whom he used to look down as his juniors, have all gone up in rank and seniority.11 This makes his light blue hateful to him, and I for one pity him.”

  Genji smiled. “He has a very grown-up complaint against me, I see. Ah, foolish youth! It is his age.” He found it thoroughly appealing. “His disappointment will soon be gone once he acquires some learning and understands a little more.”

  The young man received his academic style in the east pavilion, where the east wing was prepared for the event. Senior nobles and privy gentlemen all rushed to be there, agog with wonder and curiosity, but the Doctors must have been terrified.

  “Do it right,” Genji commanded them. “Stint on nothing and do not relax whatever precedent may require.”

  With desperately affected composure they shamelessly wore odd, ill-fitting clothes that they had had to borrow elsewhere, and everything about them presented a novel spectacle, including their manner of taking their seats with grave voices and pompous looks. The younger nobles could not stifle their grins. Genji had chosen only quiet, collected men to pour their wine, men unlikely ever to give in to mirth, but even so the Commander of the Right, the Lord of Civil Affairs, and the others who so earnestly kept their cups filled got a fine tongue-lashing.

  The corner of a fishing pavilion

  “Fie upon your manners, sirs! You presume to serve His Majesty, yet you fail to know a man of my renown? You are fools, sirs!”

  The company broke into laughter.

  “Silence! I will have silence! Your conduct is disgraceful! Sirs, I must require you to leave!”12

  Such magisterial censure was great fun. Those who had never heard anything like it before thought it a rare treat, and the senior nobles who had come through the Academy beamed with satisfaction. Everyone felt it was a wonderful thing that His Excellency should have chosen this course for his son. Was there a buzz of talk? They put a stop to it. A cheeky remark? They issued their rebuke. But as the night wore on and their stridently disapproving expressions stood forth a little in the lamplight, they took on instead a pathetically comical sadness, and this among other things made the occasion a strange and curious one indeed.

  “It is a great oaf and dullard like me who merits your reproof,” Genji said, watching them from behind his blinds. Hearing that some Academy students were leaving because there had been no room for them, he detained them in the fishing pavilion13 and had them given special gifts.

  When it was over and everyone was going, Genji called on the Doctors and other like-minded gentlemen to make more Chinese verses. To this end he detained all the most likely senior nobles and privy gentlemen. The Doctors composed poems in four rhyming couplets, and Genji and the other amateurs four-line stanzas.14 The Doctor of Letters chose the wording of a splendid topic.15 The nights were short then, and it was day by the time the poems were read out. The Reader was the Left Grand Controller,16 a fine-looking man whose voice as he read was marvelously awesome and impressive. He enjoyed especially high esteem as a scholar. The poems praised variously, with many elevated references, how nobly a young man whom lofty birth entitled to pursue only glory and its pleasures had befriended the fireflies at the window and the snow upon the bough.17 Every line had such quality, as all in those days wonderingly agreed, that one would have wished to have them known in Cathay as well. Needless to say, His Grace's was especially accomplished, but it also conveyed a father's love so movingly that all present wept while they hummed it. However, a woman has no business repeating what she cannot know, and since I do not wish to give offense, I have omitted it.

  Genji next saw his son through his admission to the Academy,18 and he promptly gave him a room in his residence; after which he gravely entrusted him to a learned tutor and set about putting him to his studies. The young man seldom even called on Her Highness.19 Genji doubted that he would ever learn anything there, since she spoiled him day in and day out and still treated him like a child, and he confined him instead to a quiet place by himself. He allowed him just three visits to her a month.

  The young man chafed at being shut up this way all the time, and the more he did so, the more he detested his father; for were there not others who rose high and held distinguished office without ever having to suffer this way? On the whole, though, he was serious, and there was nothing frivolous about him. He buckled down and decided somehow to get through these classics as quickly as possible and on with a successful career, so that in four or five months he had read all the way through the work entitled The Records of the Historian.

  Genji, who proposed to have him take the foundation examination, first had him tested in his own presence. The Commander attended as before, as well as the Left Grand Controller
, the Commissioner of Ceremonial, and the Left Controller. Genji summoned the Chief Clerk and had him select difficult passages from the Records, ones that the Doctors were likely to dwell on at the examination, and he required the young man to read them out, which he did with such perfect fluency and manifest understanding as to dispel all doubt. All present were wholly convinced by his brilliant performance, and they were moved to tears. “If only His Late Excellency were here!” the Commander exclaimed, weeping more than anyone.

  Genji, too, failed to keep his composure. “I know I have thought other people old fools, but the father fails as the son matures, and I do not have that many years left—well, such is life,” he said, wiping his eyes.

  The tutor was glad and proud at the sight. His face in his drunken daze—for the Commander kept his cup filled—was awfully thin. He was too great an eccentric to have found employment commensurate with his learning, and he lived in poverty and neglect, but Genji had singled him out that way because he saw something in him. The man seemed destined for even greater things in the future, considering that he now enjoyed Genji's favor far beyond his station and that he therefore owed to his young charge this sudden renewal of his life.

  Countless carriages belonging to senior nobles gathered at the Academy gate on the day when Genji's son went there to be examined. It seemed impossible that there should be any others left elsewhere. The magnificently cosseted and appareled young man did indeed look far too distinguished for the company in which he now found himself. No wonder it offended him to take so low a seat among the same rabble as before.20 Once again there were shockingly loud, scolding voices, but he read straight through without a tremor. The Academy still flourished then, as it did in its early days, and people of all ranks flocked eagerly to the instruction it offered, so that the number of learned, well-prepared scholars was constantly growing. Genji's son easily passed his examinations at every level, from Provisional Candidate to Candidate and on, and he applied himself so well to his studies that he inspired his teachers and their other students to ever greater efforts. At his father's residence there were many occasions to compose Chinese verses, and Doctors and other men of learning were always at home there. That was a reign when talent, whatever its nature, always came into its own.

  Meanwhile, it was time to have an Empress. “The Ise Consort is the one Her Late Eminence was pleased to charge with seeing to his needs, you know,” Genji insinuated. People objected to yet another non-Fujiwara Empress,21 and Kokiden had after all gone to him first, had she not? Anyone secretly sympathetic to either side was anxious. The present Lord of Ceremonial, once known as His Highness of War,22 enjoyed even higher esteem in this reign than before, and his daughter had already come to His Majesty with hopes of her own. She herself was a Consort of imperial lineage and certain to be close to His Majesty, since she was a relative on his mother's side, and so she seemed—his partisans insisted—a thoroughly plausible choice to tend His Majesty now that his mother was no more. Each side therefore had its claims, but the title still went to the Ise Consort. People at large were astonished that fortune should have favored her so much more than her mother.

  His Grace rose to Chancellor and the Commander23 to Palace Minister. Genji ceded all the affairs of government to him. In his person this gentleman was resolute and imposing, and in judgment he was wise. He had worked particularly hard at his studies and showed great discernment in all matters, public or private, although he still lost to Genji at guessing rhymes. He had ten or more sons from various mothers, and his house boasted all the glory of Genji's own, since each one was growing up to enjoy a successful career. In the way of daughters he had the Consort and one other,24 a girl of imperial blood whose lineage was no less distinguished than his other children's. Her mother, however, had married the Inspector Grand Counselor, by whom she had had many more, and he had therefore taken her away and entrusted her to Her Highness; he felt that it would be wrong to let her stepfather have her with all the rest. She was charming in both personality and looks, although he thought a great deal less of her than he did of the Consort.

  His Grace's son had grown up with her, but they had lived separately25 ever since they were ten, when her father told her, “You may be good friends, the two of you, but you are not to yield your intimacy to any man.” However, the boy still thought of her in his youthful way, despite this new distance between them, and he was always eager to play dolls with her or to take whatever chance passing blossoms or autumn leaves might offer him to send her a word. She responded warmly to his open affection and was not markedly shy with him even now. The women looking after them were reluctant to intervene. “It is all very well, but they are still children,” they said. “How could anyone be so cruel as to keep them apart, when they have been together all these years?” But while the young lady may still have been girlish and innocent, the young man, perhaps because of whatever naughty moments they might have shared, seemed despite his obviously tender age to have taken their separation hard. Being so young, they of course sometimes lost their letters to each other, done in writing still immature but attractively promising, and so the women on either side had some idea what was going on. They undoubtedly looked the other way, though, because after all, why announce it?

  The celebratory banquets26 were over, there were no court festivals to prepare for, and things were quiet at last. Early one evening, while the season's cold rain fell and a mournful wind sighed through the hagi fronds, His Excellency the Palace Minister went to call at his mother's. There he summoned his daughter and had her play the koto. Her Highness, who played every instrument well, had taught her them all.

  “One would prefer not to watch a woman play the biwa,”27 His Excellency observed, “but what a beautiful sound it has! Few in our time have received any genuine transmission of its music—Prince So-and-So, perhaps, or Genji This-and-That…” He counted some off. “Among the women, I hear the one His Grace keeps out there in that mountain village is superb. She learned it from an expert, of course, but even so, one wonders how anyone that remote from her source,28 and who has lived that long as a mountain rustic, could possibly be so good. His Grace seems to think highly of her, and he often talks about her. In music, unlike the other arts, the best way forward is to play a great deal with others and to attempt many styles. It is rare indeed to become accomplished on one's own.”

  He urged Her Highness to play. “I hardly know how even to adjust the bridge anymore,” she replied, but she nonetheless played very nicely. “That woman is certainly fortunate,” she observed, “but beyond that, she seems to have extraordinary personal quality. To have given him the daughter he did not yet have at his age, and then to decide to give her up to a great lady rather than keep her and condemn her to obscurity—that, they say, shows her exceptional quality.” Her Highness talked on for some time as she played.

  “What gains a woman respect is her character,” His Excellency remarked, and he went on to discuss one example and another. “The Consort, now—there is nothing wrong with her looks, as far as I can see, and she got as good an upbringing as anyone else, but it was her luck to be eclipsed by someone completely unforeseen, which I can only take as a lesson that nothing in this world ever goes as it should. I mean to have this girl at least turn out the way I want, though. The Heir Apparent will soon be of age, and I am privately laying my plans, even if this fortunate mother's future Empress is breathing down her neck. Once she has gone to His Highness, I am afraid there will be no stopping her.” He sighed.

  “But why? His Late Excellency was convinced that in the end this house would produce a girl with her future,29 and he was keen to make sure that the Consort had the best possible chance. This injustice would never have occurred if he were still alive.” On this issue she was quite angry with Genji. Contemplating the graceful sweep of her granddaughter's hair and the lovely way it fell as she sweetly and innocently played the sō no koto, it seemed to her that this charming face, these shy, sidelong glances, an
d the way her left hand pressed the strings, all had a doll-like perfection. The girl seemed to her infinitely dear. Her granddaughter pushed the instrument away after accompanying her grandmother a little.

  His Excellency drew the wagon to him, and the freedom of his playing, in the latest style for a change and in the richi mode, was a great pleasure. The leaves dropped from the trees in the garden until there were no more,30 while the old women leaned on one another here and there behind the standing curtains. “And yet how light the breeze!”31 His Excellency sang; and he remarked, “It has not the depth of the kin,32 but what a strangely moving evening this is! Will you not play again?” They did “Autumn Wind” together, and when His Excellency sang as well, in superb voice, Her Highness thought him, too, very dear. Just then the new young gentleman arrived, as though to add to their pleasure.

  “Do come in.” His Excellency sat the young man down beyond a standing curtain. “I see so little of you these days! What keeps you so hard at your books? It will do you no good to know more than your birth requires, as His Grace must know, and I am very sorry that you should be shut up this way, though I grant he must have his reasons.” He went on, “Do take up something else now and again! After all, the flute gives us the words of the ancients, too.”33 He handed the young man a flute.