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

by Murasaki Shikibu

  36. “There are other things, you see” (omoinagara zo ya) contains syllables that form the name of the Nagara (Bridge), often mentioned in poems that lament old age. Her answer, hashibashira (“bridge pillar”), here rendered for narrative meaning as “bewail[ing] the treachery of time,” is taken from such a poem, probably Shūishū 864.

  37. In her saibara song a girl, courted by a melon grower, wonders whether to say yes. Genji takes her to mean, “Shall I give up that man [Genji] who rejects me and make do with someone else?”

  38. In “On Hearing a Girl Sing at Night,” Bai Juyi (Hakushi monjū 0498) described being on a journey at Ezhou (Gakushū) and hearing a woman on a nearby boat sing a heartbreaking song that turned to piteous weeping.

  39. In the saibara song “Azumaya” (“The Eastern Cottage”), a man arrives at the woman's door in the pouring rain and demands to be admitted. The woman, inside, answers that the door is unlocked and urges him to come in. An azumaya was a form of thatched house characteristic of eastern Japan. This song inspired the poem that gave the “Azumaya” chapter its title.

  40. Literally, “I am sure the spider's behavior was perfectly clear.” In the proverbial Kokinshū 1110, by Princess Sotōri, “the spider's behavior” clearly foretells a lover's visit.

  41. This exchange of poems bristles with wordplays. To no Chūjō's remark after his poem alludes to Kokin rokujō 3261, which evokes a red robe that when worn on the outside displays the wearer's amorous preoccupation to all.

  42. “If you did not want everyone to know about your affair with this lady, you should have thought twice before barging in on me like this.”

  43. “It is no use my complaining (although I would like to), now that the two of you have gone, never to return.” The image of waves breaking on a beach suggests erotic desire.

  44. The river of my tears.

  45. Hatasode, an extra width of cloth that further lengthened the sleeve.

  46. “Lest you blame me if that woman wants no more of you, I have not even touched this blue sash of yours.” The poem plays on “tearing” the sash (the liaison) and borrows twice (for example, hanada no obi, “blue sash”) from the saibara song that Tō no Chūjō, too, quotes in his reply.

  47. “Rumor is rife!” is from Kokin rokujō 2108 (“Though rumor be as rife as seaweed the seafolk gather, as long as we love each other, let the world talk as it will!”); and “swore each other to silence” (a paraphrase for narrative meaning) is from Kokinshū 1108.

  48. The brevity and indirection of this announcement has to do with the solemnity of the event.

  49. Into the “cloud dwelling” (kumoi), a noble expression for the palace.

  8: HANA NO EN

  1. Sakon no sakura, a cherry tree by the steps at the front (south) side of the Shishinden. This kind of party, like the one beneath the autumn leaves, was especially favored about a century before the author's time.

  2. Tsubone, made by setting up curtains and screens around their places.

  3. The gentlemen advanced in order of rank, each to draw a single rhyme character (as in a lottery) from those set out on a table; then, before retiring, each announced his clan name, his office, and his rhyme character. His poem developed this rhyme.

  4. “Song of the Spring Warbler” (Shun'ōden), a “Chinese” bugaku piece.

  5. More precisely, the door to where he might have found Ōmyōbu and persuaded her to take him to her mistress.

  6. The Kokiden is opposite the Fujitsubo, to the east.

  7. Genji's criticism, appropriate for himself, is probably aimed at the laxness of the Kokiden Consort's household. He has a low opinion of the household's mores.

  8. Shinkokinshū 55, by Ōe no Chisato: “Nothing compares with the misty moon of a spring night, neither brilliant nor clouded.” Oborozukiyo (“Night with a Misty Moon”) is the name by which she has been known ever since.

  9. “If I were to vanish [die], would you fail to seek me only because I had not told you my name?”

  10. “[I asked you to tell me who you are only because] if I come looking for you, people may notice and condemn us.”

  11. The Kokiden Consort is about to return; some gentlewomen precede her, while others go out from her own apartments to meet her.

  12. Genji's own rooms at the palace.

  13. Genji's younger brother, a Prince who is Viceroy of Kyushu (Dazai no Sochi).

  14. Goen, a “follow-up party” held for a smaller circle of the highest rank. The absence of the lower ranks made it less formal and more elegant than the earlier one.

  15. Oborozukiyo. Genji calls her ariake (“moon at dawn”) by association with “misty moon,” and also because this is the time of the lunar month (the twentieth and after) for the ariake moon, to which he refers again in a poem below.

  16. Yoshikiyo, the son of the Governor of Harima and the man who, in “Young Murasaki,” told Genji about the old man and his daughter at Akashi.

  17. Kita no jin (also called Sakuheimon), the north gate to the palace compound.

  18. Brothers of the Kokiden Consort, not mentioned elsewhere.

  19. As a son-in-law.

  20. “Triple” because the fan, with its eight cypress ribs, folds into three panels together. The fan is white on one side and scarlet on the other.

  21. From a saibara song; the singer is a young woman in love (quite unlike Aoi).

  22. Kokinshū 68, by Ise: “O cherry tree in a mountain village with no one to admire you, wait to bloom until the flowers elsewhere are gone.”

  23. Two imperial daughters of the Kokiden Consort, hence the Minister's granddaughters.

  24. They are Genji's half sisters as well as the Minister's granddaughters.

  25. His dress cloak (nōshi) is of a “cherry blossom” (sakura) layering, suitable for a young man in spring. Under that he has on an ebi dyed shita-gasane, which normally went under the formal cloak (hō) for a solemn court occasion. A dress cloak is relatively informal, and its color does not convey rank. Genji is flaunting his exalted station.

  26. He intentionally misquotes a saibara song (“A man from Koma stole my sash, oh, bitter regret is mine…”), substituting “fan” for “sash.”

  27. Oborozukiyo, the daughter of a political enemy, is promised to the Heir Apparent. Besides, Genji already dislikes her family's shallow ostentation, and he may be disappointed by how easily she gave herself to him.

  9: AOI

  1. Suzaku, the son of the Kokiden Consort, has succeeded Genji's father as Emperor. This has brought the faction represented by the Kokiden Consort and her father, the Minister of the Right, to power. Moreover, Genji's father seems as a last gesture to have appointed Genji Commander of the Right, so that he must now travel with an escort of eight guards.

  2. Fujitsubo's. Kokinshū 1041: “As though in retribution for my not loving the one who loves me, the one I do love does not love me.”

  3. Asagao.

  4. With morning sickness.

  5. Ritual abstinences, performed by others on her behalf, to ensure safe childbirth.

  6. The Kamo Festival, on the middle Bird (tori) day in the fourth month, one of the major annual events in the City.

  7. Strictly speaking, the second Purification, held on the day of the Horse (uma) or Sheep (hitsuji) preceding the day of the Festival proper.

  8. According to the Engi shiki, the first Purification required a single Consultant as imperial envoy, while the second required one Grand Counselor, one Counselor, and two Consultants.

  9. They had on full civil dress, with a formal cloak of a color to match their rank, contrasting train-robes, and two pairs of open-legged trousers (the inner pair of plain red silk, the outer of brocade).

  10. Genji.

  11. More literally, “And perhaps because this was not even Sasanokuma, he passed by with no sign of recognition…” Kokinshū 1080, attributed to the goddess at Ise: “At Sasanokuma, by the Hinokuma River, stop, let your horse drink, that I may look upon you!”

&nb
sp; 12. Tsubo sōzoku, the attire for a respectable woman outdoors. She draped a shift over her head and hair, then put on a deep, broad-brimmed hat. She also hitched up her skirts a little for walking.

  13. Women too modest in standing to wear tsubo sōzoku would still tuck their hair under their outer robe when outdoors.

  14. Asagao.

  15. On this day the High Priestess actually went to the Kamo Shrine.

  16. Once appointed, the High Priestess moved to special quarters in the palace and there underwent purification until the seventh month of the following year, when at last she went on to Ise. In this case, however, her move seems to have been delayed. Meanwhile, her house has been purified, and branches of the sacred sakaki tree, hung with cloth or paper streamers, have been set up at the four corners and at the gate to mark the place as ritually pure.

  17. Where Murasaki lives.

  18. Genji playfully addresses Murasaki's playmates as adults.

  19. An auspicious day according to the almanac.

  20. Ladies with long hair, Genji says, still have shorter sidelocks (hitai gami, the hair that falls from the temples over the cheeks); but Murasaki's hitai gami seems as long as the rest of her hair. His lament that she “will not look very nice” is not serious.

  21. It was apparently customary to wish that a girl's hair should grow “a thousand fathoms” long. Genji's poem compares the little girl's hair to seaweed in praise, and it plays on miru (a kind of seaweed) and miru (“see,” i.e., “possess” [a wife]).

  22. The riding ground ([sakon no] baba) was near the intersection of Ichijō and Nishi no Tōin; the pavilion (otodo) there was where the Captains and Lieutenants sat during the yabusame riding events that took place on the third and fifth days of the fifth month. For the Festival the High Priestess was to come down from her temporary residence north of the city and proceed eastward along Ichijō to the Kamo Shrine.

  23. Presumably a hiōgi, made of thin slips of cypress (hinoki) wood. She would have written on a piece of one of these.

  24. Continuing the mood of the poem, “I should not presume” relies on vocabulary special to a sacred festival.

  25. Kokinshū 509: “Am I the float on the line of the fisherman, fishing in Ise Bay, that I should be unable to make up my mind?”

  26. Literally, “the violent rapids of the lustration stream” (misogigawa, the stream that runs before the Kamo Shrine).

  27. “Spirits” (mononoke) are the spirits of the dead or other supernatural, generally troublesome entities. “Living phantoms” (ikisudama) are the malevolent spirits of living persons.

  28. Rokujō's poem develops a play on koiji (“mud-filled [flooded] rice field” and “path of love”), and her final remark means, “It is true that you care little for me.” Kokin rokujō 987: “How bitterly I regret dipping water from the mountain spring, so shallow that I only wetted my sleeves.”

  29. From a riddling poem (Genji monogatari kochūshakusho in yō waka 76) built on the multiple implications of the verb omou: “Trying too hard to forget, I only remember; why, when one tries to forget, does one not forget?”

  30. An Ise Priestess was appointed by divination at the start of a new reign. She first purified herself on the bank of the Kamo River (first purification), then entered the Shosai-in (“Hall of First Abstinence”) within the palace compound. In the autumn of the next year she underwent the second purification and then entered the Shrine on the Moor; she went to Ise in the ninth month of the following year, after further purification in the Katsura River.

  31. Nonomiya, a temporary shrine built for the purpose on Saga Moor (Sagano), just west of the City.

  32. If she became unambiguously ill, her presence would pollute the sacred space inhabited by her daughter.

  33. An old poem-spell, to be repeated by one who has seen a ghost, enjoins the speaker to knot the overlapping hems at the front of his or her robe.

  34. Her gentlewoman lifted her to the then-normal squatting position. Hot medicinal water was provided for a birth.

  35. Driven by the healers (male Buddhist clerics) into the attendant (female) mediums, through whom the healers interrogated and dismissed them.

  36. The afterbirth.

  37. Parties (ubuyashinai) were given on the third, fifth, seventh, and ninth evenings after a birth. The guests brought gifts of food and clothing for the child.

  38. Poppy seeds were thrown on the sacred goma fire during the rite to quell a spirit.

  39. He speaks to Aoi through a gentlewoman.

  40. Appointments were announced each spring and autumn, and the Minister of the Left, the court's senior nonimperial official, presided over the event.

  41. The pillow was the soul's resting place. If it was moved, the soul might fail to find the body again if life returned.

  42. When the family returned home, a retainer carried the ashes in an urn.

  43. Presumably his grandmother or Yūgao.

  44. An intentional allusion also to the fire that has consumed the body of Aoi.

  45. A wife mourning her husband wore darker gray than a husband mourning his wife, and she mourned him a year in contrast to his three months.

  46. A Chinese phrase in praise of the Bodhisattva Fugen, closely associated with the Lotus Sutra. It refers to enlightened insight into the nature of existence.

  47. Gosenshū 1187, by Kanetada no Haha no Menoto: “Were it not for the child conceived between you and me, how should I now pluck the grasses of remembering?” These “grasses” are shinobu, a plant the name of which is homophonous with the verb that means “remember fondly.”

  48. The services held every seven days for the first forty-nine days after a death.

  49. The building that was converted when necessary into the Shosai-in, where the priestess spent a period of purification.

  50. The guise of a monk; the “fresh tie” is his new son.

  51. Kokinshū 839, by Mibu no Tadamine, laments the special cruelty of losing a loved one in autumn, which was a sad season of separation even for the living.

  52. The messenger did not say from whom the letter came perhaps because the sender's present ritually pure situation prevents her from corresponding openly with someone in mourning.

  53. A message from someone in mourning (hence polluted by death) might not be admissible into the priestess's dwelling.

  54. Her husband.

  55. Tō no Chūjō, who has apparently been promoted to the third rank. Captain was a fourth-rank office, but an exceptionally wellborn young man could be promoted higher. He is probably no longer Secretary.

  56. Oba otodo, a nickname for the old lady featured in “Beneath the Autumn Leaves.” Genji's father gave it to her, according to a passage in “The Bluebell.”

  57. The shigure rain of late autumn and early winter.

  58. On the first day of the tenth month (the first of winter), courtiers changed into new clothes. Although still in mourning, To no Chūjō had lightened the mood of his costume.

  59. From a poem by the ninth-century Chinese poet Liu Mengde, included in the anthology Wenxuan (Japanese Monzen). Tō no Chūjōs poem, below, picks up the same reference.

  60. Scarlet (kurenai) could easily be worn under the gray of relatively light mourning.

  61. Aoi and Tō no Chūjōs mother was a sister of Genji's father.

  62. The “little pink” (or pinks, nadeshiko) stands for Genji's son; “the autumn that is gone,” for his wife and her death.

  63. Genji monogatari kochūshakusho in yō waka 514: “The cold rains of the tenth month always fall, but never have my sleeves been as wet as now.”

  64. “I could not very well write to you.”

  65. Apparently a quotation from a poem now lost.

  66. She has on an akome (often worn by little girls) under a kazami (a girl's formal dress gown). The darker gray conveys deeper mourning.

  67. A line (like “The frost flowers are white,” below) from Bai Juyi's “Song of Unending Sorrow.”

  68.
Here as elsewhere, tokonatsu (“gillyflower”) plays on toko (“bed”). The dew is Genji's tears.

  69. From past lives.

  70. During the first forty-nine days a mourner kept to the plainest food and especially avoided meat and spices.

  71. Curtains and other furnishings had been changed for winter, which began on the first of the tenth lunar month.

  72. He addresses her very politely, despite his intimate tone.

  73. The guessing game (hen-tsugi) involved guessing partly hidden characters or making up new ones by adding elements to given parts.

  74. So that she can answer the poem he has left by her pillow. After a couple's first night together the man was supposed to leave the woman a poem, and she to respond. Being “knotted,” Genji's note has visibly to do with love.

  75. Glutinous rice cakes, each shaped like a baby boar (inoko mochii), eaten for good luck at the hour of the Boar (about 9:00 to 11:00 P.M.) on the first day of the Boar in the tenth lunar month. The rice was mixed with ingredients like sesame, chestnut, or persimmon, so that the cakes came in seven different flavors and colors.

  76. Newlyweds were served white rice cakes on their third night together, the one when their marriage was sealed. However, the day of the Boar (only the second night in this case) was unlucky for the start of anything as important as marriage.

  77. The day of the Rat followed that of the Boar, but “baby rat cakes” (nenoko [no mochii]) did not exist; the term is Koremitsu's invention.

  78. Ben must be behind a curtain. The box serves to disguise its contents.

  79. She mistakes Koremitsu's meaning. Ada (“wrong”) can mean specifically something wanton.