Transcriber Note: The cover image was created by the transcriber from the original cover and elements of the title page. It is placed in the public domain.

THE SACRED TREE

BEING THE SECOND PART
OF ‘THE TALE OF GENJI’

By

LADY MURASAKI

TRANSLATED FROM THE JAPANESE BY

ARTHUR WALEY

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

The Riverside Press Cambridge

1926

To
MARY MacCARTHY

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

PREFACE

SEVERAL critics have asked to be told more about the writer of the Tale of Genji. Unfortunately little is known of Murasaki’s life save the bare facts recorded in the first appendix of Volume I. What other knowledge we possess is derived from her Diary, which will be discussed in a later volume and is meanwhile available in Mr. Doi’s translation. Reviewers have also asked for information concerning the state of literature in Japan at the time when the Tale was written. This I have supplied; and I have further ventured upon a short discussion of Murasaki’s art and its relation to the fiction of the West.

I have been blamed for using Catholic terms to describe heathen rituals. My reason for doing so is that the outward forms of medieval Buddhism stand much nearer to Catholicism than to the paler ceremonies of the Protestant Church, and if one avoids words with specifically Catholic associations one finds oneself driven back upon the still less appropriate terminology of Anglicanism. Thus ‘Vespers’ is a less misleading translation than ‘Evening Service’ though the latter is far more literal.

Finally, I have thought it might be of interest to give a few notes concerning the transmission of the text.

Volume III is finished and will appear shortly.

Note on Pronunciation.—The G in ‘Genji’ is hard, as in ‘gun.’ Vowels, as in Italian.

CONTENTS

LIST OF MOST IMPORTANT PERSONS

(ALPHABETICAL)

GENEALOGICAL TABLES

1 Whom in this volume I call Oborozuki for short.

SUMMARY OF VOLUME ONE

GENJI is an illegitimate son of the Emperor; his mother dies soon after his birth. At the age of twelve he is affianced to Lady Aoi, the daughter of the Minister of the Left; but she is older than he is, and looks down upon him as a mere schoolboy. Years go by and they are still upon indifferent terms. Meanwhile Genji falls in love with Lady Rokujō, a widow eight years older than himself. She is passionately jealous of his wife (whom, however, Genji hardly ever sees) and relations with her become very difficult. Genji turns for consolation to Utsusemi, wife of a provincial governor: to Yūgao, a discarded mistress of his great friend Tō no Chūjō: to the fantastic Lady Suyetsumuhana, the ‘lady with the red nose.’ Utsusemi is carried away to the provinces by her husband; Yūgao dies, withered by the virulence of Rokujō’s jealousy. Meanwhile Genji manages to establish better terms with his wife, Aoi, only to lose her through the operation of the same baleful force that had destroyed Yūgao. Since his childhood Genji has had a passionate admiration for Lady Fujitsubo, his father’s second wife and therefore his own stepmother. He has a son by her which is believed by the world to be the Emperor’s child. Had this misdemeanour became known, Genji’s enemies, led by Lady Kōkiden who had been his mother’s rival, would have had an ample pretext for driving him away from Court. As it is, the actual cause of Genji’s banishment (recounted in Vol. II) is his intrigue with Oborozukiyo, a much younger sister of his enemy, Lady Kōkiden.

At the end of Vol. I, Genji marries, en secondes noces, Lady Murasaki, a niece of Fujitsubo, whom he had some years before taken into his house and adopted.

INTRODUCTION

Fiction in Japan Previous
to “The Tale of Genji”

THE Tale of Genji was probably written about 1001–1015 a.d. We know the titles of a good many earlier stories and romances. About a dozen are mentioned in the Tale itself. But only three actual works of fiction survive, The Bamboo-cutter, The Hollow Tree (‘Utsubo’), and the Room Below Stairs (‘Ochikubo’). Besides these there are a few works which, though belonging to a rather different category, throw some light on the development of fiction and will be mentioned in due course.

The Bamboo-cutter dates from about 860–870. It is a harmless little fairy-story. An old peasant finds a minute child in a bamboo-stem. She grows up into a woman of surpassing beauty, is courted by numerous lovers to whom she sets a series of grotesque tasks which they entirely fail to perform. Finally celestial messengers arrive and carry her away to the sky.

The Hollow Tree cannot be much earlier than 980. No doubt in this interval of more than a hundred years much was written that is now lost. But it cannot be said that The Hollow Tree shows much sign of progress. As it exists to-day it is a very long book—more than half as long as Genji. But it is not quite certain whether, of the fourteen chapters which we now possess, any but the first (called Toshikage) is really earlier than Genji. Toshikage is the story of a man who on the way from Japan to China, regardless of geographical probabilities, gets wrecked ‘on the coast of Persia.’ In this country he falls in with supernatural beings from whom he obtains thirty miraculous zitherns and the knowledge of enchanted tunes. After a distinguished career on the Continent he returns to Japan with ten zitherns which he distributes among the grandees of the Court, keeping one for his small daughter, to whom alone he teaches the marvellous Persian tunes. He and his wife die, the daughter marries unhappily and is finally left with no possessions save the marvellous zithern and a little son of twelve. They take refuge in a hollow tree, but soon discover to their consternation that their new home is the den of a bear who, returning from his day’s hunting, is about to devour them, when the little boy makes a speech of several pages. The bear is so much moved that, far from molesting the intruders, it puts the hollow tree at their disposition and trots off to look for another home. Finally the wicked husband repents, takes back the wife and child whom he had deserted and all ends happily. The child embarks upon its career as an infant prodigy and at the age of eighteen takes part victoriously in a musical competition at Court.

The remaining chapters deal chiefly with the rivalry of this young musician and other courtiers for the hand of the Prime Minister’s daughter. They possess a certain historical interest as pictures of Court life, but are long-winded and boring to an almost unbelievable degree. Even Toshikage (the first chapter), which, when summarized, may sound mildly entertaining, is for the most part unendurably silly.

A little later, but not very far removed in date, is the Room Below Stairs. It is a feebly sentimental story about an ill-used step-child, somewhat in the manner of the edifying stories told in the Fairchild Family, but wholly lacking in the occasional felicities which spring unexpectedly from Mrs. Sherwood’s pen. It is, however, a short book (only about 200 pages) and that is the best that can be said for it.

In none of these works is there any ability or desire to portray character. That is not in itself fatal to a work of fiction. The Arabian Nights are without it, and it exists only in the most rudimentary form in Defoe. But if this resource be neglected, something must take its place. There must be a fertility of narrative invention (as in Near Eastern fiction) or the building up of effect by sequences of actual word-texture (as in Virginia Woolf). Otherwise not literature but mere perfunctory anecdote will result, as has indeed happened in the case of Genji’s predecessors.

Now Murasaki herself has every quality which these earlier writers lack. She exploits character, in a very restrained way, it is true, but with an unerring instinct how to produce the greatest effect with the least possible display. And to this she adds not only an astonishing capacity for invention, but also a beauty of actual diction unsurpassed by any long novel in the world. For none of these qualities was she indebted in any way to such of her predecessors as survive. Concerning lost works it is useless to speculate.

I have said that besides the three early stories there are other prose works which have some bearing on the history of Japanese fiction. To begin with there are the Tales of Ise, written somewhere about 890 a.d. They consist of 125 short paragraphs (often only two or three lines) containing little poems and a description of the circumstances under which they were written. They appear to concern the love-adventures of a single person, but are quite disconnected. I have translated one of the longer episodes in my Japanese Poetry. The Yamato Tales, about half a century later, also centre round poems. They consist of rather trivial anecdotes about courtiers of the period.

We now come to the one book which, though it is not a work of fiction and though it lacks the qualities of deliberate art which make Genji so astonishing, at least seems to move in the same world of thought and feeling. This is the Gossamer Diary (‘Kagerō Nikki’).

The writer was mistress of the great statesman Fujiwara no Kane-iye (929–999). By him she had a son called Michitsuna, and her name not being recorded she is known to history as ‘Michitsuna’s mother.’ He made her acquaintance in 954 and Michitsuna was born the year after. But Kane-iye already had a wife, a legitimate family and numerous mistresses. Lady Gossamer (as we will for convenience call the writer of the Diary) could not expect undivided attention. This was a fact that she took years to recognize, and when the diary closes (in the twentieth year of their liaison!) she had indeed recognized her position, but was still as far from accepting it as at the start.

The record begins in 954, the year in which they met. ‘For twenty days he has not been here at all.’ ‘This month he has written only twice....’ Such entries are frequent from the beginning. Her grievance grew and grew. It became her whole life. When he did not come, she wept; when he came, she wept because he had not come sooner. She was immersed in perpetual devotions; while he, like our own eighteenth-century bucks whom in every particular he so strongly resembled, only turned religious when he was ill. Often he found her kneeling before an image of Buddha, lost in prayer; and one day, suddenly infuriated by this dismal reception, he kicked over her incense-bowl and, snatching the rosary from her hands, flung it across the room. He loved gaiety, noise, funny stories, practical jokes. She was shy, sensitive and, above all, terribly serious. His method of entertaining her was to repeat with immense gusto ‘every piece of silly clownery or tomfoolery’ that was current in the City, spiced with jokes and puns of his own.

She was incurably sentimental. Never for an instant could she recognize that time must bring changes, and after ten years she was still expecting him to court her with the ardour of arishi toki, ‘the times that were.’

One night when she is awaiting him she lights the candles. No! She will let him find her in the dark, as in those old days when their love was still a secret escapade. She puts the candles out and, hearing him fumbling at the entry, cries Koko ni! (Here!) and stretches out her hand as she had often done before. But to-night he is in no mood for hide-and-seek. ‘What game is this?’ he cries angrily, ‘light the candles at once. I cannot see my way into the room.’ Then he asks if they can find him a snack of something to eat; he has had no supper. He eats his fish in silence, then says that he has had a tiring day, yawns, and falls asleep. At dawn his sons, the children of her rival, come to fetch him, and he calls her to the window to ‘look what fine young fellows they have grown.’

His visits become more and more infrequent. She is desperately unhappy, talks of suicide, threatens to become a nun and on more than one occasion actually instals herself in a nunnery, but always allows herself to be ‘rescued’ at the last minute. The second flight was to a temple at Narutaki. Here she remained for many months in a state of the greatest agitation; but she did not take her vows, and in the end allowed herself to be fetched, quietly away by Kane-iye and her son Michitsuna, now a boy in his ’teens.

It was at this moment that she actually began the composition of the Diary, the first part of which is not a day-to-day record but an autobiographical fragment composed many years later than the events which it records. But henceforward the book has all the character of a diary and is indeed very minute; scarcely a shower passes unrecorded. A new phase in the story begins with the adoption by Lady Gossamer of a little orphan girl aged twelve, a child of her lover Kane-iye by a woman whom years ago he had seduced and immediately abandoned. The child grows up and is ultimately courted by the head of the office in which Lady Gossamer’s son Michitsuna is now working. Kane-iye gives his consent to the match; Lady Gossamer hears stories to the young man’s discredit, foresees for her adopted daughter a life all too like her own and opposes the plan.

Here (in 974 a.d., twenty years after she first met Kane-iye) the Diary ends abruptly.

Publication in our sense of the word did not of course exist in those days. But no doubt a few copies of the book were made for those who were likely to be interested. Kane-iye himself, who lived on for another twenty-five years, surely possessed one. Now it was in the family of Kane-iye’s legitimate son Michinaga[1] that Murasaki, the authoress of the Tale of Genji, served as lady-in-waiting, and we know from Murasaki’s diary that this Michinaga fell in love with her and courted her. It is more than probable that Michinaga had inherited a copy of the Gossamer Diary from Kane-iye and in that case it is also very probable that he showed it to Murasaki. This much at any rate is certain, that we find in the Gossamer Diary an anticipation of just those characteristics which mark off Genji from other Japanese romances,—apt delineation of character, swift narrative, vivid description and above all the realization that a story of actual life, such as is led by hundreds of real men and women, is not necessarily less interesting than a tale crammed with ogres and divinities. The following passage refers to the year 970, when Kane-iye (the lover) was 41, Michitsuna (the bastard) 15 and Lady Gossamer herself perhaps about 35.

‘Every day he promises that it shall be to-morrow. And when to-morrow comes, it is to be the day after. Of course I do not believe him; yet each time that this happens I begin imagining that he has repented,—that all has come right again. So day after day goes by.

‘At last I am certain. He does not intend to come. I did not think that about unhappiness I had anything fresh to learn; I confess that never before have I endured such torture as in these last days. Hour after hour the same wretched thoughts chase through my brain. Shall I be able to endure it much longer? I have tried to pray; but no prayer forms itself in my mind, save the wish that I were dead.

‘But there is this lovely creature (her son Michitsuna) to think of. If only he were a little older and I could see him married to some girl whom I trusted, then I would indeed be glad to die. But as it is how can I leave him to shift for himself,—to wander perhaps from house to house? No, that is too horrible. I must not die.

‘I might of course become a nun and try to forget all this. Indeed, I did once speak of it (i.e. to Michitsuna),—quite lightly, just to see how he would take it. He was terribly distressed and, struggling with his tears, he told me that if I did so he would become a monk, “For what would there be,” he said, “to keep me in the world? You are the only thing I care for.” And at that he burst into a flood of tears. By this time I too was weeping; but seeing him almost beside himself with grief I tried to pass the thing off as a jest, saying “Well, I mean to one day; and what will your highness do then?” It happened that he had a falcon on his wrist, and jumping straight to his feet he set it free, reciting as he did so the verse: “Desolate must she be, and weary of strife, whose thoughts, like this swift bird, fly heavenward at a touch.”

‘At this, some of my servants who chanced to be sitting near by could not restrain their tears; and it may be imagined with what feelings I, in the midst of the unendurable misery and agitation with which I was contending, heard my child utter these words.

‘It was growing dark when suddenly he (her lover) arrived at the house. For some reason I felt certain that he had come only to regale me with all the empty gossip that was going round. I sent a message that I was not well and would see him some other time.

‘It is the tenth day of the seventh month. Every one is getting ready their Ullambana[2] presents. If, after all these years, he should fail to send me anything for the festival I think the most hard-hearted person in the world could not help being sorry for me! However, there is still time.

‘Last night, just when I was thinking I should have to get the offerings for myself and was weeping bitterly, a messenger came with just the same presents as in other years, and a letter attached! Even the dead were not forgotten.[3] In his letter he quoted the poem: “Though never far away, yet wretched must I bide....” If that is indeed how he feels, his conduct becomes more than ever inexplicable! No allusion to the fact that he has transferred his affections to some one else. Yet I am certain it is so.

‘It suddenly occurs to me that there is a certain gentlewoman in the household of that Prince Ono no Miya[4] who died the other day. I believe that it is she whom my lord is courting. She is called Ōmi, and I heard some one whispering not long ago that this Ōmi was having an adventure of some kind. He does not want her to know that he comes here. That is why he decided to break with me beforehand. I said this to one of my maids; but she doubted if there were anything in it. “O well, it may be so,” she said, “but in any case this Ōmi is not the sort of person to ask many questions....”

‘I have got another idea. I think it is one of the daughters of the late Emperor. But what difference does it make? In any case, as every one tells me, it is no use just sitting and watching him slip away from me as one might watch the light fade out of the evening sky. “Go away, pay a visit somewhere or other,” they say to me. I have thought about nothing else day or night but this hideous business. The weather is very hot. But it is no use going on talking about what I am going to do. This time my mind is made up. I am going to Ishiyama for ten days.

‘I decided to tell no one, not even my brothers, and stole from the house very secretly, just before dawn. Once outside, I began to run as fast as I could. I had almost reached the Kamo River when some of my women came rushing after me laden with all sorts of stuff. How they discovered that I had fled and that this was the direction I had taken, I still do not know. The setting moon was shining very brightly and we might easily have been recognized; but we met no one. When we came to the river some one told me there was a dead man lying face downwards on the shingle. I did not feel afraid.

‘By the time we reached the Awada Hill I began to be very exhausted and was obliged to rest. I had still not decided what I should do when I arrived,[5] and in the agony of trying to make up my mind I burst into tears. I could not risk being seen in such a state and staggering to my feet I set out once more, just able to drag myself along a step or two at a time.

‘By the time we reached Yamashina it was quite light. I felt like a criminal whose guilt has suddenly been exposed and became so agitated that I scarcely knew what I was doing. My women had now fallen behind. I waited for them and made them go in front, myself walking alone so that we might attract as little attention as possible. Yet the people I met stared at me curiously and whispered excitedly. I was terrified.

‘Scarcely able to draw breath I at last reached Hashiri-i. Here they said it was time for breakfast, and having opened the picnic baskets they were just arranging the mats and getting things ready when we heard people coming towards us shouting at the top of their voices. What was I to do? Who could it be? I could only suppose that they were friends of one or another of the maids who were with me. “Could anything more tiresome have happened?” I was just thinking, when I saw that the people were on horseback and formed part of a large travelling party, consisting of numerous riders and a number of waggons and coaches. It was in fact the retired governor of Wakasa coming back from his province. Soon they began to pass the place where we were sitting. Fortunate travellers! Among them are many who from to-day onwards will kneel in my Lord’s presence noon and night. This thought cut through my heart like a knife. It seemed to me that the drivers took the waggons as close as they could to where we had spread our mats. While they were passing us, not only the servants who were at the back of the coaches but even the drivers and grooms behaved disgracefully, making such remarks as I had never heard before. My ladies showed great spirit, hastily moving our belongings as far from the roadside as they could and calling out: “This is a public highway, isn’t it? We have just as good a right to be here as you!” What an odious scene to be mixed up with! As soon as they were well out of sight we pressed on again, and were soon passing through the Ōsaka gate. I reached the quay at Uchide[6] more dead than alive. My people whom I had sent on ahead had gathered long bulrushes and built for me a kind of shelter or cabin on the deck. I crept on board and lay down, scarcely noticing whether we had the boat to ourselves or not. Soon we were far out upon the lake. During the voyage, as we drew further and further from the City, I felt a loneliness, an anguish, an utter helplessness impossible to describe. It was well after the Hour of the Monkey (i.e. about 5 p.m.) that we reached the temple.

‘As soon as I had taken a bath, I went and lay down. Again I began trying to make up my mind what I should do, and for several hours I lay tossing from side to side, unable to get any rest. At dusk I washed again and went into the Chapel.

‘I began trying to make my confession to Buddha; but tears choked me and my voice fell to a whisper. It was now quite dark. I went to the window and looked out. The Chapel stood high, and below it was what seemed like a precipitous ravine; it lay in a cup or hollow and the steep banks on either side were overgrown with tall trees, so that the place was very closed-in and dark. The moon was some twenty days old and having risen late in the night was now shining with extraordinary brilliance. Here and there the moonlight pierced through the trees, making sudden patches of brightness; there was one such just at the foot of the cliff. Looking straight below me I could see what appeared to be a vast lake, but was indeed only a small drinking-pool. I went on to a balcony and leant over the railing. Among the grass on the steep bank far below me I could see something white appearing and disappearing, and at the same time there was a curious, rustling sound. I asked what it was and was told that these were deer. I was wondering why I had not heard them cry as one generally does, when suddenly from the direction of quite a different valley there came a faint weak sound like the wailing of a new-born child. Surely it must be a young doe crying a great way off? At first I thought that I was imagining the sound; but presently it became unmistakable.

‘I was lost in prayer and knew nothing of what was going on around me, when a hideous yelling, seeming to come from the far side of the hills at which I had been looking, broke in upon my prayers. It was a peasant chasing some one off his land. Never have I heard a voice more pitiless, more ferocious. If such sounds as that proved to be common happenings in this place, I knew that I should not hold out very long and, utterly shattered, I sat for a while trying to recover my composure. At last I heard a sound of chanting in the temple; the monks had begun to sing the goya,[7] and I left the chapel. Feeling very weak, I again took a bath. It was beginning to grow light, and looking about me I saw that a heavy night-mist was rolling away to the West, blown by a light, steady wind. The view beyond the river looked as though painted in a picture. Near the water horses were quietly grazing; they looked strangely small and far away. It was very lovely.

‘If only my beloved child were in safe hands I would give everything up and arrange to end my days here. But the moment I think of him I long to be back in the City and become very depressed.

‘He will be coming with the other boys on the excursion to Sakura-dani, which is not far from here. If he were to come, I could not bear to hear that he had passed so close.... I do not want to go back; but I think if any one fetched me I should consent to go. But should I? I worry about this all the time and cannot bring myself to eat anything.

‘They came and told me they had been for a walk behind the monastery and found some meadow-sweet growing near a pond. I asked them to bring me some, which they did, and put the flowers in a bowl along with some lemons on stripped stems. It really looked very pretty.

‘When it was dark I went back to the chapel and spent the night in confession and prayer, weeping bitterly the whole while. Towards daybreak I dozed for a moment and dreamt that I saw one of the monks (the one who seems to act as a sort of steward here) fill a bucket of water and put it on the seat on my right. I woke up with a start and knew at once that the dream had been sent to me by Buddha. It was certainly not of a kind to bring much encouragement.[8] Presently some one said that it was now broad daylight, and breaking off my prayers I came down from the chapel. I found, however, that it was really still quite dark. Only across the surface of the lake a whiteness was creeping, against which were dimly outlined the figures of some twenty men clustered together on the shore. They seemed all to be gazing intently at something that was hidden from me by the shadow of the cliff. But though I could see nothing I knew that from the dark place would presently issue the boat for which they were waiting. A priest, who had just come from the early morning service, was standing on the cliff watching the boat put out from the shore, and as it drew further and further away from him, it seemed to me that he gazed after it almost wistfully. Should I too, if I had been here as many years, grow weary of the place and long for escape? It may be so. “This time next year!” the young men on the boat shouted; and by the time the priest had called “goodbye” they were already mere shadows in the distance. I looked up at the sky. The moon was very slim. Its narrow bow was reflected in the lake. A rainy wind was now blowing and presently the whole surface of the water became covered with glittering ripples. The young men on the boat had begun to sing, and though their voices were faint I could hear what song they were singing. It was “Haggard has grown the face ...” and the sound of it brought back the tears to my eyes.

‘Ikaga Point, Yamabuki Point,—promontory after promontory was now emerging from the darkness. And as my eye travelled along the shore I suddenly saw something moving through the reeds. Before I could see clearly what it was I began to hear the noise of oars, then the low humming of a rowers’ song. A boat was drawing near. Some one standing further down the shore called out as it passed “Where are you making for?” “For the temple,” a voice from the boat answered, “to fetch the lady....”

‘How my heart beat when I heard those words! It seems that despite all my precautions he[9] caught wind of my plan, and sent some servants to escort me; but by then I suppose I had already started. They were at first wrongly directed; hence the delay. The boat pulled inshore, room was made for us, and soon we were on our homeward way, the oarsmen singing lustily. As we passed along the side of Seta Bridge it began to grow quite light. A covey of sand-plovers, with much frilling of wings, flew right across us; and indeed, before we reached the quay where two days ago I had taken boat, we had seen many lovely and moving sights. A carriage was waiting for me at the quay and I was back in the City soon after the hour of the Snake (10 a.m.). No sooner did I reach home than my women gathered round me full of lurid stories about all that had been going on in the world since my departure. It is really very odd that they should still think such things have any interest for me; and so I told them.’

In the Izumi Shikibu Nikki, the record of a love-affair which took place in 1003–1004, we find the romantic diary already becoming a rather effete and self-conscious genre. This little book (some forty pages) is utterly lacking in the intensity and directness of Lady Gossamer’s journal; it has been translated into English[10] and the environment of the story is so new to European readers that its weakness as literature tends to be condoned. Another work which preceded Genji by a few years was the Makura no Sōshi or ‘Pillow Sketches’ of Sei Shōnagon. This is a spirited commonplace-book, but it contains no connected narrative and therefore does not here concern us. The greater part of it was translated by the late Abbé Noël Péri, and no doubt his translation will one day be published.

The Art of Murasaki

Most critics have agreed that the book is a remarkable one and that Murasaki is a writer of considerable talent; but few have dealt with the points that seem to me fundamental. No one has discussed, in anything but the most shadowy way, the all-important question of how she has turned to account the particular elements in story-telling which she has chosen to exploit. The work, it is true, is a translation, and this fact prevents discussion of Murasaki as a poet, as an actual handler of words. But it has for long been customary to criticize Russian novels as though Mrs. Garnett’s translation were the original; nor is there any harm in doing so, provided actual questions of style are set aside.

One reviewer did indeed analyse the nature of Murasaki’s achievement to the extent of classifying her as ‘psychological’ and in this respect he even went so far as to class her with Marcel Proust. Now it is clear that, if we contrast Genji with such fiction as does not exploit the ramifications of the human mind at all (the Arabian Nights or Mother Goose), it appears to be ‘psychological.’ But if we go on to compare it with Stendhal, with Tolstoy, with Proust, the Tale of Genji appears by contrast to possess little more psychological complication than a Grimm’s fairy tale.

Yet it does for a very definite reason belong more to the category which includes Proust, than to the category which includes Grimm. Murasaki, like the novelist of to-day, is not principally interested in the events of the story, but rather in the effect which these events may have upon the minds of her characters. Such books as hers it is convenient, I think, to call ‘novels,’ while reserving for other works of fiction the name ‘story’ or ‘romance.’ She is ‘modern’ again owing to the accident that medieval Buddhism possessed certain psychological conceptions which happen to be current in Europe to-day. The idea that human personality is built up of different layers which may act in conflict, that an emotion may exist in the fullest intensity and yet be unperceived by the person in whom it is at work—such conceptions were commonplaces in ancient Japan. They give to Murasaki’s work a certain rather fallacious air of modernity. But it is not psychological elements such as these that Murasaki is principally exploiting. She is, I think, obtaining her effects by means which are so unfamiliar to European readers (though they have, in varying degrees, often been exploited in the West) that while they work as they were intended to do and produce aesthetic pleasure, the reader is quite unconscious how this pleasure arose.

What then are the essential characteristics of Murasaki’s art? Foremost, I think, is the way in which she handles the whole course of narrative as a series of contrasted effects. Examine the relation of Chapter VIII (The Feast of the Flowers) to its environment. The effect of these subtly-chosen successions is more like that of music (of the movements, say, in a Mozart symphony) than anything that we are familiar with in European fiction. True, at the time when the criticisms to which I refer were made only one volume of the work had been translated; but the quality which I have mentioned is, I should have supposed, abundantly illustrated in the first chapters. That to one critic the Tale of Genji should have appeared to be memoirs—a realistic record of accidental happenings rather than a novel—is to me utterly incomprehensible. But the first painted makimonos that were brought to Europe created the same impression. They were regarded merely as a succession of topographical records, joined together more or less fortuitously; and Murasaki’s art obviously has a close analogy with that of the makimono. Then there is her feeling for shape and tempo. She knows that, not only in the work as a whole, but in each part of it there is a beginning, a middle and an end, and that each of these divisions has its own character, its appropriate pace and intensity. It is inconceivable, for example, that she should open a book or episode with a highly-coloured and elaborate passage of lyrical description, calculated to crush under its weight all that follows. Another point in which she excels is the actual putting of her characters on to the scene. First their existence is hinted at, our curiosity is aroused, we are given a glimpse; and only after much manoeuvring is the complete entry made. The modern novelist tends to fling his characters on to the canvas without tact or precaution of any kind. That credence, attention even, may be a hard thing to win does not occur to him, for he is corrupted by a race of readers who come to a novel seeking the pleasures of instruction rather than those of art; readers who will forgive every species of clumsiness provided they are shown some stratum of life with which they were not previously familiar.

How finally does Murasaki achieve the extraordinary reality, the almost ‘historical’ character with which she succeeds in investing her scenes? Many readers have agreed with me in feeling that such episodes as the death of Yūgao, the clash of the coaches at the Kamo festival, the visit of Genji to the mountains, the death of Aoi, become, after one reading, a permanent accession to the world as one knows it, are things which have ‘happened’ as much as the most vivid piece of personal experience. This sense of reality with which she invests her narrative is not the result of realism in any ordinary sense. It is not the outcome of those clever pieces of small observation by which the modern novelist strives to attain the same effect. Still less is it due to solid character building; for Murasaki’s characters are mere embodiments of some dominant characteristic; Genji’s father is easy-going; Aoi, proud; Murasaki, long-suffering; Oborozukiyo, light-headed. This sense of reality is due rather, I think, to a narrative gift of a kind that is absolutely extinct in Europe. To analyse such a gift would require pages of quotation. What does it in the last resort consist in, save a preeminent capacity for saying the most relevant things in the most effective order? Yet, simple as this sounds, I believe that in it rests, unperceived by the eye of the Western critic, more than half the secret of Murasaki’s art. Her construction is in fact classical; elegance, symmetry, restraint—these are the qualities which she can set in the scales against the interesting irregularities of European fiction. That such qualities should not be easily recognized in the West is but natural; for here the novel has always been Gothic through and through.

NOTE ON THE TEXT

The Medieval Manuscripts

In the Middle Ages (from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries) the MSS. of Genji were divided into two groups, (1) Those which were founded on the copy made for Fujiwara no Sadaiye about the middle of the thirteenth century. His was known as the Blue Cover Copy and is the basis of all printed editions[11] down to the present day. (2) Those which were founded on the copy made for Minamoto no Mitsuyuki early in the thirteenth century. His was known as the Kōchi Copy, owing to the fact that he was Governor of Kōchi. At first the more popular of the two, it was afterwards almost entirely disregarded.

Existing Manuscripts

The earliest existing Genji manuscript is a series of rolls illustrating some of the later chapters of the Tale. They are attributed to Tosa no Takayoshi (early twelfth century). Then comes a manuscript of Chapter xxiv (The Tide-Gauge), which is supposed to be in the handwriting of Fujiwara no Sadaiye and therefore to date from the first half of the thirteenth century. The earliest complete manuscript is the Hirase Copy, which is in private possession at Ōsaka. It was made during the years 1309–1311 and is founded principally on the Kōchi Copy. It has thus a quite different pedigree from the currently printed text. I know it only from facsimiles of Chapters i and xxxi kindly presented to me by Professor Naitō, on whose researches the above information is largely based. My translation is based chiefly on the Hakubunkwan edition of 1914; but numerous other editions have been consulted.

[1] 966–1027 a.d.

[2] Festival on the 15th day of the 7th month. The presents given are to be used as offerings to Buddha.

[3] I.e. specially her mother. The festival was on behalf of the souls of dead parents and ancestors.

[4] An uncle of Kane-iye’s.

[5] Whether she should stay permanently in the monastery.

[6] The modern Ōtsu, now reached from Kyōto (her starting-point) by tramway in half an hour.

[7] The late night service.

[8] It foreboded ill to Kane-iye, who was at that time Marshal of the bodyguard of the Right. Water typifies weakness and death.

[9] Kane-iye.

[10] Diaries of Court Ladies, 1920.

[11] The earliest printed edition known to me is that of 1650, of which there is a copy in the British Museum. I imagine this to be the editio princeps.

THE SACRED TREE

CHAPTER X
THE SACRED TREE

AS the time for her daughter’s departure came near, Lady Rokujō fell into utter despair. It had at first been generally supposed that the death of the lady at the Great Hall would put an end to all her troubles and the attendants who waited upon her at the Palace-in-the-Fields were agog with excitement. But their expectations remained unfulfilled. Not a word came from Genji, and this unprecedented treatment on his part finally convinced her that something[1] had indeed happened which it was impossible for him to forgive. She strove to cast out all thought of him from her heart so that when the time came she might set out upon her journey without misgiving or regret. For a parent to accompany her daughter on such an occasion was in the highest degree unusual; but in this case the Virgin’s extreme youth was a convenient excuse, and Rokujō put it about that as the child still needed surveillance she had decided to quit the temporal world in her daughter’s company. Even after all that had happened the prospect of parting with her forever was extremely painful to Genji, and as the day drew near he again began to send her letters full of tenderness and solicitude. But he did not propose a meeting, and she herself had by now given up all hope that there could be any question of such a thing. She was certain that (for all his politeness) what had happened must in reality have made her utterly odious to him, and she was determined not to plunge herself, all to no purpose, into a fresh period of conflict and agitation. From time to time she made short visits to her palace, but so secretly that Genji did not hear of it. The Palace-in-the-Fields was not a place where he could see her without inconvenient restrictions and formalities. He fully intended to see her, but put off the visit from day to day till at last months had elapsed since she left the city. Then the ex-Emperor’s health began to decline. He had no definitely serious or alarming symptoms, but constantly complained of feeling that there was something wrong with him. Genji’s thoughts were therefore a great deal occupied with his father’s condition; but he did not want Rokujō to leave with the impression that he had lost all feeling for her, nor did he wish those who knew of their friendship to think that he had treated her heartlessly, and despite all difficulties he set out one day for the Palace-in-the-Fields. It was the seventh of the ninth month and the departure of the Virgin for Ise was bound to take place within the next few days. It may be imagined that Rokujō and her maids were in no condition to receive visits, but he wrote again and again begging her to see him even if it were only at the moment of her departure, and at last, despite the fluster into which her whole household was plunged, and feeling all the while that she was acting very imprudently, she could no longer fight against her longing once more to see him and sent word secretly that, if he came, she would contrive to speak to him for a moment from behind her screen-of-state. As he made his way through the open country that stretched out endlessly on every side, his heart was strangely stirred. The autumn flowers were fading; along the reeds by the river the shrill voices of many insects blended with the mournful fluting of the wind in the pines. Scarcely distinguishable from these somewhere in the distance rose and fell a faint, enticing sound of human music. He had with him only a handful of outriders, and his attendants were by his orders dressed so as to attract as little notice as possible. They noted that this lack of show contrasted strangely with the elaborate pains which their master had bestowed upon his own equipment, and as they looked with admiration at the fine figure he cut, the more romantically disposed among them were thrilled at the thought that it had befallen them to accompany him upon a journey, every circumstance of which was calculated to stir to the depth such sensitive hearts as theirs. So delighted was Genji with the scene before him that he continually asked himself why it was that he had deferred this visit for so long; and he regretted that while Rokujō was at the Palace-in-the-Fields he had not made a constant practice of visiting her. They came at last to a group of very temporary-looking wooden huts surrounded by a flimsy brushwood fence. The archways,[2] built of unstripped wood, stood out black and solemn against the sky. Within the enclosure a number of priests were walking up and down with a preoccupied air. There was something portentous in their manner of addressing one another and in their way of loudly clearing their throats before they spoke. In the Hill of Offering there was a dim flicker of firelight, but elsewhere no single sign of life. So this was the place where he had left one who was from the start in great distress of mind, to shift for herself week after week, month after month! Suddenly he realized with a terrible force all that she must have suffered. He hurried to the place where she had told him he would find her (a room in the northern outbuilding) and sent in a long message contrasting his present quiet and serious existence with his now discarded frivolities. She in return replied with a message, but did not suggest that they should meet. This angered him. ‘You do not seem to realize,’ he said, ‘that such excursions as this are now no part of my ordinary existence and can only be arranged with the greatest difficulty. I had hoped that instead of keeping me beyond the pale, you would hasten to relieve all the anxiety that I have had concerning you in the long months since we met.’ To this appeal were added the protests of her waiting-ladies who were scandalized at the idea of Prince Genji being left waiting outside the house. At first she pleaded the impossibility of receiving a guest in surroundings so cramped and wretched, her duty towards her daughter at this critical hour, the undesirability of such an interview just on the eve of her permanent departure. But though the prospect of facing him filled her with unspeakable depression, she had not the heart to treat him unkindly, and at last, looking very grave, with sighs and hesitation at every step she came forward to meet him. ‘I presume that here one is allowed no further than the verandah,’ he said, and mounting the narrow bamboo platform that surrounded the building he took his seat there. An evening moon had risen and as she saw him moving in its gentle light she knew that all this while she had not been wrong; he was indeed more lovely, more enticing than anyone in the world beside. He began trying to explain why it was that for so many months on end he had not been able to visit her; but he soon got into a tangle, and feeling suddenly embarrassed he plucked a spray from the Sacred Tree[3] which grew outside her room and handing it to her through her blinds-of-state he said: ‘Take this evergreen bough in token that my love can never change. Were it not so, why should I have set foot within the boundaries of this hallowed plot? You use me very ill.’ But she answered with the verse ‘Thought you perchance that the Holy Tree from whose boughs you plucked a spray was as “the cedar by the gate”?’[4] To this he replied: ‘Well knew I what priestess dwelt in this shrine, and for her sake came to pluck this offering of fragrant leaves.’

Though the position was not likely to be a very comfortable one, he now thrust his head under the reed blinds and sat with his legs dangling over the wooden framework of the bamboo platform. During all the years when he could see her as often and as intimately as he chose and she on her side withheld nothing from him, he had gone on serenely assuming that it would be always so, and never once in all that time had he felt so deeply moved as at this moment. Suddenly he realized with astonishment that though after that unhappy incident he had imagined it to be impossible for them to meet and had so avoided all risk of his former affection being roused to new life, yet from the first moment of this strange confrontation he had immediately found himself feeling towards her precisely as he had before their estrangement. Violently agitated he began to cast his mind rapidly over the long years of their friendship. Now all this was over. It was too horrible. He burst into tears. She had determined not to let him see what she was suffering, but now she could restrain herself no longer and he was soon passionately entreating her not to go down to Ise after all. The moon had set, but the starlit sky was calm and lovely. Pausing often to gaze up into the night he began at last to speak to her of what had lain so heavily on his heart. But no sooner was it openly mentioned between them than all the pent-up bitterness of so many weeks was suddenly released and vanished utterly away. Little by little, in preparation for her final departure, she had at last accustomed herself to think of him almost with indifference. Now in a moment all this was undone, and when she heard Genji himself entreating her to abandon the journey her heart beat violently, and the wildest thoughts agitated her brain. The garden which surrounded her apartments was laid out in so enchanting a manner that the troops of young courtiers who in the early days of the retreat had sought in vain to press their attentions upon her, used, even when she had sent them about their business, to linger there regretfully; and on this marvellous night the place seemed consciously to be deploying all its charm. In the hours which followed, no secret was withheld on her side or on his; but what passed between them I shall not attempt to tell.

At last the night ended in such a dawn as seemed to have been fashioned for their especial delight. ‘Sad is any parting at the red of dawn; but never since the world began, gleamed day so tragically in the autumn sky,’ and as he recited these verses, aghast to leave her, he stood hesitating and laid her hand tenderly in his.

A cold wind was blowing. The pine-crickets in neighbouring trees were whispering in harsh despairing tones, as though they knew well enough what was toward. Their dismal voices would have struck a chill to the heart of any casual passer-by, and it may well be imagined what cheer they gave to lovers already at the height of distraction and anguish. She recited the verse ‘Sad enough already is this autumn parting; add not your dismal song, O pine-crickets of the moor.’ He knew that it was his neglect that had forced this parting upon them. But now it was too late to make amends. Full of useless regrets, while the grey light of morning spread over the sky, he journeyed back disconsolately to the town, through meadows deep in dew. As she watched him go she could no longer restrain herself, and at the thought that she had lost him forever broke into a fit of reckless weeping. Her gentlewomen, who on the evening before caught a fleeting glimpse of him in the moonlight, enjoyed next morning the excitement of detecting in their mistress’s room a lingering fragrance of the princely scent which he had carried.[5] It may well be imagined that they at any rate were far from condemning the crime to which she had been accessory. ‘It would have to be a marvellous journey indeed that I was going to take, before I could bring myself to part from such a one as this young prince!’ So one of the ladies exclaimed; and at the thought that they had seen him for the last time all were on the verge of tears.

His letter, which arrived during the day, was so full and affectionate that had it been within her power she might have attempted to alter her plans. But matters had gone too far for that and it was useless to think of it. Nor were his feelings towards her (she was convinced) of a sort to warrant such a step. Much of what he had said was inspired simply by pity for her. But the mere fact that he took the trouble to say such things—that he thought it worth while to comfort her—showed that he still retained something of his old feeling, and the thought that even upon such remnants of affection as this she must now soon turn her back forever, filled her mind with the most painful longings and regrets. He sent her many costumes and all else of which she could possibly have need upon the journey, with suitable presents to all her ladies. But to these handsome and costly gifts she gave hardly a thought. Indeed as the hour of her departure drew near she sank into a state of utter collapse. It was as though she had never till that moment fully realized the desolation and misery into which an intrigue, undertaken originally in a reckless and frivolous spirit, had at last plunged her. Meanwhile the Virgin, who had to the last been far from certain that her mother really meant to accompany her, was delighted that all was now fixed beyond power of recall. The unusual decision of the mother to accompany her daughter was much discussed in the world at large. Some scented a scandal; a few were touched by so rare an exhibition of family attachment. It is indeed in many ways more comfortable to belong to that section of society whose actions are not publicly canvassed and discussed. A lady in Rokujō’s conspicuous position finds her every movement subjected to an embarrassing scrutiny.

On the sixteenth day of the seventh month the Virgin was purified in the Katsura River. The ceremony was performed with more than ordinary splendour, and her escort for the journey to Ise was chosen not from among the Chamberlains and Counsellors, but from noblemen of the highest rank and reputation. This was done in compliment to the old ex-Emperor who showed a particular interest in the Virgin, his favourite brother’s child. At the moment of her departure from the Palace-in-the-Fields Rokujō was handed a letter. It was from Genji and was couched in all those tender terms that had once been current between them. Remembering the sacred errand upon which she was bound he tied the letter to a streamer of white bark-cloth.[6] ‘Such love as ours,’ he wrote, ‘not even the God of Thunder whose footsteps shake the fields of Heaven ...’[7] and added the verse: ‘O all ye Gods of the Kingdom, Rulers of the Many Isles, to your judgment will I hearken; must needs this parting sever a love insatiable as ours?’[8] Though the letter arrived just when the procession was forming and all was bustle and confusion, an answer came. It was not from Rokujō but from the Virgin herself, and had been dictated by her to her aunt who was acting as Lady Intendant: ‘Call not upon the Gods of Heaven to sit in judgment upon this case, lest first they charge you with fickleness and pitiless deceit.’ He longed to witness the presentation of the Virgin and her mother at the Palace,[9] but he had a feeling that since it was to avoid him that Rokujō was leaving the City, it would be embarrassing for both of them if he took part in the ceremonies of farewell, and overcoming his desire to see her once more, he stayed in his own palace sunk in idle thoughts. The reply of the Virgin showed a quite astonishing precocity, and he smiled as he read it through again. The girl had begun to interest him. No doubt she was precocious in charm as well as intelligence, and since it was his foible invariably to set his heart upon possessing, even at the cost of endless difficulties, whatever custom and circumstance seemed to have placed beyond his utmost reach, he now began thinking what a misfortune it was that he had in earlier days never once availed himself of his position in the house to make her acquaintance, which would indeed at any time have been perfectly easy. But after all, life is full of uncertainties; perhaps one day some unforeseen circumstance would bring her into his life once more.

The fame of Lady Rokujō brought many spectators to view the procession and the streets were thronged with coaches. The Palace Gates were entered at the hour of the monkey.[10] Lady Rokujō, sitting in the sacred palanquin by her daughter’s side, remembered how her father, the late Minister of State, had brought her years ago to these same gates, fondly imagining that he would make her the greatest lady in the land.[11] Thus to revisit the Palace now that so many changes had come both to her life and to the Court, filled her with immeasurable depression. At sixteen she had been married, at twenty she had been left a widow and now at thirty again she had set foot within the Ninefold Palisade. She murmured to herself the lines: ‘Though on this sacred day ’twere profanation to recall a time gone by, yet in my inmost heart a tinge of sadness lurks.’

The Virgin was now fourteen. She was extremely handsome and her appearance at the presentation-ceremony, decked in the full robes of her office, made a profound impression. The Emperor, when he came to setting the Comb of Parting in her hair, was deeply moved and it was observed that he shed tears.

Outside the Hall of the Eight Departments a number of gala-coaches were drawn up to witness the departure of the Virgin from the Palace. The windows of those coaches were hung with an exquisitely contrived display of coloured scarves and cloaks, and among the courtiers who were to go down to Ise there were many who thought with an especial pang of one who in his honour had added some gay touch of her own to the magnificence of this unprecedented show. It was already dark when the procession left the Palace. When after traversing the Second Wood they turned into the Dōi Highway the travellers passed close by Genji’s palace. Deeply moved, he sent the following poem tied to a spray of the Holy Tree—‘Though to-day you cast me off and lightly set upon your way, yet surely when at last you ferry the Eighty Rapids of Suzuka Stream[12] your sleeve will not be dry.’ When this message was brought to her it was already quite dark. This and the noisy bustle of her journey prevented her from answering till the next day. When her reply came it was sent back from beyond the Barrier: ‘Whether at the Eighty Rapids of Suzuka Stream my sleeve be wet or no, all men will have forgotten me long ere I come to Ise’s Land.’ It was hastily written, yet with all the grace and distinction that habitually marked her hand; but his pleasure in it was marred by the strange bitterness of her tone. A heavy mist had risen, and gazing at the dimly-veiled semblances that were belatedly unfolding in the dawn he whispered to himself the lines: ‘O mist, I long to follow with my eyes the road that she passed; hide not from me in these autumn days the slopes of Meeting Hill.’[13] That night he did not go to the western wing,[14] but lay sleepless till dawn, brooding disconsolately upon a turn of affairs for which, as he well knew, he alone was responsible. What she suffered, as day by day she travelled on through unknown lands, may well be guessed.

By the tenth month the ex-Emperor’s condition had become very grave indeed. Throughout the country much concern was felt. The young Emperor was in great distress and hastened to pay him a visit-of-state. Weak though he was the sick man first gave minute instructions as to the upbringing of the Heir Apparent and then passed on to a discussion of Genji’s future. ‘I desire you,’ he said, ‘still to look upon him as your guardian and to seek his advice in all matters, whether small or great; as indeed I have accustomed you to do during my lifetime. In the handling of public business he shows a competence beyond his years. There is no doubt that his natural vocation is to administer the affairs of a people rather than to lead the secluded life of a Royal Prince, and when I attached him to a clan devoid of Royal Blood it was that he might the better keep watch for us over the public affairs of our kingdom. I therefore entreat you never to act contrary to his advice.’ He gave many other parting instructions to his successor, but such matters are not for a woman’s pen and I feel I must apologize for having said even so much as this.

The young Emperor, deeply moved, repeatedly signified that he would obey all these instructions in every particular. It gave his father great comfort and pleasure to note that he was already growing up into a fine handsome young fellow. But after a short while Court affairs necessitated the Emperor’s immediate presence, and his father, who longed to keep him by his side, was in the end more distressed than comforted by this brief visit. The Heir Apparent was to have come at the same time as the Emperor; but it was thought that this arrangement would be too tiring and the little boy[15] was brought on another day. He was big for his age and very pretty. The old man looked fondly at him and the child, unconscious of the purpose for which he had been summoned, stood watching him with laughter in his face. Fujitsubo, who sat near by, was weeping bitterly; and, suddenly catching sight of her, the ex-Emperor for a while lost his composure. To this little prince also he gave a variety of instructions; but it was evident that he was too young to understand what was being said, and remembering the uncertainties of his future the ex-Emperor gazed at the child with pity and distress. In his final instructions to Genji concerning the management of public affairs he recurred again and again to the question of the Heir Apparent and the importance of giving him due protection and advice. It was now late at night and the Heir Apparent was taken off to bed. A vast number of Courtiers followed in his train, so that his visit created almost as much bustle and confusion as that of the Emperor himself. But this visit had seemed to the sick man only too short and it was with great distress that he watched the procession depart. The Empress Mother, Lady Kōkiden, had also intended to come; but hearing that Fujitsubo was at his side she felt somewhat disinclined, and while she was trying to decide whether to go or not, his Majesty passed quietly and painlessly away.

The ex-Emperor’s death caused profound consternation in many quarters. Though it was some while since he resigned the Throne, he had continued to control the policy of the government just as in former days. The present Emperor was a mere child; his grandfather, the Minister of the Right, was known to be a man of hasty temper and treacherous disposition. Courtiers and noblemen alike regarded with the greatest apprehension a government subjected to his arbitrary power. But among them all none had better reason than Fujitsubo and Prince Genji to dread the coming reign. It was indeed natural that this prince should take a foremost part in the ceremonies of mourning which were performed by the family on each seventh day, and in the Filial Masses for the dead man’s soul; but his piety was generally noted and admired. Despite the unbecoming dress which custom required, his beauty made everywhere a deep impression; and this, combined with his evident distress, procured him a great share of sympathy.

He had lost in one year his wife and in the next his father. The scenes of affliction through which he had passed weighed heavily upon his spirits and for a while deprived him of all zest for life. He thought much of retiring from the world, and would have done so had he not been restrained by many earthly ties. During the forty-nine days of mourning the ladies of the late ex-Emperor’s household remained together in his apartments. But at the expiration of this period they retired to their respective homes. It was the twentieth day of the twelfth month. The dull sky marked (thought Fujitsubo) not only the gloom of the departing year, but the end of all fair prospects. She knew with what feelings Kōkiden regarded her and was aware that her existence at a Court dominated by this woman’s arbitrary power could not be otherwise than unhappy. Above all it was impossible for her to go on living in a place where, having for so many years enjoyed the old Emperor’s company, she found his image continually appearing to her mind. The departure of all his former ladies-in-waiting and ladies-of-the-household rendered her situation unendurable and she determined to move to her mansion in the Third Ward. Her brother Prince Hyōbukyō came to fetch her away. Snow was falling, blown by a fierce wind. The old Emperor’s quarters, now rapidly becoming denuded of their inhabitants, wore a desolate air. Genji happened to be there when Hyōbukyō arrived and they fell to talking of old times. The great pine-tree in front of the Palace was weighed down with snow and its lower boughs were withered. Seeing this, Hyōbukyō recited the verses: ‘Because the great pine-tree is withered that once with wide-spread branches sheltered us from the storm, lo! we the underboughs droop earthward in these last moments of the year.’ No very wonderful poem, but at that moment it moved Genji deeply, and noticing that the lake was frozen all over he in his turn recited the poem: ‘Now like a mirror shines the frozen surface of the lake. Alas that it reflects not the form and face we knew so well!’ Such was the thought that came to him at the moment, and he gave it utterance well knowing that the prince would think it forced and crude. Ōmyōbu, Fujitsubo’s gentlewoman, now interposed with the verse: ‘The year draws in; even the water of the rock-hewn well is sealed with ice, and faded from those waters is the face that once I saw.’ Many other poems were exchanged; but I have other things to tell.

Fujitsubo’s return to her mansion was carried out with no less ceremony than on former occasions, but to her mind the transit seemed this time a distressing affair and more like a journey to some strange place than a home-coming; and as she approached the house her thoughts travelled back over all the months and years that had passed since this place had been her real home.

The New Year brought with it none of the usual novelties and excitements. Genji, in very dismal humour, shut himself up in his room. At the time when the new appointments were being made, during the old Emperor’s reign and to an equal extent even after his retirement, Genji’s doors had always been thronged with suitors. But this year the line of horses and carriages waiting outside his palace was thin indeed, and the bags[16] of courtiers were no longer to be seen at all.

When he looked about him and saw his reception halls frequented only by his personal retainers, who looked as though time were hanging heavily on their hands, the thought that this was but a pretaste of the dreariness and insignificance with which his whole life would henceforth be tinged reduced him to a state of great depression.

In the second month Oborozukiyo was made chief Lady of the Bedchamber, the former occupant of this office having at the ex-Emperor’s death become a nun. Her birth and education, together with her unusual charm both of person and disposition, combined to make her much sought after even at a Court where such qualities were to be found in remarkable profusion. Her sister Lady Kōkiden was now seldom at Court, and on the rare occasion when she needed a room she lodged in the Umetsubo, resigning her old apartments to the Lady of the Bedchamber. No longer was Oborozukiyo buried away in the inconvenient Tōkwaden; she had space and light and a vast number of ladies in her employ, while all about her was in the gayest and newest style. But she could not forget a certain brief and unexpected adventure[17] which had once befallen her, and was very unhappy. A desultory correspondence was still carried on between them with the greatest caution and secrecy.

He knew well enough how fatal would now be the consequences of discovery; but this, as has often been noted, so far from discouraging him served only to increase his interest in such an affair.

During the late Emperor’s lifetime Kōkiden had been obliged to behave with a certain restraint. Now she was free to revenge herself with the ferocity of a long-curbed malice upon those who had hitherto been sheltered from her spite. Genji found himself thwarted at every turn. He had expected these intrigues, but having for so long enjoyed a favoured and protected existence he was at a loss how to cope with them.

The Minister of the Left felt that his influence was gone and no longer presented himself at Court. Kōkiden had never forgiven him for marrying the late princess his daughter to Genji instead of giving her, as had originally been intended, to her son the present Emperor. Moreover there had always been a certain amount of ill-feeling between the families of the two Ministers. During the late Emperor’s reign the Minister of the Left had managed things pretty much as he chose, and it was but natural that he now had no desire to take part in the triumph of his rival. Genji continued to visit him as before and was assiduous in his attention to Aoi’s maids-of-honour, as also in providing for the education of the little prince her son. This delighted the old Minister and he continued to treat his son-in-law with the same affectionate deference as in old days.

The high position to which Genji had been raised two years ago had entailed much tiresome business and made considerable inroads upon his leisure. He found himself in consequence obliged to discontinue many of the intimacies in which he had been previously engaged. Of his lighter distractions he was now thoroughly ashamed and was glad to abandon them; so that for a while his life became altogether quiet, regular and exemplary. The announcement of his marriage with Murasaki was very well received by the world at large. Shōnagon and her companions naturally attributed their little mistress’s success to the prayers of her pious grandmother the late nun, and in secret conclave congratulated themselves on the turn which events had taken. Her father Prince Hyōbukyō asked for nothing better than such a match. But his wife, who had not managed to do half as well for her own children on whom she doted, was extremely jealous of her step-child’s triumph, and this marriage continued to be a very sore point with her. Indeed, Murasaki’s career had been more like that of some step-child in fiction[18] than of a real young person.

The Vestal Virgin of Kamo, third daughter of the late Emperor by Lady Kōkiden, was now in mourning and had to resign her charge. Her successor was the Princess Asagao.[19] It had not very often happened that a collateral descendant of the Emperor was chosen for this post; but on this occasion no other princess of suitable age and lineage was available. Genji’s admiration for this lady had not, in all the years that had passed since he first courted her, in any degree abated, and it was painful to him to learn that she was now to embark upon so different a way of life. She still sent him an occasional message and he had never ceased to write to her. He had known her as a Lady of the Court. Now he must try to picture her to himself as a priestess. This he could not manage to do, and his repeated failure to evoke any image which corresponded to her as she now was bitterly tormented him.

The young Emperor punctiliously obeyed his father’s last injunctions and treated Genji with great consideration. But he was still very young, and being somewhat weak and yielding in character he was easily influenced by those about him. Again and again, under pressure from Kōkiden or the Minister of the Right, he allowed public measures to be taken of which he did not really in the least approve. Meanwhile Kōkiden’s sister the Lady Oborozukiyo, though her new position rendered the carrying on of a secret intrigue in the highest degree difficult and perilous, was becoming more and more unhappy, and at last found a means of informing Genji of her unaltered attachment. He would have been glad enough if she had felt otherwise; but after what had passed between them he could not disregard such a message. Accordingly he waited till the Court was immersed in the Celebration at the Five Altars[20] and went secretly to her apartments. The encounter was brief and dream-like as on that first occasion, on the night of the Flower-feast.[21] Her maid Chūnagon smuggled him in by the little side door which had before caught his attention. There happened to be a good many people about at the time, and it was with great trepidation that this lady conducted him through the exposed and frequented ante-chambers which led to her mistress’s apartments. To look upon Prince Genji was a ceaseless delight even to those who daily served him. It can be imagined then what rapture his visit brought to one who had waited so long for his return. Nor was Genji on his side by any means indifferent to her charms. She was at the height of her youth and good-looks; lively, graceful, confiding. Indeed, save for a certain light-heartedness and inconsequence, there was nothing in her which he would wish to change. Suddenly he heard people stirring in the corridor outside and for a moment thought that it must already be morning. He soon realized however that these were not the people of the house, but members of the Imperial Guard come to report themselves. No doubt some officer of the Guard was known to be spending the night in this part of the Palace; but for a moment Genji had the wild idea that some malicious person had revealed to the soldiers of the Guard the unexpected presence of their Commander.[22] He was amused at his mistake, but at the same time horrified at the realization of the risks which he was running. Outside in the corridor they could still hear the soldiers tramping up and down looking for their officer and calling out as they went ‘First hour of the Tiger Watch, first hour of the Tiger Watch!’[23] Then Oborozukiyo whispered the verse: ‘Though the watch-man of the night cries out “Enough!” yet seems it from your tears and mine we are not of his mind.’[24] Her plaintive tone touched his heart and he answered with the verse: ‘Must we, because they say the time is spent, in tears relinquish what our own hearts’ reluctance bids us still enjoy?’ So saying he left her. Though daylight had not yet come and the setting moon was heavily veiled in mist, he felt very uneasy. And in fact, despite his disguise, his bearing and figure were so notable that he was at once recognized by a brother of Lady Jōkyōden[25] who happened, at the moment when Genji passed unsuspecting on his way, to have just left Fujitsubo’s old quarters and was now standing in the shadow of a trellis-gate. This gentleman was vastly amused and did not fail to make good use of the episode in his conversation.

So great were the risks he had run that for some time afterwards Genji found himself wishing Fujitsubo’s prudence and reserve were more commonly practised, and at such times he almost applauded her unkindness. At any rate it saved him from these nerve-racking experiences. But such moods did not last long. With the Lady of the Bedchamber his deeper feelings were not involved, whereas he was drawn towards Fujitsubo as though by some secret power, and except at rare moments her coldness caused him nothing but torment and despair.

This princess, though she no longer felt at ease in the Palace and could not bring herself to visit it, was distressed that she was now unable to see her son. It was very awkward that there was no one to advise her about the child except Prince Genji, who unfortunately still persisted in regarding her with the same strange adoration. She was in a continual panic lest he should take advantage of her dependence upon him. True the Emperor had died without betraying the least suspicion concerning the child’s parentage. But she shuddered to think of the predicament in which this deception had involved her. Any renewal of their relationship, quite apart from the effect it might have upon her own fortunes, would react disastrously upon her son. So heavily did this matter weigh upon her that when she was supposed to be at her prayers she did nothing but turn over in her mind, a hundred times this way and that, how best she might persuade him to feel differently towards her.

Yet despite all her precautions he managed one night to enter the house and get very near indeed to the room where she was sitting. Not a soul in the house had conspired with him or expected his coming. He seemed to have risen mysteriously up among them like a figure in a dream. He sent her many passionate messages, such as I cannot here transcribe, but she would not let him come to her. At last, worn out by his persistency, she began to feel so faint that Ōmyōbu, Myōbu no Ben and the rest of her favourite waiting-women took fright and were soon busily employed in attending to her. Meanwhile Genji, in a frenzy of irritation and disappointment, scarce knew how he came to be in her ante-chamber nor thought how he was going to retire from it. So completely had he lost all sense of real things that though broad daylight was come he did not stir from where he stood. The news of her indisposition quickly spread through the house. There was a sound of footsteps, and Genji, still but half conscious, groped his way into a large lumber-room or clothes-cupboard that happened to be near by. An embarrassed lady-in-waiting hastily stowed away a cloak and other effects which she saw lying about.

Fujitsubo herself remained in much distress both of body and mind throughout the night. As she was feeling very giddy, her brothers, who had now arrived upon the scene, sent out for a priest. All this Genji heard from his hiding-place with great grief and alarm. The day was far advanced when she began at last to mend. She had not of course the least idea that he was still in the house and her ladies feared that if they were to tell her of his presence the news might cause a recurrence of last night’s attack. At last she dragged herself from her bed to the chair in which she generally sat, and her brothers, thinking that the worst was now over, withdrew and she was left alone. Even her intimate and personal attendants had retired from her daïs and could be heard moving away to and fro behind the screens at the other end of the room. The sole preoccupation of Ōmyōbu and the few other ladies who shared the secret of Genji’s presence was now how best to get him out of the house. They were certain that if he stayed where he was the same scene would be repeated that night, with the same unhappy effects, and they were whispering together in a tone of great concern when Genji, first cautiously pushing the door a little ajar and then gently slipping out, darted from his hiding-place to the shelter of one of the screens which surrounded her daïs. From this point of vantage he was able at last to gaze upon her to his heart’s content, and as he did so tears of joy and wonder filled his eyes. ‘I am wretched, wretched,’ she was murmuring; ‘but soon my misery will end, soon all will be over....’ She was looking out towards the centre of the room and he caught a profile view of her face which he found inexpressibly charming. Presently Ōmyōbu came with fruit for her breakfast. Though the cover of the fruit-box was of rare and beautiful workmanship she did not so much as glance at it, but sat rigidly staring in front of her, like one for whom life has lost all interest and meaning.

How beautiful she was! And, now that it was possible to compare them on equal terms, how like in every minutest detail of pose and expression to the girl at home! Particularly in the carriage of her head and the way her hair grew there was the same singular charm. For years Murasaki had served to keep Lady Fujitsubo, to some extent at any rate, out of his thoughts. But now that he saw how astonishingly the one resembled the other he fancied that all the while Murasaki had but served as a substitute or eidolon of the lady who denied him her love. Both had the same pride, the same reticence. For a moment he wondered whether, if they were side by side, he should be able to tell them apart. How absurd! Probably indeed, he said to himself, the whole idea of their resemblance was a mere fancy; Fujitsubo had for so many years filled all his thoughts. It was natural that such an idea should come to him. Unable to contain himself any longer, he slipped out of his hiding-place and gently crept between her curtains-of-state, till he was near enough to touch the train of her cloak. By the royal scent which he carried she knew at once that it was he, and overcome by astonishment and terror she fell face downwards upon her couch. ‘Can you not bear to set eyes upon me?’ he cried, and in despair clutched at the skirt of her cloak. She in panic slipped the cloak from her shoulders and would have fled, leaving it in his hands; but by ill luck her hair caught in the buckle and she was held fast. With horror she realized that a fate too strong for her was planning to put her at his mercy. He for his part suddenly lost all dignity and self-restraint. Sobbing violently he poured out to her, scarce knowing what he said, the whole tale of his passion and despair. She was horrified; both the visit and the outburst seemed to her unpardonable, and she did not even reply. At last, hard-pressed, she pleaded illness and promised to see him some other time. But he would not be put off and continued to pour out his tale of love. In the midst of all this talk that so much displeased her and to which she paid no heed at all, there came some phrase which caught her attention and for some reason touched her; and though she was still determined that what had happened on that one unhappy occasion should never, never be repeated, she began to answer him kindly. Thus by skilful parryings and evasions she kept him talking till this night too was safely over. By her gentleness she had shamed him into submission and he now said: ‘There cannot surely be any harm in my coming occasionally to see you in this way. It would be a great relief to me if I could do so.’ This and much else he said, now in a far less desperate mood. Even in quite commonplace people such situations produce strange flights of tenderness and fancy. How much the more then in such lovers as Genji and the queen!

But it was now broad daylight. Ōmyōbu and her daughter arrived and soon took possession of their mistress. Genji, retiring from the room, sent her many tender messages. But now she sat staring vacantly in front of her as though she were but half alive. Exasperated by her martyred attitude, he cried out at last: ‘Answer me, answer me! I cannot live without you. And yet, what use to die? For I know that in every life to come I am doomed to suffer the torment of this same heinous passion.’ Still, to the alarm of those who waited upon her, she sat staring fixedly in front of her. He recited the verse: ‘If indeed the foeman fate that parts us works not for to-day alone, then must I spend Eternity in woe.’ When she heard him saying that the bonds of her love would hold him back from Paradise, she began to weep and answered with the verse: ‘If to all time this bond debars you from felicity, not hostile fate but your own heart you should with bitterness condemn.’ The words were spoken with a tenderness that was infinitely precious to him; yet he knew that a prolongation of the interview could not but be painful to both of them, and he rushed from the room.

He felt that he made himself odious to her. He would never be able to face her again, and contrary to custom he wrote no morning letter. For a long while he paid no visit either to the Emperor or to the Heir Apparent, but lay in his room brooding upon Fujitsubo’s unkindness. Misery and longing brought him at last to so pitiable a plight that it was as though with agonizing pain his inmost soul were dissolving within him. Often there ran in his head the lines: ‘Soon upon causeways of resounding stone my footsteps shall beat out their song!’[26] And indeed the world again seemed to him so cheerless that his decision would soon have been taken had he not remembered that there was one over whose happiness he was pledged to watch. So exquisite, so trustful a creature he could not abandon, and the project was soon put aside.

Fujitsubo too reflected upon what had taken place with great uneasiness of mind. She had now learnt how he had concealed himself for a whole day in her house without giving her the slightest intimation of his presence. This fact Ōmyōbu and the rest had not, in their indignation at his plight, managed to restrain themselves from revealing to her. Such conduct she could not tolerate. Yet she well knew that if she showed her displeasure Genji would feel a disinclination towards the Heir Apparent, and this she was above all things anxious to avoid. In a fit of despair he might even take some step which could not be rectified, and that thought, despite the torment of his importunity, filled her even now with horror. If such an occurrence as that of last night were often to be repeated it was certain that both their reputations would soon be irrecoverably destroyed. She felt that it would in a way disarm the censures of the world if she were to give up the rank of Empress, the bestowal of which had been received with such caustic comments by Lady Kōkiden. She remembered with what intention and with what explicit injunctions this title had been granted her by the late Emperor. But she felt herself no longer bound by his instructions; for since his death the whole position at Court had utterly changed. She had no fear of suffering the fate of Lady Chi,[27] but she had every reason to suppose that her position as Empress would henceforth be both ludicrous and humiliating. She felt no inclination to struggle against ridicule and opposition. Soon her mind was made up. She must renounce the world. But first she must visit her son. She could not bear that he should never again see her as he had known her in days of old. She drove to the Palace without public escort. On many occasions when she had travelled in even less state than this, Genji had attended her and arranged every detail of her progress. This time he pleaded sickness and was not present. Previously he had been in the habit of sending constantly to enquire after her health. The fact that he had discontinued this practice was cited by the sympathetic Ōmyōbu as a proof that he must be now plunged in the utmost misery.

The little prince[28] had grown into a handsome boy. His mother’s visit surprised and delighted him and he was soon telling her all his secrets. She looked at him sadly. The step that she contemplated seemed unendurably hard to take. Yet a glance at the Palace reminded her how great were the changes and upheavals that had taken place, how insecure had now become her own position at the Court. The Lady Kōkiden still showed the same unrelenting hostility, finding at every turn some means to inconvenience or humiliate her. Her high rank, so far from protecting her, now imperilled both herself and her son. For a long while she hesitated, torn by many conflicting feelings. At last she succeeded in saying to the child: ‘What would you think if I were to go away for a long while and, when at last I came back to see you, were to look quite different, almost as though it were another person?’ She watched his face while she spoke. ‘What would happen to you?’ he said, very much interested; ‘would you become like old Lady Shikibu? Why do you want to be like that?’ and he laughed. It was very difficult to tell him. She began again: ‘Shikibu is ugly because she is so old. That is not what I mean. I shall have even less hair than Shikibu and I shall wear a black dress, like the chaplain whom you have seen coming to say prayers here in the evenings; but it will be a long while before they let me come here to see you.’ He saw that she was crying and at once said very decidedly: ‘If you do not come for a long while, I shall miss you terribly.’ He too began to cry, and ashamed of his tears, turned his head away. As he did so his long hair fell rippling across his cheek. The eyes, the brow—all was as though a cast had been taken from the face she knew so well. He had not yet lost his baby-teeth. One or two of them were a little decayed, their blackness amid a row of white giving to his smile a peculiar piquancy and charm. As she watched him standing there in his half-girlish beauty and suddenly realized how like he was to his father, she became more than ever unhappy. But if the resemblance was painful to her and seemed to her at that moment almost to spoil his beauty, it was only because she dreaded the gossip to which this likeness would give rise.

Genji too was longing to see his son, but while Princess Fujitsubo was at Court he was resolved to keep away. Perhaps this would make her realize how completely he had been frustrated by her harshness; for she would certainly be expecting to meet him in the young prince’s apartments.

He was in very ill humour and the time hung heavily on his hands. It was now autumn and it seemed a pity not to be in the country. He decided to spend a little while at the Temple in the Cloudy Woods.[29] Here in the cell of his mother’s elder brother, a master of the Vinaya,[30] he spent several days reading the sacred texts and practising various austerities. During this time much happened both to move and delight him. The maple leaves in the surrounding forests were just turning and he remembered Sōjō’s song written in the same place: ‘Proud autumn fields....’ In a little while he had almost forgotten that this quiet place was not his home. He gathered about him a number of doctors famous for their understanding of the Holy Law and made them dispute in his presence. Yet even in the midst of scenes such as these, calculated to impress him in the highest degree with the futility of all earthly desires, one figure from the fleeting world of men still rose up importunately before him and haunted every prayer. One day at dawn by the light of a sinking moon the priests of the temple were making the morning offering of fresh leaves and flowers before an image that stood near by. He could hear the clink of the silver flower-trays as they scattered chrysanthemum and maple leaves of many hues around the Buddha’s feet. It seemed to him then that the life these people led was worth while, not merely as a means to salvation but for its own pleasantness and beauty. Again and again he marvelled that he could have for so long endured his own aimless existence. His uncle, the Vinaya-master, had an extremely impressive voice and when he came to the passage ‘None shall be cast out, but take unto him all living things that call upon his name,’ Genji envied him the assurance with which he uttered the Buddha’s promise. Why should not he too avail himself of this promise, why should not he too lead this sanctified existence? Suddenly he remembered Murasaki and his home. What must she be thinking of him? It was many days since he had seen her, and he hastened to repair this neglect: ‘I came here as an experiment,’ he wrote, ‘that I might decide whether it would not be better for me to withdraw forever from the world. Since I have been here it has been gradually becoming clearer to me that my present way of life can bring me nothing but misery; and to-day I heard something read out loud which made a deep impression upon me and convinced me that I ought not any longer to delay....’ The letter was written on sandalwood paper of Michinoku, informally but with great elegance. With it he sent the poem: ‘Because I left you in a home deep-girt with dewy sedge, with troubled mind I hear the wild winds blow from every side.’ This he said and much else beside. She cried when she read it. Her answer was written on a white slip: ‘First, when the wild wind blows, flutters the dewy web that hangs upon the wilting sedge-row in the fields.’ He smiled to himself with pleasure as he read it, noting how swiftly her hand had improved. He had written her so many letters that her writing had grown to be very like his, save that to his style she had added some touches of girlish delicacy and grace. In this as in all else she at least had not disappointed him.

It occurred to him that Kamo was not so very far off and he thought he would send a message to the Vestal Virgin.[31] To Chūjō her maid he sent the letter: ‘That here among strangers in deep affliction I languish unconsoled, your mistress cannot know.’ To this he added a long tale of his present woes and to the Virgin herself addressed the poem: ‘Goddess Immaculate, the memory of other days has made me bold to hang this token at thy shrine!’ And to this, quoting an old song, he added the words ‘Would that like a ring upon the hand I might turn Time around till “then” was “now.”’ He wrote on light green paper, and with the letter was a twig of the Sacred Tree festooned with fluttering tassels of white as befitted the holy place to which it was addressed. In answer the maid Chūjō wrote: ‘There is so little here to break the sameness of the long empty days that sometimes an idle memory of the past will for a moment visit the Virgin’s heavenly thoughts. Of you she has spoken now and again, but only to say that now all thought of you is profitless.’ The gentlewoman’s letter was long and written with great care. On a small strip tied to a white ritual tassel the Virgin herself had written the poem: ‘Full well you know that in those other days no secret was between us for you to hang as ritual-token at your heart.’ It was not written with much pains, but there was an easy flow in the cursive passages which delighted his eye and he realized that the Court had lost one who would in time have grown to be a woman of no ordinary accomplishments.

He shuddered. How pitiless is God! Suddenly he remembered that only last autumn the melancholy gateway of the Palace-in-the-Fields had filled him with just such an indignation and dismay. Why should these Powers be suffered to pursue their hideous exactions?

That strange trait of perversity, so often noted, was indeed at work again under the most absurd circumstances. For in all the years when Asagao was within reach he had not made one serious effort to win her, but had contented himself with vague protestations and appeals. But now that she was utterly unattainable he suddenly imagined that he had never really cared for anyone else! Believing him to be the victim of an inconsolable passion, the Virgin had not the heart to leave his letters unanswered, and a correspondence of a rather strange and unreal kind was for some while carried on between them.

Before he left the Temple in the Cloudy Woods he read the whole of the Sixty Chapters,[32] consulting his uncle on many obscure points. The delight of the priests, down to the humblest servitor, may well be imagined. It seemed as though the Lord Amida must hold their poor country temple in especial favour, or he would not have vouchsafed that such a radiance should shine among them.

But soon Genji began to grow restless. His mind strayed constantly to mundane affairs, and though he dreaded the return, there was one whom it was not in his heart any longer to neglect. Before his departure he ordered a grand chanting of the Scripture to be held and gave suitable presents to all the resident priests both high and low, and even to the peasants of the surrounding country. Then, after many other rituals and benefactions, he drove away. The country people from far and near crowded round the gates to see him go, uncouth figures strangely gnarled and bent. His carriage was draped with black and he himself was still dressed in the drab unbecoming robes of mourning. Yet even the momentary glimpse of him that they caught as he entered his carriage sufficed to convince them that a prince of no ordinary beauty had been dwelling near to them and many were moved to tears.

It seemed to him when he was back in his palace that Murasaki had in these last months become far less childish. She spoke very seriously of the changes at Court and showed great concern for his future. That in these last weeks his affections had been much occupied elsewhere could hardly have escaped her notice. He remembered with a pang that in the last poem she had sent him there was some reference to ‘the wilting sedge-row,’ and full of remorse he treated her with more than ordinary kindness. He had brought her a branch of autumn leaves from the country temple where he had been staying. Together they compared it with the trees in his palace garden, and found when they set them side by side that the country leaves were dyed to a yet deeper red. There was one who was at all times paramount in his thoughts, and the sight of these leaves, tinged with so strong a hue that they eclipsed whatever colours were set beside them, reminded him that to her alone he had given no token of his return. The desire to have news of her so tormented him that at last he wrote a letter to Ōmyōbu announcing that he had left the temple: ‘I heard with surprise and joy of your Lady’s visit to the Court. I longed for news both of her and of the young prince; but though I was uneasy on their account, I could not interrupt my appointed course of penance and study. Thus many days have passed since last I gave you any news. Here are some sprays of autumn leaf. Bid your Lady look at them when she feels so disposed, lest unregarded they should waste their beauty “like silken stuffs spread out by night.”’

They were huge, leaf-laden boughs, and when she looked closer, Fujitsubo saw that the usual tiny strip of paper, such as he always used in writing to her, was tied to one of them. Her gentlewomen were watching her, and as she examined the offering she felt herself blushing. So he was still in the same deplorable state of mind! Surely he must realize that it was very embarrassing for her to receive offerings of this kind from one who was known to be her admirer! Wishing that he would show more regard for her feelings and reputation she bade a servant put the boughs in a vase and stand it against one of the pillows on the verandah, as far out of the way as possible.

In her reply she confined herself to matters of business upon which she needed his advice. Her cold and impersonal tone deeply wounded him. But as it was his usual practice to assist her in every difficulty, he felt that his absence on the day of her departure from Court would give rise to unwelcome speculations, and hearing that the day had been fixed he hastened to the Palace. He went first to the apartments of the young Emperor and finding him at leisure settled down to a long conversation. In person His Majesty much resembled the late Emperor, but he was of a quicker and livelier disposition. He was very easy to get on with and they were soon exchanging recollections of their late father. The Emperor had heard that Genji was still on intimate terms with his aunt the Princess Oborozuki, and had on his own account observed many signs of such an attachment. If the affair had begun since the Princess’s arrival at Court he would have felt bound to take cognizance of it. But he knew that the friendship between them was of very old standing and felt that under these circumstances there was no great impropriety in it.

They discussed all manner of affairs together, including their Chinese studies, and the Emperor consulted him about the interpretation of various difficult passages. They then repeated to one another such poems of gallantry as they had lately addressed to ladies of the Court, and it was in the course of this conversation that the Emperor mentioned his admiration of the Lady Rokujō’s daughter and his distress on the occasion of her departure for Ise. This emboldened Genji, and soon he was telling the Emperor about his own visit to the Palace-in-the-Fields and all the sad circumstances attending it. The waning moon had begun at last to rise. ‘It is at such moments as this,’ said the Emperor sadly, ‘that one longs for music.’[33]

Genji now took his leave, explaining that he must wait upon the ex-Empress before she retired again to her own home. ‘You will remember,’ he said, ‘that the late Emperor our father committed the Heir Apparent to my guardianship and protection. There happens unfortunately to be no one else to watch over his interests, and as I am very uneasy concerning his future I am obliged to take counsel fairly frequently with his mother.’ ‘Our father certainly asked me to retain him as Heir Apparent,’ replied the Emperor, ‘and I have always tried to help him in any way I could. But there is really nothing much that I can do for him. I hear he has made astonishing progress with his handwriting and is in every way satisfactory. I am afraid he is more likely to be a credit to me than I a help to him.’ ‘He does indeed seem to be in most ways very forward and intelligent,’ said Genji, ‘but his character is still quite unformed.’ And after some further description of the child’s attainments he proceeded to the Heir Apparent’s apartments.

There was a certain Tō no Bēn, a son of Kōkiden’s elder brother Tō Dainagon. Being young, good-looking and popular he had grown somewhat out of hand. This young man was now on his way to the rooms of his sister Princess Reikeiden. For a moment Genji’s servants who were preceding him to the Heir Apparent’s rooms blocked his path and forced him to stand waiting till they had passed. In a low voice, but quite distinctly enough for Genji to hear every word, the young courtier chanted the lines ‘When a white rainbow crossed the sun the Crown Prince[34] trembled.’ Genji flushed, but it was obviously best to let the matter pass.

That Kōkiden should have succeeded in infecting her whole clan with her venomous hostility towards him was both vexatious and alarming. Genji was indeed much disquieted; but he contrived on all such occasions to conceal his discomfiture.

In arriving at Fujitsubo’s rooms he sent in a message to explain that he had been detained in the Presence. It was a moonlit night of unusual beauty. It was at such times as this that the old Emperor would call for music. Fujitsubo remembered those dazzling midnight parties. Here were the old courtyards, the old gardens and rooms, and yet this was not the Palace after all! Through Ōmyōbu her maid she sent to him the poem: ‘Though now dark exhalations hide from sight the Palace of the Ninefold Wall, yet goes my heart to the bright moon[35] that far above the cloud-bank dwells.’ She did not in this message give any hint that she wished to see him; yet her tone was not unkind, and forgetting all his rancour he wrote with tears in his eyes: ‘Though lovely still as in past years the moonbeams of this night, for me in vain their beauty, since now in shadows of unkindness they are wrapped.’

She was to leave the Palace at dawn and was much preoccupied with the young prince her son. In her anxiety for his future she overwhelmed him with warnings and instructions. The child understood but little of what she was saying, and seeing that his attention had wandered, she felt more than ever that he was of no age to shift for himself. He usually went to bed very early, but on this occasion he had asked to sit up till his mother started. It was evident that he was very much upset by her departure, but he was very brave about it, and this made her feel more than ever remorseful at leaving him.

Genji could not banish from his mind the thought of Tō no Bēn’s insolent behaviour. It spoilt all his enjoyment in life and for a long while he wrote to no one, not even to Oborozuki. The autumn rains set in and still no word came from him. She began to wonder what could be amiss, and at last sent him the poem: ‘While leaf by leaf autumn has stripped the trees, all this long windy while have I in sadness waited for the news that did not come.’ Doubtless it had cost her some trouble to communicate with him in secret; moreover the poem itself was not at all displeasing. Genji detained the messenger, and going to his desk opened the drawer where he kept his Chinese writing-paper and chose the prettiest piece he could find. Mending his pen with the greatest care, he indited a note so elegant even in its outside appearance that on its arrival there was quite a stir among the ladies who were at her side. Who could be the sender of such a missive? Significant glances were exchanged. ‘I have for some while, for reasons about which it would be useless to speak, been in the last depths of depression.’ So he wrote and to this he added the poem: ‘Why, think you, fell the rains of autumn yet faster than of yore? It was my tears that swelled them, my tears because we could not meet.’ He told her too that if the path of their friendship were but clear, he should soon forget the rain and his depression and all that was amiss in the world. He took much pains with this letter. There were several other people who had written to complain of his neglect, but though he sent them all encouraging replies there were some of them about whom he did not feel very strongly one way or the other.

On the anniversary of the Emperor’s death, in addition to the usual ceremonies, he caused the Service of the Eight Recitals[36] to be celebrated with particular magnificence. The day of national mourning was the first of the eleventh month. A heavy snow was falling. He sent to Fujitsubo the poem: ‘Though once again the time of his departure has come back, not yet dare hope we for the day when we shall meet.’[37] It happened that on that day she felt in utter despair, seeing no hope of happiness on any side. She answered: ‘Though sad to have outlived him for so long, yet in this day’s return found I some peace; it was as though the world again were in his rule.’

It was not written with very great display of penmanship, but there was (or Genji fancied that there was) a peculiar distinction and refinement in the writing. It was not quite in the fashion of the moment; but that did not matter, for she had a style that was completely of her own invention.

But this, he remembered, was the day of the great masses for his father’s soul. He must put Fujitsubo out of his thoughts; and wet through by the perpetual downpour of rainy snow, he played his part in the elaborate rituals and processions.

The Service of the Eight Recitals was to be celebrated in Fujitsubo’s house on the tenth of the twelfth month and the four succeeding days. She was at great pains to render the ceremony as impressive as possible. The tents to be used on each of the five days were wound on rods of ivory; they were backed with thin silk and laid in cases of woven bamboo. All was ordered with a splendour such as had seldom been seen before. But under her management even the most trivial daily arrangements became invested with a singular beauty and completeness. It did not therefore surprise Genji that the Recitals were carried out with unequalled impressiveness and dignity. The adornments of the Buddha, the coverings of the flower-altars, all were of a beauty that made him dream he was indeed a dweller in Amida’s Land of Bliss.

The first day’s Recital was dedicated to the memory of her father;[38] the next was on behalf of her mother, the deceased Empress; the third day was in memory of her husband, the late ex-Emperor. It is on this day that the fifth book is read; despite the disapproval of Kōkiden and her flatterers, the ceremony was attended by the greater part of those about the Court. The readers of this third day had been chosen with especial care, and when they came to the passage: ‘Then he gathered sticks for firewood and plucked wild berries and the fruit of the mountains and trees,’ the words that all had heard so many times before took on a strange significance. It fell to the lot of the dead man’s sons to officiate at the altar, circling it with gold and silver dishes held aloft in their hands, and these dishes piled high with offerings of many kinds. This rite was performed by Genji with a grace and deftness that was not equalled by any of his companions. You will say that I have noted this superiority many times before; that is true, and I can only plead in excuse that people were actually struck by it afresh each time they saw him.

The last day’s Recital was on behalf of her own salvation. To the astonishment of all present it was announced that she herself wished to take this opportunity of abandoning the world, and had desired the clergy to intimate her renunciation to the Lord Buddha. It may well be imagined with what consternation both Prince Hyōbukyō her brother and Genji himself received this utterly unexpected announcement. It was made in the middle of the service, and Hyōbukyō, without waiting for the Recital to end, left his seat and went at once to her side. But all his pleading was in vain. At the end of the service she sent for the Head of the Tendai Sect[39] and told him that she was ready to receive the Rules forthwith. Her uncle the High Priest of Yogawa thereupon ascended the daïs and shaved her head. A murmur of horror ran through the hall; there was a sound of sobbing. There is something strangely moving in the spectacle of such a renunciation, even when some decrepit old woman decides at last that it is time to take her vows. But here a lady in the prime of her beauty, who till now had given the world no inkling of her intention, was suddenly casting herself away. Her brother found himself weeping with the rest; and even strangers who had come merely for the sake of the service felt, under the spell of the reader’s solemn voice and of this sudden declaration, that a personal calamity had befallen them. The sons of the late Emperor who remembered her proud bearing at their Father’s Court were particularly distressed, and all of them intimated their regret at the step which she had taken. Only Genji stood rooted to the spot in speechless horror and dismay. At last he realized that his behaviour must be attracting attention, and when all the princes had left her he made his way to her daïs.

Most of the people had cleared off and only a few ladies-in-waiting, all of them on the verge of tears, sat here and there in small disconsolate groups. An unclouded moon heightened the sparkling radiance of the fresh snow which lay around the house. Old memories crowded to his mind and for a moment he feared that he would break down. But at last controlling himself he said very quietly ‘What made you suddenly decide to do this?’ ‘I have been meaning to for a long while, but so many things were happening and I had not time to think about it quietly....’ He was standing outside her curtains-of-state. This answer was not spoken directly to him, but was brought by Ōmyōbu, her maid. Within the curtains he knew that her favourites were gathered round her. He could hear a faint, reiterated rustling, as though a company of silent mourners were swaying in inconsolable grief. How well he understood their utter despair! From the hanging incense-burner behind her curtain-of-state there rose a heavy perfume of kurobo,[40] carried through the room by the fierce snow-wind which had blown since dusk; and with it mingled a faint remnant of the holy incense which the priests had that day been burning in the house. Add to this the princely scent which Genji wore and you may well imagine that the night air was fragrant as the winds of Paradise.

A messenger came from the Heir Apparent’s household. There rose before her mind the memory of the child’s pretty speeches and ways, that last morning in the Palace. It was more than she could bear, and lest she should break down altogether she left the message unanswered. Seeing the messenger go away empty-handed, Genji wrote a few words on her behalf. It was now time for him to take his leave; but both he and she were in a state of agitation which they could barely control, and he dared not utter the thoughts that were at that moment passing through his mind. Through Ōmyōbu he sent her this poem: ‘Though fain I too would seek that stainless tract whither the moon has climbed, yet how unguided in the darkness should those small feet not go astray?’[41] He spoke of his regret at the step she had taken, but only in formal terms, for he knew that she was not alone. Of the tumultuous thoughts which surged through his brain there was not one to which he could at such a time give vent. And answer came: ‘Though now upon life and all its sorrow I have looked my last, yet are there certain earthly things I shall not soon forget....’ ‘The stain of the world clings fast to me....’ This and much else was in the answer; but he guessed that a great part of it had been supplied by those who were about her.

There was no more to be done, and heavy at heart he left the house. At the Nijō-in he lay alone upon his bed, never once closing his eyes. He was now firmly convinced that if it were not for his duty to Fujitsubo’s son he would certainly retire from the world. The late Emperor had hoped that by investing Lady Fujitsubo with definite public rank he would assure the boy’s future. But now, by becoming a nun, she had upset all his calculations; for it was almost certain that she would not continue to hold her present position in the State. Were Genji also now to desert the child, what would become of him? These were the thoughts that still perplexed him when morning came. He remembered that Fujitsubo would now have to provide herself with such articles as appertain to a nun’s life. In this matter at least he could assist her, and he hastened to send to her palace before the end of the year a suitable provision of rosaries, prayer-desks and the like. He heard that Ōmyōbu also had renounced the world that she might keep her mistress company, and to this gentlewoman he sent a message of affectionate condolence. In this letter he touched on many incidents of their common past, and a correspondence ensued, of such length that it would not be possible to record it. As was natural on so affecting an occasion many poems were exchanged between them, and as these were of considerable merit I regret that they must be omitted.

Now that Fujitsubo had definitely embraced the religious life she felt that there was less impropriety in her receiving him, and on several occasions she no longer conversed through an intermediary, but actually admitted him to her presence. His feelings towards her were absolutely unchanged, but now that there could be no question of intimacy between them he could face her with some degree of tranquillity.

The close of that year ended the period of Court mourning, and the New Year was celebrated at the Palace with the usual festivities, including the Imperial Banquet and the Dance Songs.[42] But of these things no echo reached Fujitsubo’s house. Day after day was spent in prayers, penances and meditations on the life to come, and he who had been at once her comfort and despair no longer found any place in her thoughts. She continued to use the old palace-chapel for her daily observances; but for the celebration of more elaborate rites she built a new chapel in front of the west wing, but at some distance from the house.

He visited her on New Year’s Day. Nowhere was there a sign of renewal or rejoicing. The house was very quiet and seemed almost deserted. Here and there stood a few of her most devoted retainers, looking (or was it only his fancy?) very downcast and depressed. Of the usual New Year offerings from the Palace only the white horse[43] had this year arrived. The gentlewomen of the house could not but remember how at this season in former years princes and courtiers had thronged these halls. Now they drove straight past, making one and all for the great palace in the next Ward.[44]

This was under the circumstances perfectly natural and Fujitsubo had fully expected it. Yet when it happened she became very depressed. But now the arrival of one whom she would not have exchanged for a thousand visitors put all this chagrin out of her head.

So great were the changes that had taken place since he was last in her room that for a while he could do nothing but stare about him in bewilderment.

The canopy of her daïs and the hangings of her screen-of-state were now of dark blue; here and there behind the curtains he caught a glimpse of light grey and jasmine-coloured sleeves. The effect was not displeasing and he would gladly have studied it more closely.

The ice on the lake was just beginning to break up. The willows on the banks showed a faint tinge of green; they at least remembered that a new season had begun. These and other portents of the approaching spring he watched till it grew dark. From behind the curtains Fujitsubo gazed at him as he sat singing softly to himself the song: ‘Happy the fisher-folk[45] that dwell ...’; she thought that in all the world there could be no one so beautiful.

She remained all the while behind her curtains, but a great part of the room was taken up by images and altars, so that she was obliged to let him sit very near the daïs and he did not feel wholly cut off from her.

A number of elderly nuns were installed at her side, and fearing lest in their presence his parting words might betray too great an emotion he stole in silence from the room. ‘What a fine gentleman he has grown up to be!’ they exclaimed after Genji’s departure. ‘One might have thought that it would have spoiled him always having things his own way as he did in his Father’s time, and being first in everything. How little can he then have guessed that he would ever come to know the world’s ingratitude! But you can see that he bears his troubles manfully, though there is a graver look in his face now than there was in the old days. Poor gentleman, it makes one’s heart bleed to see him so sad!’ So the old ladies whispered together, shaking their heads and calling blessings upon him, while to Fujitsubo herself came many painful recollections.

It was the time when the yearly distribution of honours took place. Fujitsubo’s kinsmen and retainers were entirely passed over. This was quite natural and she did not resent it; but she noticed that even the usual bounties were withheld, and promotions which had always been taken as a matter of course were in many cases not granted. There was a great deal of disappointment and annoyance. Moreover on the ground that she would shortly have to give up her official rank and would not then be able to maintain so large an establishment,[46] many other changes and readjustments were made.

All this she had expected. It was indeed the inevitable consequence of her retirement from secular life; but when she saw her former pensioners and retainers going about with dismal faces and in many instances left without proper support, she was very much upset. But above all her thoughts were centred on one persistent desire; that, even though she herself should come to utter ruin, the Heir Apparent might in due course come peacefully to the Throne, and it was to this end that she caused perpetual services to be celebrated in the chapel attached to her house.

To what secret peril was the young prince’s life exposed? Those who were called upon to officiate at these incessant litanies could themselves form no conjecture. But her own prayers were more explicit. Again and again she called upon the Buddha to save the young prince from the ruin which would immediately overtake him should the true story of his birth be known; and she prayed with all her heart that, if retribution must needs come, it might fall upon herself rather than upon the child. These prayers had at least the effect of bringing her to a calmer state of mind. Genji, for his part, regarded them as by no means superfluous.

His own servants and retainers had in the recent distribution of honours fared little better than hers and were in very ill humour. Thoroughly discontented with the march of public affairs both they and their master henceforward appeared but seldom at Court. About this time the Minister of the Left decided to send in his resignation. The changes in his home as well as the decline of his own political influence had recently told very much upon his spirit and he no longer felt equal to his charge. The Emperor remembered the unbounded confidence which his father had placed in this Minister’s sagacity, and how in his last hours the old Emperor had said that to dispense with such a man’s counsel must needs endanger the security of the Throne. He was therefore very reluctant to give this resignation effect and for a while attempted to ignore it. But the Minister stuck to his point and, though his retirement had not been formally accepted, no longer appeared at Court.

Henceforward the whole government of the country fell into the hands of a single family, that of Kōkiden’s father, the Minister of the Right. The powerful influence of the retired Minister had indeed been the last check upon the complete dominance of this ascendant faction, and his withdrawal from public affairs was regarded with grave apprehension both by the young Emperor himself and by all right-thinking people.

The late Minister’s sons, who had hitherto enjoyed a consideration in the world somewhat beyond that to which their own abilities would have entitled them, were mortified to discover that they could no longer have everything their own way. The most crestfallen of them all was Tō no Chūjō, who through his connexion[47] with the family which was now dominant, might have been expected to fare rather better than the rest. Unfortunately he was still on very bad terms with his wife, and his neglect of her had deeply offended the Minister, who no longer received Chūjō as a son-in-law. No doubt as a punishment for his misdemeanour, his name had been altogether omitted from the list of New Year honours and promotions. Such things however did not much interest him and he was not nearly so disappointed as the Minister had hoped. He could indeed hardly expect to enjoy much influence when even Genji’s fortunes were so obviously on the decline, and leaving public business to look after itself he would go off to Genji’s palace, where the two of them spent the time in the study of music and letters. Often they would remind one another of the many absurd exploits in which they had once been rivals; and even in their present quiet pursuits the old rivalry continued. Genji was much occupied with the readings of Holy Scripture which are appointed for spring and autumn, and with the performance of various other annual observances.[48] He also gathered round him a number of scholars who seemed, no doubt owing to the present state of public affairs, to be out of employment, and put them to writing Chinese poems and essays. He also spent many hours in playing literary games such as rhyme-covering and the like. He soon became so interested in these trivial pursuits that for a month on end he never once set foot in the palace. This incivility, together with his enthusiasm for what were considered frivolous and undignified occupations, was commented upon very unfavourably in many quarters.

The summer rains had set in, and one day when a steady downpour made other amusements impossible Chūjō arrived at the palace with a great pile of books. Genji too opened his library, and after exploring several cases which had not been unlocked for a long time he produced some very remarkable collections of ancient Chinese poetry. There happened to be with him that day several friends who, though they were not scholars by profession, had a very considerable knowledge of such matters. From among these gentlemen and the learned doctors who were present Genji picked sides, and ranging them to left and right of the room instituted a grand competition with very handsome prizes. In the course of the rhyme-covering contests they came across some most unusual and puzzling rhyme-words, and even well-known scholars were occasionally at a loss. More than once Genji was able to come to their rescue. They were astonished at his knowledge. How, they wondered, did he find time to pick up so many accomplishments? There seemed to be no art or pastime in which he did not show the same marvellous proficiency. The ‘right’ won easily and it fell to Chūjō’s lot to provide the winners with a feast. This took place on the following day. It was not an elaborate affair, but consisted of a collation served in elegant luncheon boxes.

Various prizes were also given and when this was over the doctors of literature were again called upon to divert the company with essays. The rose-trees at the foot of the steps were in full bloom and coming as they did in a somewhat dull season, when the brightness of spring is over and the riot of autumn colours has not yet begun, these flowers gave Genji an especial pleasure.

Chūjō’s son, a little boy of eight or nine who had only that year been introduced at Court, was present that day. He sang well and could play the shō. Genji was very fond of him and they used often to practise together. He was Chūjō’s second son by his wife, the sister of Kōkiden, and as grandson of the all-powerful Minister of the Right he was treated by every one at Court with great deference. But he was also not only handsome but extremely intelligent, and in the present company his performance received so much encouragement that he was soon singing that rather noisy song the Ballad of Takasago, which he got through with great credit and applause. As a reward for this song Genji laid his own cloak on the boy’s shoulders, and as he sat flushed with the excitement of the party and wearing only an unlined shirt of thin gauze that showed the delicate texture of his skin beneath, the old doctors of literature stared at him with delight and amazement from the distant part of the room where they had respectfully taken up their stand; and many of them shed tears of wonder and delight. At the close of the stanza: ‘May I be there where lilies bloom’ Chūjō picked up the wine-bowl and handed it to Genji, reciting as he did so the poem: ‘Not the first rose that but this morning opened on the tree, with thy fair face would I compare.’ Laughing, Genji took the cup and whispered the poem: ‘Their time they knew not, the rose-buds that to-day unclosed. For all their fragrance and their freshness the summer rains have washed away.’ Then Chūjō, who had become somewhat excited, accused Genji of toying with the wine-bowl and forced him to drink what he considered a proper draught.

Much else happened before the banquet closed. But to describe in detail all that was said and done on an occasion such as this would, I think, be very unfair to the persons concerned. I will therefore observe Tsurayuki’s warning and refrain from tiring you with any further particulars. Suffice it to say that the company made a great many poems both in Chinese and Japanese, all of them containing flattering references to their host, and Genji soon began to feel in very good humour with himself. He could not help thinking of the passage in Chinese history where the Duke of Chou boasts that he is ‘the son of King Wen and the brother of King Wu.’ These were very good names and fitted his case exactly. ‘Son of King Wen, brother of King Wu.’ Suddenly, as he murmured these words, he remembered that the Chinese duke had added ‘and uncle of King Ch’ēng.’ But here he was on difficult ground; something seemed to have gone wrong with the parallel. The ‘King Ch’ēng’[49] of his case, though something more than a nephew, was still a very long way from being a king!

Prince Sochi no Miya[50] frequently joined these gatherings, and as he was not only a man of taste and fashion but also an excellent performer on various instruments, his presence added greatly to the pleasure of the company.

About this time Princess Oborozuki left the Court for a while and went to stay at her father’s house. She had for some time been suffering from slight attacks of malaria and it was thought that she could be treated for this illness more conveniently at her home than amid the bustle of the Court. Priests were summoned and their incantations were at once effective. Among the many people who wrote to congratulate her upon her recovery Genji was naturally one, and as both of them happened for the moment to have a good deal of time on their hands, a correspondence ensued which led in the end to his paying her a somewhat reluctant visit. This was followed by others and he was soon seeing her every night. She was well made, tending even to plumpness, so that the slight pallor and thinness which had ensued from her recent indisposition only enhanced her charm. It happened that at the time Kōkiden was also staying in the house. This made Genji’s visits particularly imprudent, but it was just this added risk which attracted him and induced him to repeat them. It was not of course long before several inmates of the house became aware that something of this kind was going on, but they were too frightened of Kōkiden to say anything to her about it, nor had the Minister of the Right any suspicion whatever.

One night when Genji was with her a violent storm suddenly came on. The rain fell in such torrential floods as to be quite alarming and just after midnight tremendous crashes of thunder began. Soon the whole place was astir. The young princes and Kōkiden’s gentlemen-in-attendance seemed to be wandering all over the house, while the ladies-in-waiting, terrified by the thunderstorm, were clinging to one another hysterically in the passage just outside. There were people everywhere and Genji began to wonder how he was ever going to escape.

It was now broad daylight. Oborozuki’s maids had entered the room and seemed to be crowding round the great curtained bed. Genji was appalled by the situation. Among these ladies there were two who knew the secret, but they quite lost their heads in this emergency and were unable to be of any use. The thunderstorm was over and the rain was now less violent. The Minister was now up and about. He first paid his elder daughter a visit, and then, just at a moment when the rain was falling rather heavily, stepped lightly and briskly into Oborozuki’s room. The rain was making such a noise that they did not hear him and it was not till a hand was thrust through the bed-curtains that they realized what had happened. ‘We have had a very bad thunderstorm,’ he said, pulling the curtain slightly aside as he spoke. ‘I thought of you in the night and had half a mind to come round and see how you were getting on, but somehow or other I didn’t. Your brothers were on duty at the Palace last night. Just fancy....’ So he went on, speaking in an excited inconsequent manner which, even in his present quandary, Genji could not help contrasting with the gravity and good-sense of that other Minister, Aoi’s father, and he smiled to himself. Really if he had so much to say he had better come right inside and have done with it. Oborozuki, determined to screen her lover if she could, now crept to the edge of the bed and issued cautiously from between the curtains. Her face was so flushed and she looked so very ill at ease that her father was quite alarmed. ‘What have you been doing?’ he said, ‘you are not looking at all well. I am afraid we stopped the treatment too soon. These attacks are very troublesome to get rid of....’ As he spoke his eye suddenly fell upon a man’s pale violet-coloured belt that had got mixed up with her clothes, and at the same time he noticed a piece of paper with writing upon it lying near the bed. How did these things come to be in his daughter’s room? ‘Whose is this?’ he asked, pointing at the paper. ‘I think you had better give it to me; it may be something important. I shall probably know the writing.’ She looked where he was pointing. Yes, there was Genji’s paper lying conspicuously upon the floor. Were there no means of heading her father away from it? She could think of none and did not attempt to answer his question. It was evident that she was acutely embarrassed, and even though she was his own child he ought to have remembered that she was now a lady of some consequence, whose feelings, however reprehensible might be her conduct, he was bound in some measure to respect. Unfortunately there was not in his nature a particle either of moderation or restraint. He stooped to pick up the paper, and as he did so, without the slightest hesitation or compunction he opened the bed-curtains and peered right in. There full length upon the bed and apparently quite at his ease lolled a charming young man, who when the curtain stirred merely rolled quietly over and hid his face in the pillows. Enraged, astonished as the Minister was, even he had not quite the courage to press the discovery home. Blind with fury he thrust the paper into his pocket and rushed out of the room.

Genji was indeed extremely concerned about the consequences of this incident, coming as it did in the wake of so many other indiscretions. But his first care was to comfort his companion, which he did as best he could.

Self-restraint had never been a characteristic of the lady’s father and now that he was getting old he found it more than ever impossible to keep anything to himself. It was therefore only to be expected that without considering the consequences or turning the matter over in his mind for a single moment, he went and told the whole story to his daughter Kōkiden.

‘Well there it is,’ he wound up, ‘and you will not be surprised to hear that the handwriting was that of no less a person than Prince Genji! Of course I know quite well that this affair has been going on for a long time. A good deal of licence is allowed to people in his position and unfortunately I was weak-minded enough to let the matter pass. Then came the death of his wife, and it seemed certain that he would now legitimize his relations with your sister. Instead of doing so he suddenly abandoned her in the most heartless and disgraceful fashion. I was very uneasy about what had happened, but there was nothing to do except to make the best of a bad business, and I sent her to Court, fully trusting that His Majesty would not regard this one escapade as a fatal objection. Unfortunately he looked upon her as still more or less betrothed to Genji and left her severely alone. One would have thought she had suffered enough already! It is really disgusting, after what has happened, that he should have the face to start the thing all over again. You may say that a young man is bound to have his fling; but this Prince Genji goes a great deal too far. I hear that he has been behaving very badly with the Vestal Virgin of Kamo, carrying on a secret correspondence with her, and according to some people going a good deal further than that. If he has no respect for her holy calling he might at least realize that this kind of thing does his own reputation no good. How anyone holding an important and responsible position in the State can bring himself to behave in this way I simply cannot imagine....’ Kōkiden had always detested Genji and she now burst out angrily: ‘They call him their Emperor, but from the very beginning they have gone out of their way to heap every sort of indignity upon him. Even before he came to the Throne they had already begun to treat him abominably. Remember how the Minister of the Left behaved about the marriage of his cherished only daughter! He insisted forsooth in giving her to this wretched Prince Genji instead of to my son, though my boy was older and had already been proclaimed Heir Apparent, while Genji did not count as a member of the royal family at all and was so young that the wedding took place on the same day as his Initiation! We too, you may remember, were planning to give my sister to Genji when we were outwitted by this hasty wedding, of which till the last minute no one was given the slightest intimation. Every one was indeed astonished that we should allow ourselves to be tricked in this unscrupulous fashion. We should all much have preferred to see her married to this young man, but when that fell through there was nothing for it but to do the best we could for her at Court. It is really extraordinary that after all the painful experiences she has had with this wretch she should still imagine she can make a permanent conquest of him. I have no doubt he is treating the Vestal Virgin in just the same way; and his behaviour in this matter, as indeed in many others, is causing His Majesty the greatest anxiety; which is not to be wondered at, seeing that the heir to the Throne is entirely in this Prince Genji’s hands.’

She went on in this strain for so long and with so much rancour that her father, who never remained angry for more than a short time, soon began to sympathize with Genji rather than with her and was sorry that he had mentioned the matter at all. ‘I think that for the present,’ he said, ‘you had better not speak of this to anyone, not even to His Majesty your son. Prince Genji’s conduct is certainly outrageous; but you are very fond of your sister and you cannot denounce him without getting her too into trouble. Leave the matter to me. I intend to speak to her very seriously, and if this has no effect, then we shall have done our best and she must take the consequences.’ But it was too late to mend matters; she was indeed only further exasperated by his attempt to conciliate her. That Genji should have been carrying on this intrigue in her own house, and that too at a time when he knew she was in residence, showed an impudent contempt for her authority which deeply wounded her, and all that she now thought of was how best she might use this discovery to his undoing.

[1] Rokujō was still uncertain whether it was her jealousy that had killed Yūgao.

[2] Torii.

[3] The sakaki, a species of evergreen oak, is planted at Shintō shrines.

[4] In allusion to the old song ‘My home is at the foot of Miwa Hill. If you like me, come some day to visit me. You will know the house by the cedar which grows at the gate.’

[5] Princes used rich scents forbidden to commoners.

[6] Used in making offerings to Shintō gods.

[7] An allusion to the poem (Kokinshū 701) ‘Can even the God of Thunder whose footfall echoes in the sky put those asunder whom love has joined?’

[8] In reality an appeal to the Virgin (representative of the Gods) to dissuade her mother from accompanying her.

[9] Before departing for Ise the Virgin was presented to the Emperor and formally invested.

[10] 4 p.m.

[11] Prince Zembō, her father, was at that time Heir Apparent.

[12] A river in the Province of Ise.

[13] ‘Ōsaka’ means Hill of Meeting; a gentle slope on the road from Kyōto to Ōtsu.

[14] I.e. to Murasaki.

[15] Genji’s son by Fujitsubo; supposed to be the Emperor’s child. He was now four years old.

[16] In which they packed the costumes they wore while on duty at the palace.

[17] Her relations with Genji. See vol. i, p. 241. She had now become the Emperor’s mistress.

[18] The neglected step-child who in the end triumphs over her pampered rivals is a favourite theme in Japanese stories. Cf. the Sumiyoshi Monogatari and the Ochikubo.

[19] See vol. i, pp. 68 and 252.

[20] A ritual in honour of the Five Mysterious Buddhas of the Tantric Sect, to wit: Gōsanze, Gundari, Dai-itoku, Kongō-yasha and Fudō.

[21] See vol i, pp. 241 seq.

[22] Genji was Commander of the Imperial Guard. The soldiers of the Guard had to report at 4 a.m. to the senior officer of the Guard who happened on that night to be in the Palace. They had really come to report to some subordinate officer who happened to be lodging close by.

[23] I.e. 4 a.m. They had to go on calling the hour till their officer replied ‘So be it’ to show that he had heard them.

[24] There is a play of words on aku ‘enough’ and aku ‘dawn’; in the next poem between aku ‘enough’ and aku ‘open.’

[25] Wife of the young Emperor Suzaku.

[26] I.e. in a monastery.

[27] Who, after the death of her lover, the Chinese Emperor Kao Tsu, was tortured and mutilated (c. b.c. 200) by his wife.

[28] Genji’s child by Fujitsubo: supposed by the world to be the late Emperor’s son.

[29] The Unrinin, near Kyōto.

[30] Books on monastic discipline, and morality in general.

[31] Princess Asagao.

[32] The canonical book of the Tendai Sect.

[33] The Court was still in mourning and music was not allowed.

[34] The Crown Prince sent an assassin to murder the King of Ch‘in; whereupon the above phenomenon was observed and the Crown Prince felt convinced that the plot would fail. The young courtier vaguely hints that Genji is meditating treason.

[35] I.e. the late Emperor.

[36] Of the Hokkekyō.

[37] Ostensibly the poem refers to the late Emperor, but it has a hidden reference to the meeting of Fujitsubo and Genji. There is a pun on yuki, ‘snow,’ and yuki, ‘go.’

[38] Of whom we are vaguely told that he was ‘a former Emperor.’

[39] The bishop of the Enryakuji on Mount Hie.

[40] An incense made of sandal-wood, cloves, etc.

[41] I should like to become a priest, but I must stay and look after the child. There is an allusion to the famous poem on the death of a child: ‘Because in Death’s dark land he will not know the way, I will make offerings to the Guardian of Souls that on his shoulders he may carry him.’

[42] Performed by girls on the 16th day and by young men on the 14th and 15th days of the first month.

[43] Twenty-one white horses were offered to the Emperor on the 7th day, and afterwards distributed by him among members of his family.

[44] The residence of the Minister of the Right, Kōkiden’s father.

[45] Ama, ‘fishermen,’ also means ‘nun.’

[46] The State grant allowed to an ex-Empress was sufficient to maintain 2,000 dependants.

[47] His wife was the fourth daughter of the Minister of the Right.

[48] Such as Buddha’s birthday, Māyā’s birthday, Buddha’s Nirvāna day, etc.

[49] The Heir Apparent, Genji’s son by Fujitsubo, supposed to be the old Emperor’s child.

[50] One of Genji’s step-brothers.

CHAPTER XI
THE VILLAGE OF FALLING FLOWERS

THE outlook was very black. Not only were his private affairs in a state of grievous entanglement, but also his position at Court was being made every day more difficult. So despondent did he become that he had serious thoughts of giving everything up and quitting the Capital. But this was by no means easy now that so many persons were dependent upon him. For example there was Lady Reikeiden, a lady of his father’s Court. She had no children to look after her and had, since the old Emperor’s death, been living in very bad circumstances. But for Genji’s assistance she would never have pulled through. With her lived a sister much younger than herself with whom he had once had a fugitive affair when both of them were living at the Palace. He never forgot anyone to whom he had stood, even for the briefest period, in such a relation as this. Their friendship had never been resumed; but he had reason to suppose that on her side the attachment was still as strong as ever. During the period of emotional tumult through which he had just passed he had many times brooded upon his relations with this lady. At last he felt that he could neglect her no longer, and the rains of the fifth month having given place to an enchanting spell of fine warm weather, he set out for her sister’s house. He went without any outriders and took care that there should be nothing to distinguish his coach from that of an ordinary individual. As he was nearing the Middle River he noticed a small house standing amid clumps of trees. There came from it the sound of some one playing the zithern; a well-made instrument, so it seemed, and tuned to the eastern mode.[1] It was being excellently played. The house was quite near the highway and Genji, alighting for a moment from the carriage, stood near the gate to listen. Peeping inside he saw a great laurel-tree quavering in the wind. It reminded him of that Kamo festival long ago, when the dancers had nodded their garlands of laurel and sun-flower.[2] Something about the place interested him, seemed even to be vaguely familiar. Suddenly he remembered that this was a house which he had once visited a long while before. His heart beat fast.... But it had all happened too long ago. He felt shy of announcing himself. All the same, it seemed a pity to pass the house without a word, and for a while he stood hesitating. Just when he was about to drive away, a cuckoo flew by. Somehow its note seemed to be an invitation to him to stay, and turning his chariot he composed the following poem, which he gave into Koremitsu’s hands: ‘Hark to the cuckoo’s song! Who could not but revisit the hedge-row of this house where once he sung before?’ There seemed to be several people sitting together in a room on the left. This must be the lady’s own apartment. Several of the voices Koremitsu thought he could remember having heard before. He made a slight noise to attract attention and delivered the poem. He could hear it being discussed within by a number of young women who seemed somewhat puzzled by it. Presently a reply was brought: ‘That to my garden Cuckoo has returned, his song proclaims. But how, pray, should I see him, caged behind the summer rain?’ Koremitsu made sure that they were only pretending not to know who their visitor was. The lady indeed, though she hid her feelings from the rest, was very loath to send Koremitsu away with this hollow message. But so long a time had elapsed since her adventure with Genji that she may very well have had good reasons for doing so. Suddenly, as he drove away, there came into his mind a picture of this lady dancing with four others at the Palace. Yes, that was who she was. She had been one of the Gosechi dancers one winter long ago. How much he had admired her! And for a moment he felt about her exactly as he had felt before. It was this strange capacity of his for re-creating in its full intensity an emotion suspended for months or even years and overlaid by a thousand intervening distractions, that gained for him, faithless though he was, so large a number of persistent admirers.

At last he arrived at Lady Reikeiden’s house. Noting that it wore an aspect fully as cheerless and deserted as he had feared, he hastened at once to the elder lady’s room. They talked much of old times and the night was soon far advanced. It was the twentieth day and the moon had now risen, but so tall were the surrounding trees that the garden still looked dark and gloomy as before. The lady herself sat in a room pervaded by the fragrance of orange-trees. She was no longer young, but still preserved much dignity and charm. Though she had never been singled out as a particular favourite with the late Emperor, they had been on very familiar terms and she was able to entertain Genji with many intimate recollections of his father’s life and habits. Indeed so vivid a picture of those old days soon rose before his mind that the tears came into his eyes. A cuckoo was suddenly heard in the garden outside, perhaps the very same that had sung when he was waiting at the gate of the little house; its note at any rate seemed strangely similar. Had it followed him? Pleased with this idea he sang softly to himself the old song ‘Knows the cuckoo when he sings?’ Presently he handed to her this poem: ‘“It is the scent of orange-trees that draws the cuckoo to the village of falling flowers.” I knew you would remind me of many things that I would not gladly forget; that is why I made my way straight to your room. Though life at Court gives me much both to think of and to feel, there are often times when I should like to have about me people who would talk of the past, and now that the world has given its allegiance to new powers such people are hard to find. But if I, amid the bustle of the town, feel this deprivation, how much the more must you in your long hours of tedious inactivity!’

His prospects had indeed changed very much for the worse since she had first known him, and he certainly seemed to feel those changes deeply. But if her heart went out to him it was perhaps rather because of his youth and beauty than because she regarded his position in the world as calling for any particular commiseration. She answered him with the poem: ‘To these wild gardens and abandoned halls only the scent of orange-trees could draw the traveller’s steps!’ She said no more and he took his leave. Yes, despite the fact that greater beauties had overshadowed her at his father’s Court, this lady had a singular charm and distinction of her own.

Her sister was living in the western wing. He did not hide from her that he was only calling upon her on his way from Lady Reikeiden’s rooms. But in her delight at his sudden arrival and her surprise at seeing him under circumstances so different she forgot to take offence either at his having visited her sister first or having taken so long in making up his mind to come at all. The time that they spent together was in every way successful and agreeable, and she can scarcely have thought that he did not care for her.

It was often thus with those whom he met only in this casual way. Being women of character and position they had no false pride and saw that it was worth while to take what they could get. Thus without any ill will on either side concerning the future or the past they would enjoy the pleasure of each other’s company, and so part. However, if by chance anyone resented this kind of treatment and cooled towards him, Genji was never in the least surprised; for though, as far as feelings went, perfectly constant himself, he had long ago learnt that such constancy was very unusual. The lady in the little house by the road-side was clearly an example of the latter class; she had resented the infrequence of his visits and no longer felt disposed to receive him.

[1] I.e. as a wagon or Japanese zithern, not in the Chinese style.

[2] See vol. i, p. 257.

CHAPTER XII
EXILE AT SUMA

THE intrigue against him was becoming every day more formidable. It was evident that he could not in any case go on living much longer where he was, and by a voluntary withdrawal he might well get off more lightly than if he merely allowed events to take their course.

There was Suma. It might not be such a bad place to choose. There had indeed once been some houses there; but it was now a long way to the nearest village and the coast wore a very deserted aspect. Apart from a few fishermen’s huts there was not anywhere a sign of life. This did not matter, for a thickly populated, noisy place was not at all what he wanted; but even Suma was a terribly long way from the Capital, and the prospect of being separated from all those whose society he liked best was not at all inviting. His life hitherto had been one long series of disasters. As for the future, it did not bear thinking of! Clearly the world held in store for him nothing but disappointment and vexation. But no sooner had he proved to himself convincingly that he was glad to leave the Capital than he began to recollect a thousand reasons for remaining in it. Above all, he could not imagine what would become of Murasaki if he were to leave her. Even when for one reason or another he was obliged to pass a few days away from his palace, he spent so much of the time wondering how she was getting on without him that he never really enjoyed himself and in the end dreaded even these short absences almost as much as she did. Now he was going away not for a fixed number of days or even years, but for a huge, incalculable period of time; perhaps (for who knew what might not happen either to him or her?) forever. The thought that he might never see her again was unendurable and he began to devise a scheme for hiding her in his retinue and secretly taking her with him. He soon saw however that this was quite impracticable. First there was the difficult sea-journey; and then, at Suma, the total lack of amusements and society. The waves and winds of that desolate shore would make poor companions for one used to the gaieties of a fashionable house. It would moreover be utterly impossible in such a place to make adequate provision for the comfort of a fastidious and delicately-nurtured lady. Her presence would soon involve him in all sorts of difficulties and anxieties. She herself felt that she would rather face every danger, every hardship, than be left behind at the Nijō-in, and that he should doubt her courage wounded her deeply.

The ladies at the ‘village of falling flowers,’ though in any case they saw him but seldom, were dismayed at the news of his departure, not for personal reasons only, but also because they had come to depend in numerous ways on his patronage and support. Many others whose acquaintance with him was very slight, were, though they would not have confessed it, shattered at the prospect of his disappearance from the Court. The abbess[1] herself feared that if she showed him any open mark of sympathy at this turn in his fortunes she would give new life to rumours which had already been used against him by his enemies. But from the time when his decision was first announced she contrived to send him constant secret messages. He could not help reflecting with some bitterness that she might sometimes have shown an equal concern while it was still possible for her to console him in more concrete ways. But it seemed to be fated that throughout all this long relationship each, however well disposed, should only cause torment to the other. He left the City about the twentieth day of the third month. The date of his departure had not been previously disclosed and he left his palace very quietly, accompanied only by some seven or eight intimate retainers. He did not even send formal letters of farewell but only hasty and secret messages to a few of those whom he loved best, telling them in such words as came to him at the moment what pain it cost him to leave them. Those notes were written under the stress of deep emotion and would doubtless interest the reader; but though some of them were read to me at the time, I was myself in so distracted a state of mind that I cannot accurately recall them. Two or three days before his departure he paid a secret visit to Aoi’s father. He came in a rattan-coach such as women use, and heavily disguised. When they saw that it was indeed Prince Genji who had stepped out of this humble equipage the people at the Great Hall could hardly believe that this was not some strange dream. Aoi’s old room wore a dismal and deserted air; but the nurses of his little boy and such of Aoi’s servants as were still in the house soon heard the news of his unexpected arrival and came bustling from the women’s quarters to gaze at him and pay him their respects. Even the new young servants who had not seen him before and had no reason to take his affairs particularly to heart were deeply moved at this farewell visit, which brought home to them so vividly the evanescence of human grandeurs. The little prince recognized him and at once ran up to him in the prettiest and most confiding way. This delighted Genji; taking the child on his knee he played with it so charmingly that the ladies could hardly contain their emotion. Presently the old Minister arrived: ‘I have often meant,’ he said, ‘during these last months when you have been living so much at home, to come round and talk over with you various small matters connected with the past; but first I was ill and for a long time could not attend to my duties, and then at last my resignation was definitely accepted. Now I am merely a private person, and I have been afraid that if I came to see you it would be said that it must be to promote some personal intrigue that I was bestirring my aged bones. As far as I am concerned I am out of it all, and have really nothing to be afraid of. But these new people are very suspicious and one cannot be too careful.... I am distressed beyond measure that you should be obliged to take the course which you are now contemplating; I would gladly not have lived to witness such a day. These are bad times, and I fully expected to see a great deal of mischief done to the country. But I confess I did not foresee that you would find yourself in such a situation as this, and I am heart-broken about it, utterly heart-broken....’ ‘We are told,’ answered Genji, ‘that everything which happens to us in this life is the result of our conduct in some previous existence. If this is to be taken literally I suppose I must now accept the fact that in a previous incarnation I must have misbehaved myself in some way. It is clear, at any rate, that I am in bad odour at Court; though, seeing that they have not thought it necessary to deprive me of my various offices and titles, they cannot have very much against me. But when the Government has shown that it mistrusts a man, he is generally considered much to blame if he continues to flaunt himself at Court as though nothing were amiss. I could cite many instances in the history both of our own and other countries. But distant banishment, the penalty which I hear is contemplated in my case, has never been decreed except as the penalty of scandalous and open misdemeanour. My conscience is of course perfectly clear; but I see that it would be very dangerous to sit down and await events. I have therefore decided to withdraw from the Capital, lest some worse humiliation should befall me.’ He gave the Minister many further details of his proposed flight. The old man replied with a multitude of reminiscences, particularly of the late Emperor, with anecdotes illustrating his opinions and policies. Each time that Genji tried to go his father-in-law gripped his sleeve and began a new story. He was indeed himself deeply moved by these stories of old days, as also by the pretty behaviour of his little son, who while they were talking of policies and grave affairs constantly ran up to one or the other with his absurd, confiding prattle. The Minister continued: ‘Though the loss of my dear daughter is a sorrow from which to my dying day I shall not recover, I find myself now quite thankful that she did not live to see these dreadful days. Poor girl, she would have suffered terribly. What a nightmare it all is! More than anything else I am distressed that my grandson here should be left with us elderly people and that for months or even years to come you will be quite cut off from him.

‘As you say, exile has hitherto been reserved as a punishment for particularly grave offences. There have indeed been many cases both here and in China of innocent persons being condemned to banishment, but always in consequence of some false charge being made against them. But against you a threat of exile seems to have been made without any cause being alleged. I cannot understand it....’

Tō no Chūjō now joined them and wine was served. It was very late, but Genji showed no signs of going, and presently all the gentlewomen of the household collected round him and made him tell them stories. There was one among them, Chūnagon by name, who, though she never spoke of it, had always cared for Genji far more deeply than did any of her companions. She now sat sad and thoughtful waiting to say something to him but unable to think of anything to say. He noticed this and was very sorry for her. When all the rest had gone to their rooms he kept her by him and talked to her for a long while. It may perhaps have been for her sake that he stayed so long. Dawn was beginning to come into the sky and the moon, which had not long risen, darted its light among the blossom of the garden trees, now just beyond their prime. In the courtyard leafy branches cast delicate half-shadows upon the floor, and thin wreaths of cloud sank through the air till they met the first flicker of the white grass-mists which, scarcely perceptible, now quivered in the growing light.

He hung over the balustrade outside the corner room and for a while gazed in silence at this scene, which transcended even the beauty of an autumn night. Chūnagon, that she might watch him go, had opened the main door and stood holding it back. ‘I shall return,’ Genji said, ‘and we shall surely meet again. Though indeed, when I think about it, I can find no reason to suppose that I shall ever be recalled. Oh, why did I not make haste to know you in better days, when it would have been so easy for us to meet?’ She wept but made no answer.

Presently Aoi’s mother sent a message by Saishō, the little prince’s nurse: ‘There are many things that I want to talk over with you, but my mind is nowadays so clouded and confused that I hesitate to send for you. It is kind of you to have paid us so long a visit and I would ask you to come to me; but I fear that to talk with you would remind me too much of all that is now so changed. However, pray do not leave the house till your poor little son is awake.’ He answered with the poem: ‘To a shore I go where the tapering smoke of salt-kilns shall remind me of the smoke that loitered by her pyre.’ He wrote no letter to go with the poem, but turning to the nurse he said: ‘It is sad at all times to leave one’s friends at dawn. How much the more for one such as I, who goes never to return!’ ‘Indeed,’ she answered, ‘“farewell” is a monster among words, and never yet sounded kindly in any ear. But seldom can this word have had so sinister an import as to all of us on this unhappy morning.’

Touched by her concern at his departure he felt that he must give her what she evidently expected,—some further message for her mistress, and he wrote: ‘There is much that I should like to say, but after all you will have little difficulty in imagining for yourself the perplexity and despair into which my present situation has plunged me. I should indeed dearly like to see the little prince before I go. But I fear that the sight of him might weaken my resolution to forsake the fleeting world, and therefore I must force myself to leave this house without further delay.’

The whole household was now awake and every one was on the watch to see him start. The moon shone red at the edge of the sky, and in its strange light he looked so lovely, yet so sad and thoughtful, that the hearts of wolves and tigers, nay of very demons, would have melted at the sight of him. It may be imagined then with what feelings those gentlewomen watched him drive away, many of whom had known and loved him since he was a child. But I had forgotten to say that Aoi’s mother replied with the poem: ‘Seek not another sky, but if you love her,[2] stay beneath these clouds with which her soul is blent.’ When he reached his own palace he found that none of the gentlewomen there had slept a wink. They were sitting a few here, a few there, in frightened groups, looking as though they would never lift their heads again. Those officers of his household and personal retainers who had been chosen to go with him to Suma were busy preparing for their departure or saying good-bye to their friends, so that the retainers’ hall was absolutely deserted; nor had the gentlewomen whom he was leaving behind dared to present themselves on the occasion of his departure, for they knew that any demonstration of good will towards an enemy of those in power would be remembered against them by the Government. So that instead of his doors being thronged, as once they had been, by a continual multitude of horsemen and carriages, he found them that morning utterly deserted and realized with bitterness how frail is the fabric of worldly power. Already his great guest-tables, pushed against the wall, were looking tarnished and dusty; the guest-mats were rolled up and stowed away in corners. If the house looked like this now, what sort of spectacle he wondered would it present when he had been absent for a few months?

On reaching the western wing he found the partition door still open. Murasaki had sat there watching till dawn. Some of the little boys who waited upon her were sleeping on the verandah. Hearing him coming they now shook themselves and rose with a clatter. It was a pleasant sight to see them pattering about in their little pages’ costumes; but now he watched them with a pang at his heart, for he could not help remembering that while he was away they would grow up into men and in the end have to seek service elsewhere. And indeed during those days he looked with interest and regret on many things which had never engaged his attention before. ‘I am so sorry about last night,’ he said. ‘One thing happened after another, and by the time I was free to come back it would not have been worth while. You must have thought it horrid of me. Now that there is so little time left, I hate to be away from you at all. But my departure from the Court naturally involves me in many painful duties, and it would be quite impossible for me to remain shut up here all the time. There are other people, some of whom I may very likely never see again, who would think it unkind of me if I did not even bid them good-bye....’ ‘It is your going away that matters,’ she answered; ‘nothing else is of any consequence now....’ She said no more, but sat staring before her in an attitude of the profoundest despair. And indeed, as Genji realized, she had every possible reason to dread his departure. Her father Prince Hyōbukyō had never put himself out for her, and since Genji’s disgrace he stopped writing and no longer even enquired about her. She was ashamed of his worldly caution and dreaded lest others should notice it. For her part she was resolved that, since he showed no interest in her, she would be the last to remind him of her existence. Some one told her that her step-mother[3] went about saying: ‘This is what comes of trying to get on too quickly in the world. Look how she has been punished! All her relatives expire and now her lover takes flight!’ She was deeply distressed and felt that she could not ever communicate with her step-mother again. There was indeed no one to whom she could turn for help, and her position was likely to be in every way unhappy and difficult. ‘I promise,’ said Genji to comfort her, ‘that if my exile seems likely to last for a considerable time, I will send for you to join me, even if I can offer you nothing better to live in than a hole in the rocks. But it would be considered most improper for me to take you with me now. People who are disapproved of by the Government are expected to creep about miserably in the dark, and if they try to make themselves happy and comfortable it is considered very wicked. I have not of course done anything wrong, but my misfortune must certainly be due to some sin in a previous life, and I am sure that if I did anything so unusual as to take my lady into exile with me, fate would find some yet more cruel way to punish me for the presumption.’

He then lay down and slept till noon. Later in the day his half-brother Prince Sochi no Miya and Tō no Chūjō called and offered to help him dress. He reminded them that he had resigned his rank and they brought him a cloak of plain silk without any crest or badge. This costume had an informal air which became him better than they had expected. When he went to the mirror that his servants might do his hair he could not help noticing how thin his face had lately grown, and he said ‘What a fright I look! Can I really be such a skeleton as this? It is indeed a bad business if I am.’ Murasaki, her eyes full of tears, came and peeped at the mirror. To distract her he recited the poem: ‘Though I wander in strange lands and far away, in this mirror let me leave my image, that it may never quit your side.’ ‘That, yes, even so little as that, would comfort me, if indeed this mirror might hold the image of your distant face.’ So she answered, and without another word sank into a seat behind the roof-pillar, that her tears might not be seen. His heart went out to her, and he felt at this moment that among all the women he had known she was indeed the most adorable.

His step-brother now fell to reminding him of scenes in their common childhood, and it was already growing dark when he left Genji’s room. The lady at the ‘village of falling flowers’ had written to him constantly since she heard the news of his approaching departure. He knew that she had many reasons for dreading his absence and it seemed unfeeling not to pay her one more visit before he left. But if he spent another evening away from his palace Murasaki would be very disappointed, and he therefore did not start till late in the night. He went first to the room of Princess Reikeiden, who was flattered and delighted beyond measure that hers should be the only house to which he paid the honour of a farewell visit. But what passed between them was not of sufficient interest to be recorded. He remembered that it was only through his help and protection that she had managed to overcome the difficulties and anxieties of the last few years. Now matters would go from bad to worse. In the house nothing stirred. The moon had risen and now shimmered faintly through the clouds. The lake in front of the building was large and wild, and dense thickets of mountain-trees surrounded it. He was just thinking that there could hardly in all the world be a lovelier, stranger place, when he remembered the rocky shore of Suma,—a thousand times more forbidding, more inaccessible!

The younger sister had quite made up her mind that Genji was going to leave the house without visiting her, and she was all the more surprised and delighted when at last, more lovely than ever by moonlight and in the grave simplicity of his exile’s dress, he stole into her room. At once she crept towards the window and they stood together gazing at the moonlight. They talked for a while, and found to their astonishment that it was nearly day. ‘How short the night has been,’ said Genji. ‘Yet even such a hasty meeting as this may never be ours again. Why did I not know you better in all those years when it would have been so easy to meet? Never have such misfortunes befallen an innocent man before, nor ever will they again. I go from torment to torment. Listen ...’ and he was beginning to recount to her the disasters and miscalculations of the past when the cock crowed, and fearing detection he hastened away.

The moon was like last night, just on the point of setting; it seemed to him a symbol of his own declining fortunes. Shining through the dark purple of her dress the moonlight had indeed, as in the old poem, ‘the leaden look of those who weep,’ and she recited the poem: ‘Though to the moonlight my sleeve but narrow lodging can afford, yet might it dwell there for ever and for ever, this radiance[4] of which my eyes can never tire.’ He saw that she was deeply moved by this parting and in pity sought to comfort her with the poem: ‘In its long journeying the moon at last shall meet a clearer sky; then heed not if for a while its light be dimmed.’ ‘It is foolish,’ he added, ‘to spoil the present with tears for sorrows that are still to come,’ and with that he hurried away, that he might be out of the house while it was still dark.

At home he had a great many things to arrange before his departure. First of all he had to give instructions concerning the upkeep of his palace to the few faithful retainers who had taken the risk of remaining in his service. When these had at last all been assigned their functions, difficulties arose about some of the attendants who were to have gone with him into exile, and a fresh choice had to be made. Then there was the business of deciding how much luggage he should take with him to his mountain fastness. Some things were obviously indispensable; but even when he cut down his equipment to the barest possible necessities there were still all kinds of odds and ends, such as writing-materials, poems, Chinese books, which all had to be fitted into the right sort of boxes. And then there was his zithern; he could not leave that behind. But he took no large objects of furniture nor any of his more elaborate costumes, having resigned himself to the prospect of a completely bucolic existence. Finally he had to explain to Murasaki all the arrangements he had made about the servants who were to stay behind, and a hundred other matters. Into her charge too he put all the documents concerning his various estates and grazing-lands in different parts of the country. His granaries and store-houses he put into the keeping of the nurse Shōnagon whose vigilance and reliability he had often noted, giving her the help of one or two trusted household officers. And here again there were numerous arrangements to be made.

With the gentlewomen of his palace he had never been on intimate terms. But he kept them in a good humour by sending for them occasionally to talk with him, and he now summoned them all, saying to them: ‘I am afraid it will be rather dull here while I am away. But if any of you care to stay in my service on the chance that I may one day return to the Court, which if I live long enough is indeed certain to happen sooner or later,—please consider yourselves at the disposition of the Lady in the western wing.’ So saying he sent for all the other servants, high and low, and distributed suitable keepsakes among them.

No one was forgotten; to the nurse of Aoi’s little son and even to the servants at the ‘village of falling flowers’ he sent tokens of his appreciation, chosen, you may be sure, with the greatest taste and care.

To Oborozuki, despite a certain reluctance, he wrote at last: ‘That after what happened between us you should have ceased to communicate with me was both natural and prudent. But I would now have you know that the unparalleled ferocity of my enemies has at last driven me from the Court. “The rising torrent of your reproachful tears has carried me at last to the flood-mark of exile and disgrace.” I cannot forget that this folly alone was the instrument of my undoing.’ There was some danger that the letter might fall into wrong hands before it reached its destination, and for that reason he made it brief and vague.

The lady was heart-stricken, and though she strove to hide her tears, they flowed in a torrent that her sleeve was not broad enough to dam. She sent him the poem: ‘Long ere I reach the tide of your return shall I, poor scum upon the river of tears, be vanished out of sight.’ She was weeping violently when she wrote it, and there were many blotches and mistakes, but her writing was at all times elegant and pleasing. He would very much have liked to see her once more before his departure, and he many times thought of arranging it. But she was too intimately connected with just those people who had been chiefly responsible for his undoing, and somewhat regretfully he put the idea aside.

On the evening of the day before his departure he went to worship at his father’s tomb on the Northern Hills. As the moon did not rise till after midnight he found himself with time on his hands, and went first to visit the Abbess Fujitsubo. She allowed him to stand close up to her curtain, and on this occasion spoke to him with her own mouth. She naturally had many questions to talk over concerning the future of her son, which was now more than ever uncertain. But apart from this, two people who had once lived on such terms as this prince and princess, could not now fail to have much to say to one another of a far more intimate and tender character. He thought her every bit as charming and graceful as in old days, and this made him allude with bitterness to her heartless treatment of him. But he remembered in time that her present state made any such complaints in the highest degree unseemly and inappropriate. He was allowing his feelings to get out of hand, and withdrawing for a while into his own thoughts, he said at last: ‘This punishment has come upon me quite unexpectedly, and when I try to account for it, one possible explanation of a most alarming character presents itself to my mind. I am not thinking of the danger to myself should a certain fact be known, but of the disastrous consequences of such a disclosure upon the career of the young prince, your son....’ The same possibility had of course occurred to her. Her heart beat wildly, but she did not answer. The many painful scenes in which he had recently taken part had broken his spirit and he now wept unrestrainedly. ‘I am going to the Royal Tombs,’ he said at last. ‘Have you any message?’ She answered with the poem: ‘He that was, is not; and he that is, now hides from the afflictions of the world. What increase but of tears did my renunciation bring?’

At last the moon rose, and he set out. Only five or six attendants were with him, men of low rank, but all of them deeply attached to him. Genji himself rode on horseback like the rest. This was quite natural on such an occasion, but his companions could not help contrasting this melancholy cavalcade with the splendours of his retinue in former days. Among them the most downcast was Ukon,[5] who had formed part of his special escort on the occasion of the Kamo festival a few years ago. This gentleman had since that time seen himself repeatedly passed over at the annual distribution of honours, and finally his name disappeared altogether from the lists. Being without employment he had been obliged to go into service, and was now acting as Genji’s groom. As they rode along Ukon’s eye lighted on the Lower Shrine of Kamo which lay quite near their road, and remembering that wonderful day of the festival he leapt from his horse and holding Genji’s bridle he recited the verse: ‘Well I remember how, crowned with golden flowers, we rode together on that glorious day! Little, alas, they heed their worshippers, the churlish gods that in the Shrine of Kamo dwell.’

Genji well knew what was passing through the man’s mind. He remembered with indignation and pity how Ukon had been the gayest, the most resplendent figure among those who had ridden with him on that day. Genji too alighted from his horse and turning his face towards the Shrine repeated this parting poem: ‘Thou who art called the Righter of Wrongs, to Thee I leave it to clear the name that stays behind me, now that I am driven from the fleeting haunts of men.’ Ukon was a very impressionable youth, and this small episode thrilled and delighted him beyond measure.

At last they reached the Tombs. Genji’s mind was full of long-forgotten images. He saw his father seated on the throne in the days of his prime, the pattern of a kindly yet magnificent king. Who could then have guessed that death would in an instant deface all memory of that good and glorious reign? Who could have foreseen that the wise policies which, with tears in his eyes, he had time and again commended to those about him, would in an instant be reversed, and even his dying wishes contemptuously cast aside? The path to the Royal Tomb was already overgrown with tall thick grass, so that in pressing his way along it he became soaked with dew. The moon was hidden behind clouds, dank woods closed about him on either hand, such woods as give one the feeling one will never return through them alive. When at last he knelt at the tomb, his father’s face appeared so vividly before him that he turned cold with fear. Then murmuring the verse: ‘How comes it that thy vanished image looms before me, though the bright moon, symbol of thy high fortunes, is hidden from my sight?’ he set out towards the town, for it was now broad daylight. On his return he sent a message to the Heir Apparent. Ōmyōbu had taken charge of the child since Fujitsubo’s retirement and it was through her that Genji now addressed his son: ‘I leave the City to-day. That I have been unable to visit you once more is the greatest of my many vexations. You indeed know better than I can tell what thoughts are mine in this extremity, and I beg you to commend me to your little master in such terms as you deem best.’ With this letter he enclosed a spray of withered cherry-blossoms to which was tied the poem: ‘When again shall I see the flowers of the City blossoming in Spring, I whom fortune has cast out upon the barren mountains of the shore?’ This she passed on to the boy who, young though he was, quite well understood the import of the message, and when Ōmyōbu added ‘It is hard at present to say when he will return...!’ the young prince said sadly ‘Even when he stays away for a little while I miss him very much, and now that he is going a long way off I do not know how I shall get on.... Please say this to him for me.’

She was touched by the simplicity of his message. Ōmyōbu often called to mind all the misery which in past days had grown out of her mistress’s disastrous attachment. Scene after scene rose before her. How happy they might both have been, if only.... And then she would remember that she and she alone had been the promoter of their ruin. She had pleaded for Genji, arranged those fatal meetings! And a bitter remorse filled her soul. She now sent the following reply: ‘His Highness dictated no formal answer. When I informed him of your departure, his distress was very evident....’ This and more she wrote, somewhat incoherently, for her thoughts were in great confusion. With the letter was the poem: ‘Though sad it is to mark how swift the flowers fall, yet to the City Spring will come again and with it, who can tell....’ ‘Oh if that time were come!’ she added, and spent the hours which followed in recounting such moving tales of Genji’s wisdom and kindness that every one in the Palace was soon dissolved in tears. If these people who but seldom caught sight of him were distressed at the prospect of his departure, it may be imagined what were the feelings of those whose duties brought them constantly into his presence. At the Nijō-in every one down to the mere scullery-maids and outdoor servants, who could never hope to exchange a single word with him and had thought themselves very lucky if they obtained an occasional glance or smile, had always been in despair when it was known that he would be absent from the palace even for a few days. Nor was his downfall by any means welcome in the country at large. Since his seventh year he had enjoyed the privilege of running in and out of the old Emperor’s rooms just as he felt inclined. Everything he asked for had been granted without question, and there were few who had not at one time or another found themselves beholden to his boundless good-nature and generosity. Even among the great nobles and Ministers of the Crown there were some who owed their first promotion to Genji’s good offices; and countless persons of less importance knew quite well that they owed everything to him. But such was their dread of the present Government, with its ruthless methods of persecution and suppression, that not one of them now came near him. Expressions of regret were everywhere heard; but it was only in the secrecy of their own hearts that these sympathizers dared blame the Government for happenings which they universally deplored. After all, what was the good of risking their own positions by showing to the exiled prince civilities which could be of no real use to him? There was some sense in this, but on Genji their prudence made a most painful and dispiriting impression. He suddenly felt the world was inhabited by a set of mean and despicable creatures, none of whom were worth putting oneself out for in any way at all.

He spent the whole of that day quietly with Murasaki at his palace. He was to start soon after midnight. She hardly knew him as he stood before her dressed in his queer travelling clothes. ‘The moon has risen,’ he said at last. ‘Come out to the door and see me start. I know that at the last minute I shall think of all kinds of things I meant to say to you to-day. Even when I am only going away for a few nights, there are always so many things to remember....’ He raised the curtain-of-state behind which she was sitting and drew her with him towards the portico. She was weeping bitterly. Her feet would not obey her and she stumbled haltingly at his side. The moonlight fell straight upon her face. He looked down at her tenderly. The thought came to him that he might die at Suma. Who would look after her? What would become of her? He was indeed no less heart-broken than she; but he knew that if he gave way to his feelings her misery would only be increased and he recited the verse: ‘We who so long have sworn that death alone should part us, must suffer life for once to cancel all our vows.’ He tried to speak lightly, but when she answered: ‘Could my death pay to hold you back, how gladly would I purchase a single moment of delay,’ he knew that she was not speaking idly. It was terrible to leave her, but he knew that by daylight it would be harder still, and he fled from the house. All the way down to the river her image haunted him and it was with a heart full to bursting that he went aboard the ship. It was a season when the days are long, and meeting with a favourable wind they found themselves at Suma between three and four o’clock in the afternoon.[6] It was indeed a trifling journey, but to Genji, who had never crossed the sea before, the experience was somewhat alarming, though his fears were mingled with wonder and delight. As they came in sight of that wild and lonely headland where stands the Hall of Ōye[7] marked by its solitary pine, he recited the verse: ‘A life more outcast shall be mine among these hills than all those exiles led whose sufferings the books of Kara[8] have rehearsed.’ He watched the waves lapping up over the sands and then creeping back again. It put him in mind of the ancient song: ‘Oh would that like the tides I went but to return!’ Those who were with him knew the song well enough, but never before had it moved them as now when Genji murmured to himself the long-familiar words. Looking back he saw that the mountains behind them were already melting into the hazy distance, and it seemed to him that he had indeed travelled the classical ‘three thousand leagues’ of which the Chinese poets so often speak. The monotonous dripping of the oars now became almost unendurable. ‘Now is my home hid from me by the mist-clad hills, and even the sky above me seems not the lovely cloudland that I knew.’ So he sang, being for the moment utterly downcast and dispirited.

His new home was quite close to the place where in ancient days Ariwara no Yukihira[9] once lived in exile, ‘trailing his water-buckets along the lonely shore.’ At this point the sea bends back, forming a shallow inlet, encompassed by desolate hills.

He proceeded to inspect the hut which had been prepared for his reception. Never had he seen such a place before. Even the hedge was built in quite a different way from what he was used to; and the hut itself, with its thatched roof and wide-spreading gables covered with wattled bull-rushes, seemed to him the most extraordinary place to live in. But he could not help admiring the ingenuity with which it was constructed, and he knew that if he had come there under different circumstances the prospect of staying in such a cottage would have fascinated and delighted him. How, in the old days, he had longed for such an experience!

Many repairs and alterations were necessary, and Genji sent at once for the bailiffs of some of his estates which lay in the neighbourhood. They and their workmen, directed by the faithful Yoshikiyo, soon carried out Genji’s plans, and the place began to assume a much more habitable air. The pond was dredged and deepened, plantations were laid out. Soon he settled down to his new life in a way that he would never have dreamed to be possible. The Governor of the province had formerly been attached to his household, and though he did not dare to give him a public welcome, he made it clear in private that his sympathies were on Genji’s side. Thus even in this remote spot he was not entirely deprived of society; but there was no one with whom he was really intimate and such conversation as he could get was of the most superficial and uninteresting kind. He felt almost as isolated as if he had been cast up on a desert island, and the prospect of spending months, nay years, buried away amid these uncivilized surroundings still appalled him. He was just beginning to reconcile himself a little to his rustic employments when the summer rains set in. During this tedious period of inactivity he thought much of his friends at the Capital. Often he called to mind the picture of Murasaki’s misery in those last hours, of the Heir Apparent’s infant beauty or the heedless antics of Aoi’s little son. He determined to send a courier to the City, and began writing letters to everybody. While he wrote to the Lady of his palace and again while he wrote to Fujitsubo in her cloister he wept so bitterly that the letters had many times to be put aside. To Oborozuki he dared not write direct, but as he had sometimes done before enclosed a message to her in a letter to Lady Chūnagon, with the acrostic poem: ‘That I, though cast like weed upon the barren margin of the sea, am unrepentant still, how should they guess,—these fisherfolk that tend their salt-kilns on the shore?’ To the retired Minister and to Nurse Saishō he sent many instructions concerning the upbringing of the child. It may well be imagined that the arrival of his post-bag in the City set many hearts a-flutter.

The condition of Murasaki after his departure had gravely alarmed her attendants. She lay for many days utterly overcome by the shock of his departure. Every effort to cheer her was in vain. The sight or mention of things which she connected with him, a zithern which he had once played, the perfume of a dress which he had left behind, threw her at once into a new paroxysm of grief. She behaved indeed for all the world as though he were not merely exiled but already in his grave. At last Shōnagon, becoming seriously alarmed, sent for her uncle the priest and begged his aid. The liturgy of intercession which he conducted had for its aim both the recovery of Lady Murasaki from her present prostration and the early recall of Genji himself. For a while she was somewhat calmer and began to go about the house again. She spent much time at her devotions, praying fervently that he might soon return and live with her as before. She sent him sleeping-clothes and many other comforts which she feared he might not otherwise be able to secure. Among the garments which she packed were a cloak and breeches of plain homespun. She folded them with a sigh, remembering his Court apparel with its figured silks and glittering badges. And there was his mirror! He had left it behind as in his poem he had jestingly promised to do; but his image he had taken with him, and much good was a mirror that reflected another face than his! The places where he used to walk, the pinewood pillar against which he used to lean,—on these she could still never look without a bitter pang. Her situation might well have dismayed even a woman long inured to the world; for an inexperienced girl the sudden departure of one who had taken the place of both father and mother, to whom she had confided everything, to whom she had looked on every occasion for comfort and advice, was a blow from which it could hardly be expected that she would quickly recover. Deep down in her heart there was the haunting fear that he might die before his recall. But apart from this dread (which did not bear thinking of), there was the possibility that gradually, at such a distance as this, his affection for her would cease. True, she could write to him, and had his absence been fixed at a few weeks or months she would have had no great anxiety. But as it was, year might follow year without the slightest change in his prospects, and when he found that this was so who knew what might not come...?

The Lady Abbess too was at this time in great distress. The sin of the Heir Apparent’s birth was a constant weight upon her heart. She felt that she had up to the present escaped more lightly than her karma in any degree warranted and that a day of disastrous reckoning might still be at hand. For years she had been so terrified lest her secret should become known that she had treated Genji with exaggerated indifference, convinced that if by any sign or look she betrayed her partiality for him their attachment would at once become common knowledge at Court. She called to mind countless occasions when, longing for his sympathy and love, she had turned coldly away. The result of all her precautions did indeed seem to be that, in a world where everything that anyone knows sooner or later gets repeated, this particular secret had, so far as she could judge by the demeanour of those with whom she came in contact, remained absolutely undivulged. But the effort had cost her very dear, and she now remembered with pity and remorse the harshness which this successful policy had involved. Her answer to the letter which he sent from Suma was long and tender; she sought indeed to explain and expiate her seeming heartlessness in former days.

An answer also came from Oborozuki: ‘Not even to fishers that on the shore of Suma their faggots burn must we reveal the smouldering ashes of our love.’ ‘More I have no heart to write,’ she added in the margin of this poem, which was on a tiny strip of paper discreetly hidden between the pages of a note from Lady Chūnagon. In her own letter this lady gave a most melancholy account of her mistress’s condition. All these tales of woe made the arrival of Genji’s return post-bag a somewhat depressing event.

Murasaki’s letter was full of the tenderest allusions and messages. With it was the poem: ‘Look at the sleeves of the fisherfolk who trail salt-water tubs along the shore: you will not find them wetter than mine were on the night you put out to sea.’ The clothes and other odds and ends which she sent him were all of the most delicate make and colour. She had evidently taken immense trouble, and he reflected that she could now have little indeed to employ her. No doubt she had in her loneliness deliberately prolonged this task. Day and night her image floated before him and at last, unable to endure any longer the idea of her remaining by herself in that dull lonely palace, he began to make fresh plans for bringing her out to join him. But after further reflection he changed his mind. Such a step would at once bring down upon him the full retribution of his offences, and putting the idea out of his head he took to prayer and fasting, in the hope that Buddha would have pity on him and bring his exile to a speedy end. He was also somewhat distressed at being separated from Aoi’s son. But here the case was different from that of older people. There was every probability that he would eventually see the child again, and meanwhile he had the comfort of knowing that it was in excellent hands.

But stay! There has been so much to tell that one important matter had quite escaped me. I ought to have told you that before his departure he sent a message to Ise with a letter informing Lady Rokujō of the place at which she must in future address him. An envoy now arrived at Suma with her reply. It was long and intimate. Both the handwriting and mode of expression showed just that extraordinary distinction and fineness of breeding which he had always admired in her. ‘I find it impossible,’ she wrote, ‘to conceive of you in such a place as that at which you bid me to address you. Surely this must be some long, fantastic dream! I cannot but believe that I shall soon hear of you as again at the Capital; alas, even so it will be far longer before my fault is expiated and we can meet face to face. “Forget not those who for salvation dredge their misery by Ise’s shore, while you with fisherfolk drag dripping buckets to the kiln.”’ This and much more was written, not as it seemed at one time, but bit by bit as fresh waves of feeling prompted her. There were altogether four or five large sheets of white Chinese paper, and there were many passages which in the handling of the ink were quite masterly. This woman, whom he once so passionately admired, had, after the fatal outcome of her jealousy, become utterly distasteful to him. He knew well enough that she was not to blame for what had occurred and that his own feelings towards her were utterly unreasonable, and now that he was himself suffering the penalty of exile he felt more than ever ashamed of having driven her away by his sudden coldness. Her present letter moved him so deeply that he detained the messenger for several days, questioning him upon every detail of the life at Ise. The man was a young courtier of good family and was enchanted at the opportunity of living in the company of this famous prince at such close quarters as the limited accommodation of the cottage made necessary. In his reply Genji said: ‘Had I known that I was to be driven from the Court, I might have done well to join you in your journey. “Were I but in the little boat that the men of Ise push along the wave-tops of the shore, some converse would at least be mine.”... Now, alas, there is less prospect even than before that we shall ever meet again....’

He had now acquitted himself of all his epistolary duties, and no one had any right to complain. Meanwhile a letter arrived from the lady in the ‘village of falling flowers,’ or rather a journal in which she had from time to time noted down her impressions since his departure. The manner in which she recorded her despondency at his absence was both entertaining and original. The letter was a great distraction and aroused in him a quite new interest in this lady. It had come to his ears that the summer rains had done considerable damage to the foundations of her house and he sent word to his people at the Capital to get materials from such of his farms as were nearest to the ladies’ home and do whatever was necessary in the way of repairs.

The Emperor still showed no signs of summoning Princess Oborozuki to his side. Her father imagined that she felt her position and, since she was his favourite daughter, was most anxious to get matters put right. He spoke about it to Kōkiden, begging her to use all her influence, and indeed went so far as to mention his daughter’s disappointment to the Emperor himself. It was hoped that he might be prevailed upon to instal her, if not as a regular mistress, at any rate in some dignified capacity in his immediate entourage. The Emperor had hitherto neglected her solely because of her supposed attachment in another direction. When at last, yielding to the persuasion of her relatives, he summoned her to him, she was as a matter of fact more than ever absorbed in her unlucky passion. She moved into the Inner Palace during the seventh month. As it was known that the Emperor had previously been very much in love with her, no surprise was felt when he began immediately to treat her as a full lady-in-waiting. From the first he showered upon her a multitude both of endearments and reproaches. He was by no means distasteful to her either in person or character, but a thousand recollections crowded to her mind and continuously held her back. He did not fail to notice this, and once when they were at music together he said to her suddenly: ‘I know why you are unhappy. It is because that man has gone away. Well, you are not the only one who misses him; my whole Court seems to be plunged in the darkest gloom. I see what it is; I ought never to have let him go. The old Emperor on his death-bed warned me of all this, but I took no notice, and now I shall suffer for it.’ He had become quite tearful. She made no comment, and after a while he continued: ‘I get very little pleasure out of my life. I am fast realizing that there is no point in any of the things I do. I have the feeling that I shall probably not be with you much longer.... I know quite well that you will not be much upset; certainly much less than you were recently. That poet was a fool who prayed that he might know what happened to his mistress after he was gone. He cannot have cared much about her, or he would certainly rather not have known.’ He really seemed to set such store by her affection and spoke in so bitter and despondent a tone that she could bear it no longer and burst into tears. ‘It is no good your crying like that,’ he said peevishly, ‘I know well enough that your tears are not in any way connected with me.’ For a while he was silent. Then he began again: ‘It is so depressing not to have had any children. Of course I shall keep Lady Fujitsubo’s son as my Heir Apparent, since the old Emperor desired it. But there is sure to be a great deal of opposition, and it is very inconvenient....’

In reality, the government of the country was not in his hands at all; at every turn he saw his own wishes being violated and a quite contrary policy pursued by men who knew how to take advantage of his inexperience and weakness of character. All this he deplored but was powerless to alter.

At Suma autumn had set in with a vengeance. The little house stood some way back from the sea; but when in sudden gusts the wind came ‘blowing through the gap’ (the very wind of Yukihira’s poem[10]) it seemed as though the waves were at Genji’s door. Night after night he lay listening to that melancholy sound and wondering whether in all the world there could be any place where the sadness of autumn was more overwhelming. The few attendants who shared the house with him had all gone to rest. Only Genji lay awake, propped high on his pillow, listening to the storm-winds which burst upon the house from every side. Louder and louder came the noise of the waves, till it seemed to him they must have mounted the fore-shore and be surging round the very bed on which he lay. Then he would take up his zithern and strike a few notes. But his tune echoed so forlornly through the house that he had not the heart to continue and, putting the zithern aside, he sang to himself the song:

“The wind that waked you,

Came it from where my Lady lies,

Waves of the shore, whose sighs

Echo my sobbing?”

At this his followers awoke with a start and listened to his singing with wonder and delight. But the words filled them with an unendurable sadness, and there were some whose lips trembled while they rose and dressed.

What (Genji asked himself) must they think of him? For his sake they had given up their homes, parents, brothers, friends from whom they had never been absent for a day; abandoned everything in life which they had held dear. The thought that these unfortunate gentlemen should be involved in the consequences of his indiscretion was very painful to him. He knew that his own moodiness and ill humour had greatly contributed to their depression. Next day he tried to cheer them with jokes and amusing stories; and to make the time pass less tediously he set them to work to join strips of variegated paper into a long roll and did some writing practice, while on a piece of very fine Chinese silk he made a number of rough ink sketches which when pasted on to a screen looked very well indeed. Here before his eyes were all those hills and shores of which he had so often dreamed since the day long ago when they had been shown to him from a far-off height.[11] He now made good use of his opportunities and soon got together a collection of views which admirably illustrated the scenery of this beautiful coast-line. So delighted were his companions that they were anxious he should send for Chiyeda and Tsunenori[12] and make them use his sketches as models for proper-coloured paintings. His new affability soon made them forget all their troubles, and the four or five retainers who habitually served him felt that the discomforts of exile were quite outweighed by the pleasure of waiting upon such a master.

The flowers which had been planted in front of the cottage were blooming with a wild profusion of colour. One particularly calm and delightful evening Genji came out on to the verandah which looked towards the bay. He was dressed in a soft coat of fine white silk with breeches of aster-colour. A cloak of some dark material hung loosely over his shoulders. After reciting the formula of submission (‘Such a one, being a disciple of the Buddha Śākyamuni, does obeisance to him and craves that in the moonlit shelter of the Tree of Knowledge he may seek refuge from the clouds of sorrow and death’) he began in a low voice to read a passage from the Scriptures. The sunset, the light from the sea, the towering hills cast so strange a radiance upon him as he stood reading from the book, that to those who watched he seemed like some visitant from another world. Out beyond the bay a line of boats was passing, the fishermen singing as they rowed. So far off were these boats that they looked like a convoy of small birds afloat upon the high seas. With the sound of oars was subtly blended the crying of wild-geese, each wanderer’s lament swiftly matched by the voice of his close-following mate. How different his lot to theirs! And Genji raised his sleeve to brush away the tears that had begun to flow. As he did so the whiteness of his hand flashed against the black wooden beads of his rosary. Here indeed, thought those who were with him, was beauty enough to console them for the absence of the women whom they had left behind.

Among his followers was that same Ukon who had gone with him to the old Emperor’s tomb. Ukon’s father had become Governor of Hitachi and was anxious that he should join him in his province. He had chosen instead to go with Genji to Suma. The decision cost him a bitter struggle, but from Genji he hid all this, and appeared to be quite eager for the journey. This man, pointing to the wild-geese above, now recited the poem: ‘Like flocks that unafraid explore the shifting highways of the air, I have no fear but that my leader should outwing me in the empty sky.’

About this time the Secretary to the Viceroy came back to Court. As he was travelling with his wife, daughters and a very large staff of attendants he preferred to make the whole journey by water. They were proceeding in a leisurely fashion along the coast and had intended to stop at Suma which was said to be the most beautiful bay of all, when they heard that Genji was living there. The giddy young persons in the boat were immediately in the wildest state of excitement, though their father showed no signs of putting them ashore. If the other sisters, who did not know Genji, were in a flutter, it may be imagined what a commotion was going on in the breast of Lady Gosechi.[13] She could indeed hardly restrain herself from cutting the tow-cord, and when the boat put in so near the shore that a faint sound of string-music could be heard floating down from Genji’s cottage, the beauty of the shore, the proximity of so interesting a personage and the interrupted strains of the tune combined to make a powerful impression upon the imaginations of these young people, and the tears came into their eyes. The Secretary sent the following letter ashore: ‘I had hoped that after my long absence it would be from your lips that I should first hear all the gossip of the Capital. I now learn to my intense surprise and, if you will allow me to say so, to my deep regret, that you are at present living in retirement in this remote place. As we are a large and mixed party, I must excuse myself from troubling you, but I hope to have the pleasure of your society upon some other occasion.’ This letter was brought by his son the Governor of Echizen, a nobleman who had been one of Genji’s equerries and had been treated by him with particular kindness. He was distressed at his former master’s ill fortune and did not wish to seem ungrateful; but he knew that there were persons in his father’s train who had their eye upon him and would, if he lingered in Genji’s company, denounce him to the authorities. He therefore handed in the letter and at once hurried away. ‘You are the first of my friends to visit me since I left the Capital,’ said Genji. ‘I cannot sufficiently thank you for sparing me so much of your time....’ His reply to the Viceroy’s letter was couched in much the same terms. The young Governor returned in very low spirits, and his account of what he had seen and heard provoked loud expressions of sympathy not only from the ladies of the party but also from the Viceroy himself. Lady Gosechi contrived to send a short message on her own account, together with the poem: ‘Little you guessed that at the sound of your distant lute one hand was near indeed to severing the tow-cord of the boat.’ ‘Do not think me forward if under these strange circumstances I have ventured once more to address you,’ she added. He smiled as he read the letter. She seemed to have become very demure. ‘Had you in truth been minded to visit me, what easier than to cut the cable that drags you past this shore?’ So he wrote and again: ‘You are a little taken aback, I think, to find me “among the fishers at their toil.”’ So much did he long for some distraction that he would indeed have been delighted if she had found courage to come ashore; nor is this strange when we remember how not far away from this same place a mighty exile[14] found solace in the company of an ostler.

In the Capital Genji’s absence was still universally deplored. His step-brothers and some of the noblemen with whom he was most intimate had in the early days of his exile sent sometimes to enquire about him and had composed elegies in his honour, to which he had replied. This soon reached Kōkiden’s ears. She was furious at this proof of his continued popularity: ‘It is unheard of,’ she burst out angrily, ‘that a man condemned of offences against the Government of his country should be allowed to live as he pleases and even share in the literary pastimes of the Court. There he sits (by the way I hear he has got a very pretty house!) railing all day at the Government, and no doubt experimenting on loyal servants of the Crown for all the world like that man in the History Book who declared that a stag was a horse.’[15] Henceforward Genji received no letters from Court.

The lady at the Nijō-in remained inconsolable. The servants in the eastern wing had at first been somewhat reluctant to transfer their services to her; but after a while her charming manners and amiable disposition completely won their hearts, and none of them showed any signs of seeking service elsewhere. Their employment had given them opportunity of observing, albeit at a distance, most of the great ladies of the Court. They were soon willing to allow that in beauty of character Murasaki far excelled them all, and they well understood why Genji had singled her out to be his pupil.

He, meanwhile, longed more and more to have her with him. But apart from the fact that the roughness of life at Suma would be utterly unsuited to her, he knew that his sending for her would be regarded as an impudent challenge to those who had achieved his downfall.

They were within easy distance of Akashi, and Yoshikiyo naturally thought of the strange lady whom he had once courted there, daughter of the eccentric recluse[16] who had made his home near the bay. He wrote to her several times, but received no reply. Finally a note came not from her but from her father, saying that he had something to tell Yoshikiyo and would be glad if he could find time to call. It was quite clear what this meant. The old man merely wanted to tell him that his suit was unwelcome. Yoshikiyo saw no point in going to the house on purpose to be snubbed, and left the letter unanswered. As a rule provincial governors seem to think that there are no reputable families in the land except those of other provincial governors, and it would never occur to them to marry their daughters into any other class. But this ex-Governor was a man who not only had ideas of his own but clung to them with passionate obstinacy. For years past, the sons of provincial officials had been courting his daughter, and one and all he had sent them about their business. His own notion of a husband was very different. Then came Genji’s arrival at Suma. So soon as he heard of it, the ex-Governor said to his wife: ‘I hear that Lady Kiritsubo’s boy, Prince Hikaru Genji, has got into some sort of trouble with the authorities and has come to live at Suma. I confess I am delighted to hear it. What a splendid opportunity for our girl....’

‘You must be mad!’ broke in the mother. ‘I have been told by people at Court, that he already keeps several ladies of the highest rank as his mistresses; and not content with that, it appears that he has now got into trouble about some lady in the Imperial Household. I cannot imagine why you suppose that a coxcomb of this kind is likely to take any interest in a simple, country girl....’ ‘You know nothing whatever about it,’ interrupted the father testily. ‘I have very good reasons for thinking as I do, and I must trouble you to fall in with my plans. I intend to invite Prince Genji over here at the earliest possible opportunity.’ He now spoke in a gentler tone, but it was evident that he meant to have his own way, and to his wife’s consternation he began to make the most lavish preparations for Genji’s entertainment.’ I cannot imagine,’ she said, ‘why you are so set upon marrying our daughter to this man. However exalted his position may once have been, that does not alter the fact that he has now been expelled from the City as a criminal. Even if by any chance he did take a fancy to her, the idea of accepting such a person as our son-in-law is one which you cannot surely entertain even as a joke....’ ‘What is all this about criminals?’ he growled. ‘Surely you know that some of the most distinguished men in history both here and in China have been forced at one time or another to retire from Court. There is nothing disgraceful about it. Just consider for a moment who this prince is. His mother was the daughter of my own uncle, the late Inspector of Provinces, who having made a name for himself by his public services was able to obtain for her a position in the Imperial Palace. Here she at once became the idol of our beloved Monarch, and although the very exceptional favour with which she was treated aroused a good deal of jealousy and in the end brought about her undoing, her career cannot be considered unsuccessful, since she became the mother of His Majesty’s most cherished son. In short, the family with which his august father was not ashamed to ally himself is surely good enough for this young prince, and though our daughter is a country-bred girl, I do not think you will find he turns up his nose at her....’

The young woman in question was not remarkably handsome, but she had considerable distinction and charm. Indeed many of the greatest ladies at Court had, so far as good looks went, far less to boast of. She was painfully conscious of her own deficiencies and had made up her mind that no one of good position would ever take any notice of her. Men of her own rank in life she knew that she had no opportunity of meeting. Sooner or later her parents would die, and then she would either become a nun or else drown herself in the sea; she was not sure which. Her father brought her up with extreme strictness, and her only outings were pilgrimages to the Shrine of Sumiyoshi, whither he brought her regularly twice a year, secretly hoping that the God would be moved to assist his ambitious designs.

The New Year had begun. The days were growing longer and already there was a faint show of blossom on the cherry-trees which Genji had planted in his garden at Suma. The weather was delightful, and sitting idly in the sunshine he recalled a thousand incidents that were linked in his mind with former springs. The twentieth day of the second month! It was just a year ago that he left the Capital. All those painful scenes of farewell came back vividly to his mind, bringing with them a new access of longing. The cherry-trees of the Southern Hall must now be in full bloom. He remembered the wonderful Flower Feast of six years ago, saw his father’s face, the elegant figure of the young Crown Prince; and verses from the poems which he had himself made on that occasion floated back into his mind.

All this while Tō no Chūjō had been living at the Great Hall, with very little indeed to amuse him. He had been put down again into the Fourth Rank and was very much discouraged. It was essential to his prospects that he should not come under any further suspicion, but he was an affectionate creature and finding himself longing more and more for Genji’s society, he determined, even at the cost of offending the Government, to set out at once for Suma. The complete unexpectedness of his visit made it all the more cheering and delightful. He was soon admiring Genji’s rustic house, which seemed to him the most extraordinary place to be living in. He thought it more like some legendary hermit’s hut in a Chinese book than a real cottage. Indeed the whole place might have come straight out of a picture, with its hedge of wattled bamboo, the steps of unhewn stone, the stout pine-wood pillars and general air of improvisation. Chūjō was enchanted by the strangeness of it all. Genji was dressed in peasant style with a grey hunting-cloak and outer breeches over a suit of russet-brown. The way in which he played up to this rustic costume struck Chūjō as highly absurd and at the same time delighted him. The furniture was all of the simplest kind and even Genji’s seat was not divided off in any way from the rest of the room. Near it lay boards for the games of go and sugaroku, and chessmen, with other such gear as is met with in country houses. The meals, which were necessarily of a somewhat makeshift character, seemed to Chūjō positively exciting. One day some fishermen arrived with cockles to sell. Genji sent for them and inspected their catch. He questioned them about their trade and learned something of the life led year in and year out by those whose homes were on this shore. It was a story of painful unremitting toil, and though they told it in a jargon which he could only half understand, he realized with compassion that their feelings were, after all, very much like his own. He made them handsome presents from his wardrobe and they felt that these shells had indeed been life-giving.[17]

The stable was quite close by and in full view of the cottage. It amused Chūjō to watch the labourers fetching rice-husks from a queer building which seemed to be a sort of store-house or granary and using them as provender for the horses; and he would sing the ballad: ‘Sweet is the shade....’[18]

He had of course a great deal to tell to his friend, and it was sometimes with laughter, sometimes with tears that they went step by step over all that had happened in the long months of their separation. There were many stories of Aoi’s little son, happily still too young to understand what was going on in the world around him, of the old Minister, who now was sunk into a state of unremitting melancholy, and of a thousand other happenings at the Great Hall and Court, which could not possibly be recounted in full and would lose all interest if told incompletely. Neither of them had any inclination to sleep, and at dawn they were still exchanging Chinese odes.

Though Chūjō had said that he no longer cared what the authorities thought of him, he was reluctant to aggravate his offence by lingering on this forbidden shore, and he now announced that he must start for home again immediately. This was a terrible blow to Genji who knew that so short a visit would leave him even more wretched than before. Wine was brought and as they drank the farewell cup they murmured in unison the words of Po Chü-i’s parting poem: