Summary
Genji istill 17 years old.
At this time, Genji was frequently making amorous visits to a high-class lady
who was older than himself. She was known as the Rokujo Haven (Rokujo-no-miyasundokoro), or sometimes just the Rokujo Lady, and she was
a princess from a former Emperor who had long-since passed away. Her husband was a Crown Prince who would have become Emperor but he died prematurely leaving his widow with out recourse or support at court. She was high ranking, extremely beautiful, elegant, sophisticated, and intelligent. However, once her husbandhad passed away the Rokujō Haven lost most of her power and standing among the court, robbing her of her ambition to be somebodyin Heian Court circles. That's why attention from Genji was at least something which made her feel valued and valuable again.
One day as
he traveled to visit this lady, Genji stopped in Gojo to see his old wet-nurse
who was not well. In a neighboring yard he notices some delightful moonflowers
and orders his servant to pick him one. As the man is doing so, a pretty girl comse
out from the adjacent house and offers him a fan. "It is a somewhat awkward
flower to carry" she said "so please lay it on this fan." On
receiving it, Genji notices that there was a poem gracefully composed upon the
fan's surface, clearly written by a female hand. He wonders who the lady author
might be and what she was doing in such a lowly house. So he instructs his manservant, Koremitsu,
the son of his old wet nurse, to find out. Eventually, through Koremitsu's enquiries,
Genji was able to meet the lady and was immediately attracted to her. 'Yugao'
or 'Moonflower' (meaning, literally, 'an evening face') was the theme of the
poem, hence her "name" in the text..
On the night of the August 15th full moon, which Genji was spending at Yugao's
lowly lodgings, he decided, as dawn approached, to take her to a grand but deserted
mansion located nearby. The adventure proved fatal when the lovers were startled
by the face of a beautiful woman who appearedfirst in a dream, and then next to Yugao's pillow. It was
the living spirit of Rokujo-no-miyasundokoro and it was too much for poor Yugao
who died of the shock. Later, through Koremitsu's discrete arrangements, Genji
held Yugao's funeral but was himself so desolate that he fell ill and was confined
to bed for twenty days.
Genji later learns from Yugao's lady in waiting, Ukon, that Yugao had in fact
been the 'hidden wife' of Genji's great friend and brother- in-law To-no-Chujo,
the same lady referred to back on that rainy night discussion when the men were discussing
women and how to grade them. Ukon also revealed that Yugao had a three-year
old daughter and that she had been hiding out at the lodgings to escape To-no-Chujo's
jealous wife, Kita-no-kata. Ukon's service to Yugao was rewarded and Genji arranged
a position for her at his Nijo residence. It was also around this time that
Utsusemi left the area to join her husband on his return to the far off lands
of Iyo.
A poem from the Tale of Genji
Just like the Ise Monogatari, the Genji is full of "embedded" poems, and their meaninsg are often highlighted by the events and characters to which they refer.
The poem below is from Chapter 4, "Yugao." Prince Genji has a brief love affair with a young girl, called Yugao. But there is another lady, the very elegant and courtly Rokujo Haven, who is deeply in love with Genji, and who hates Yugao so much that her spirit haunts the young girl and she dies. Yes, at that time people believed that hatred can kill people!
After the funeral of Yugao, Genji is looking at the smoke from the pyre, and recites this poem (Helen McCullough's Translation):
The evening sky itself
becomes something to cherish
when I gaze at it,
seeing in one of the clouds
the smoke from her funeral pyre
It also is important to know that Yuugao's name means "Evening Faces." Therefore, Genji's reference to "being deeply intimate with the evening sky" refers to the love he shared with Yugao.
The poem in classical Japanese:
見し人の
煙を雲と
眺むれば
夕べの空も
むつましきかな
mishi hito no
keburi o kumo to
nagamureba
yube no sora mo
mutsumashiki ka na
Mishi is the rentaikei or attributive form (when a verb modifies a noun) of miki, which is the past of miru, to see. The rentaikei form is used when a verb is set before a noun as an adjective. In modern Japanese, we would say mita hito, the person who is seen. In this case it means "beloved person."
Mutsumashiki would be mutsumajii in modern Japanese. It meams "intimate, harmonious."
NOTE: Royall Tyler translates the poem slightly differently (see p. 82):
When the clouds to me always seem to be
the smoke that rose from her pyre,
how fondly I rest my gaze
even on the evening sky.
In both cases, the smoke from her funeral pyre is equated with the clouds visible in the evening sky and when the poet gazes upon them, memories of the young woman, her untimely death and her hasty cremation, come flooding back to him. Pain and loss are inseparable from this sight which comes before his eyes and sparks memories.
See also these general comments:
The Genji Monogatari
The Tale of Genji (The Genji Monogatari) is the great classic of Japanese literature. It was being written in the first years of the 11th century (so just a thousand years ago) by a lady at court, Murasaki Shikibu, and runs to 1200 pages in English translation. There are now two full translations, one, published beginning in 1929, by Arthur Waley, the second, published in 1976, by Edward Seidensticker. It is frequently called the first great novel in world literature, for it is prose narrative, but laced with waka, as that was presented as almost the standard courtly medium of dialogue. The first two thirds of the book are the story of Genji, the "Shining Prince," opening with his experience as a young lover, as he moves from one woman to another. Then, as Genji grows older, the book does deal with more extended relationships, particularly with his second wife, Murasaki, and with his political fortunes--both out of power, in exile, and in power. As a hero, Genji is not a fighter, comes before the samurai warrior ideal makes its entry into Japanese literature, a few hundred years later He is a dancer, a singer, a poet--a man of all arts--and, above all, a lover. And the book as a whole is not "The Tale of Genji." Two-thirds of the way through the book, chapter 42 opens with the sentence "Genji is dead," and the central character in the last third is Kaoru, thought to be Genji's son, but actually the son of his friend Kashiwagi. The book is not structured as most Western novels are, for, while generally chronological, and while one complication does lead to another, for a Western reader there seems to be relatively little attention given to plot--the author is interested in her characters (as Kawabata still is). But its narrative substance, and, above all, that glorious Heian milieu, have provided the story material and characters for much of the important fiction and drama that has followed in the thousand years of Japanese literature since it was written.
In the early chapters, the character of the young Genji is central. He is a son of the emperor, so a prince, and in natural capacities a "shining" prince, but his mother was a lesser lady of the court, so his inherent charm breeds jealousy in many others of superior station, and his mother dies when he is just an infant,which means that he absolutely depends upon the favor of his father--which, in general, he has. In his romantic affairs, he seems at times to be chasing the memory of his mother. In the early chapters it is as if the young Genji has a new woman in each chapter, and clearly the memory of his mother attracts him to some of them. He has an affair with one of the emperors concubines, Fujitsubo, who reminds everyone of Genji's mother, and she then has his child, though it is thought to be the emperor's--which causes many problems later.
Murasaki could be called the heroine of the novel, is the most attractive female. Genji first sees her when she is still a child (and he is but seventeen, though already an experienced lover), from a distance, when he is at a retreat recovering from a particularly traumatic love affair which has resulted in the death of the woman, Yugao. He is so taken by Murasaki that he "kidnaps" her from her grandmother, a nun, and then undertakes to train her to be the perfect wife. This is a provocative idea in any culture, and it is fascinating to see how this sophisticated court lady of 1000 years ago works out the details of the relationship.
Generally acknowledged as the best critical study of this novel in English is Ivan Morris's The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan (Oxford University Press, 1964).