Introduction

Notes

All translations from the Japanese are mine unless otherwise indi- cated. I cross-reference citations from Genji monogatari to their location in the complete English translation by Royall Tyler listed below and cross-reference to complete English translations of works other than Genji monogatari where possible.

Introduction

1 The term “real-and-imagined” is borrowed from Soja, who develops the concept in dialogue with Lefebvre’s analysis of how space is produced via (1) spatial practices, (2) representations of space, and (3) representational spaces. Lefebvre’s “representational spaces” provide key elements of Soja’s notion of the real-and- imagined. Both concepts emphasize a dialogic relationship between material/ historical spatial productions and imaginary or representational ones: “The representational space . . . overlays physical space, making symbolic use of its objects. . . . Representational spaces . . . need obey no rules of consistency or cohesiveness. Redolent with imaginary and symbolic elements, they have their source in history—in the history of a people as well as in the history of each individual belonging to that people.” Lefebvre, Production of Space, 33–42; Soja, Thirdspace, 74–82. 2 Ueshima, “Daikibozōei no jidai,” 15–94. The “mid-Heian period” refers roughly to 900–1050, when heads of the northern house of the Fujiwara consolidated their hold on imperial marriage politics and came to wield nearly hegemonic authority over the imperial court as regents and chancellors. 3 TheGenji narrator makes this comment in describing the first round of illustrated tales assembled in the picture contest in chapter 17 (Eawase). NKBZ 13:370; T 325. 4 Taketori monogatari, 55. As Pandey points out, the concept of mi (身) “makes no distinction between the physical body and what we might call the psychic, social, or cultural body; indeed mi extends beyond the body to signify a self . . . that is meaningful only as a social entity” (Perfumed Sleeves, 23–24). Yet I note that the idea that a woman’s physicality overdetermines her social identity surfaces as a focus of feminine discontent at the inception of the genre of court fiction, casting women’s roles in the elite family as particularly constricted. Kojima

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characterizes the Bamboo Cutter as “the old man who becomes the head of a patriarchal house” (ie fuchō ni naru okina) (“Hikaru Genji no shintai,” 43). 5 I follow usage established by William McCullough and others in translating the terms kado/mon (gate) as “sublineage,” and ie as either “house,” “lineage,” “family,” or “mansion.” McCullough cautions against confusing Heian notions of the house with later, less ambiguous conceptualizations of ie that emerged under the influence of decidedly patriarchal definitions of marriage and property -in heritance. See McCullough, “The Capital and Its Society,” 128–35. For a succinct discussion of the Heian notion of house or ie, with emphasis on its distinctions from early medieval conceptualizations of the house, see Mass, Lordship and Inheritance, 9–36. For a discussion of the development of medieval (as opposed to mid-Heian) ie from the perspective of women’s history, see Wakita, Women in Medieval Japan, chapter 1. 6 Readers unfamiliar with so-called sekkanke politics, whereby the northern branch of the Fujiwara family became de facto rulers by controlling the positions of imperial regent (sesshō) and chancellor (kanpaku), are encouraged to consult Appendix A, “Some Notes on Rank and Office,” in McCullough and McCullough, Tale of Flowering Fortunes, 2:789–831. For analysis of the influence wielded by high-ranking Fujiwara women of the inner palace, especially Michinaga’s sister, Fujiwara no Senshi (961–1001), and later his daughter, Fujiwara no Shōshi, see Fukutō with Watanabe, “From Female Sovereign to Mother of the Nation,” 29–32. 7 The entrance of Murasaki Shikibu’s mistress, Fujiwara no Shōshi (988–1074), into the entourage of Emperor Ichijō (r. 986–1011) heralded the rise of her father, Fujiwara no Michinaga (966–1028), to dominance over imperial court politics. Emperor Ichijō already had an empress, Shōshi’s paternal first cousin Fujiwara no Teishi (976–1001), who bore him two sons. The eclipse of Teishi and her children by her cousin was a swift final chapter in the rivalry between the sub- lineages represented by the two empresses’ fathers, Fujiwara no Michinaga and his elder brother Fujiwara no Michitaka (953–995). When then-regent Michitaka died unexpectedly, followed by the death of his next eldest brother, Michikane (961–995), the way was clear for Michinaga’s rise to an unassailable position of influence. He became head of the northern Fujiwara uji( no chōja), father-in-law to Emperor Ichijō, and eventually imperial regent (sesshō) and maternal grandfather to two more emperors, Goichijō and Gosuzaku, who were sons of his daughter, Empress Shōshi, a figure of influence at court in her own right. 8 For analysis of cultural strategies used by emperors Uda (r. 887–897) and Daigo (r. 897–930), including the “prominent role played by mansions” in struggles to thwart the emerging Fujiwara regents’ encroachments on imperial authority, see Heldt, The Pursuit of Harmony, 89–105. 9 I borrow the phrase “emotional realism” from Washburn, The Tale of Genji, xxxii. 10 “The Tale of Genji,” 313–14. 11 Washburn, The Tale of Genji, xxxiv. 12 Splendor of Longing, 14; 16.

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13 For a critique of the textually oriented methods kokubungaku scholarship used in twentieth-century analyses of Heian women’s writings (kana bungaku), see Yoda, Gender and National Literature, chapter 5. 14 There is a voluminous secondary literature in Japanese on narrative voice in the Genji. Beginning in the 1970s with scholars connected to the Monogatari Kenkyūkai, narratologically informed analyses (hyōgen ron) of the Genji and other Heian court tales bring the lexicon of medieval Genji commentators into fruitful dialogue with structuralist and post-structuralist theory. In English, Stinchecum’s still highly relevant article “Who Tells the Tale?” makes good use of French structuralist and Russian formalist analyses to illuminate narrative technique in the last ten chapters of the tale. Bowring succinctly summarizes issues of narrative voice in chapter 3 of his Murasaki Shikibu: “The Tale of Genji.” Okada, in Figures of Resistance and in a later article “Speaking For,” theorizes narrative voice in the Genji and other mid-Heian court tales in terms of the structures of surrogacy subtending Heian aristocratic society as a whole. 15 Said of Genji monogatari by one of the speakers in Mumyōzōshi (The Nameless Notebook, ca. 1202), one of the earliest surviving metafictional tales in Japanese literary history (MMZ 24). The hero Genji uses essentially the same terms, describing tales as “diverting things” (magiruru koto) that “beguile us when we are bored” (tsurezure o nagusame), in his discussion of fiction with Tamakazura in chapter 25 (Hotaru). NKBZ 14:203; T 461. 16 Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel,” in The Dialogic Imagination, 259–422. Wash- burn makes a persuasive case for fruitful comparisons between the hetero glossic discourse of the Genji and of the modern novel in the introduction to his translation of The Tale of Genji, xxviii–xxxiv. 17 TheGenji ’s many depictions of the consciousness of individual characters invite analysis that draws on current discussions of cognitive poetics and theory of mind. I have found particularly informative Zunshine, Why We Read Fiction; also Aldama (ed.), Toward a Cognitive Theory. For analyses that hew closer to classic narratological approaches, see Cohn’s pioneering study of interiority in the Anglo-European novel, Transparent Minds. There are two excellent studies exploring the Genji’s presentation of its characters’ consciousness. See Buckley, “En-gendering Subjectivity,” 88–94; Cavanaugh, “Thinking about Thinking.” 18 This is a feature the Genji shares with novelistic fictions from other cultural con- texts. As Alex Woloch notes, “our sense of the human figure is inseparable from the space that he or she occupies within the narrative totality. . . . The discrete representation of any specific individual is intertwined with the narrative’s con- tinual apportioning of attention to different characters who jostle for limited space within the same fictional universe” The( One vs. the Many, 13). 19 Tamagami Takuya estimates a total of roughly 500 characters. Their names are seldom fixed; most are not proper names at all but sobriquets based on a character’s residence or court title, or in the case of female characters, by one of her close male relatives—conventions that parallel naming practices among actual Heian elites (“Genji monogatari sakujū jinbutsu,” 420–31). For more on

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naming practices in the Genji, see chapter 1 of this study. For the sake of non- specialist readers, I use conventional sobriquets for the Genji characters through out this study. 20 Woloch, The One vs. the Many, 14. 21 Pandey, Perfumed Sleeves, 29. 22 NKBZ 14:445–46; T 570–71. 23 The phrase is borrowed from Mass, who uses it to describe house/family ie( ) systems among actual Heian elites, not their representation in fiction of the era (Lordship and Inheritance, 11). 24 TheTale of Genji is traditionally understood as falling into three parts: chapters 1–33, which chronicle Genji’s fortunes from youth to the apex of his political career (his accession to the title of honorary retired emperor and his birth daughter’s presentation at the imperial palace as consort to the heir apparent); chapters 34–41, which narrate the decline of Genji’s personal fortunes; and chapters 42–54, which track the destinies of his heirs, especially Kaoru. 25 Seasoned readers may protest that Lady Rokujō, also a widow in the ten chapters in which she appears as a living heroine, plays a similar role in directing her daughter’s marriage. Unlike the figure of Tamakazura as widow, however, Lady Rokujō’s image as a female householder is overshadowed by the account of her romantic entanglement with Genji and her posthumous ghostly presence in the mansion Genji builds on the site of her former palace. 26 Stinchecum, “Who Tells the Tale?,” 375–403, especially 388. 27 Schalow, Poetics of Courtly Male Friendship, 166. 28 Monogatari bungaku no hōhō, 2:347–93. 29 Disaster of the Third Princess, 168. With Tyler’s emphasis on character disintegra- tion in the Uji chapters, the conversation comes full circle from Ivan Morris and Andrew Pekarik who, citing Arthur Waley, argued that the Uji characters in particular “are so convincingly and complexly drawn that it is natural to think of them as people rather than fictional characters” (Morris and Pekarik, “Decep tion and Self-Deception,” 148). 30 Antinomies of Realism, 96.

Chapter One

1 Tonomura, “Black Hair and Red Trousers,” 135. 2 There is a general consensus that beginning in the ninth century, elite women grad- ually lost agency in marital matters, as the authority to make and end marital alliances shifted from daughters to fathers. See Sekiguchi Hiroko, Nihon kodai kon’ishi no kenkyū, 2:100–200; Sekiguchi Hiroko, “The Patriarchal Family Par- adigm,” 27–46. 3 The Heian terms associated with a deliberate ending of a marriage are the phrases toko hanaru, literally “to leave the bed,” and toko hanare, “distant from the bed.” The author of Kagerō nikki describes making this type of residence change in response to the attenuation of her ties to Fujiwara no Kaneie. Kagerō nikki,

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347–49; Arntzen (trans.), The Kagerō Diary, 326–27. As Sekiguchi Hiroko notes, “if a wife felt that she had lost her capacity to attract her husband sexually, it came to be thought of as refined behavior for her to separate from him before he could divorce her” (“The Patriarchal Family Paradigm,” 40). 4 See William McCullough, “The Capital and Its Society,” 134–42; William Mc- Cullough, “Japanese Marriage Institutions.” 5 Sekiguchi Hiroko notes: “These types of residence and family units are best seen as descriptions of different stages in a cycle rather than as fixed structures” (“The Patriarchal Family Paradigm,” 38). 6 William McCullough has argued that nonroyal marriages in the mid-Heian period were never virilocal (“Japanese Marriage Institutions,” 105–6). See also Nicker- son, “The Meaning of Matrilocality,” 432n6. Heian fiction, as we will see, tells a different tale. 7 Historians find this rise significant because it locates the origin of crucial shifts in marriage practices at a point predating the fusion of warrior and civil culture, which began in the thirteenth century (William McCullough, “Japanese Mar- riage Institutions,” 112). Tonomura confirms a late Heian preference for neolocal marriage by citing two surveys of marriage types and residence patterns that draw primarily on Konjaku monogatari shū, a twelfth-century collection of short tales (setsuwa). Both surveys conclude that neolocal arrangements outnumber uxorilocal, duolocal, and virilocal arrangements (“Black Hair and Red Trousers,” 135n31). 8 The house is the Sanjō mansion that had belonged to Princess Ōmiya, Tō no Chū- jō’s mother and the grandmother of both Yūgiri and Kumoi no Kari. The mansion is Yūgiri’s natal home, but a son does not normally inherit his mother’s house unless he has no sister. Like Genji, Yūgiri is his late mother’s only child. 9 Yoshimura, “Yūgiri no ie to suji,” 317–27. As Nickerson puts it, “when the neolocal residence was provided by the wife’s father, his influence was perpetuated through his status as benefactor and his ability to pass on title to the house di- rectly to his daughter” (“The Meaning of Matrilocality,” 439). 10 Kagerō nikki, 209; Arntzen (trans.), The Kagerō Diary, 174–75. Ultimately it appears that Kaneie established none of his several wives in this mansion. 11 Sarashina nikki, 317; Arntzen and Itō (trans.), The Sarashina Diary, 142. 12 NKBZ 12:126; T 18. 13 For further analysis of the romanticization of neolocal marital residences, see Ramirez-Christensen, “Self-Representation and the Patriarchy,” 78. 14 NKBZ 12:93; T 3. 15 See Wakita, Women in Medieval Japan, 13–21. 16 The Court Society, 47. 17 Thirdspace, 10. 18 Sources differ on the exact dimensions and distribution of buildings in the inner palace. Hérail puts the inner palace compound at 218 meters north to south by 176 meters east to west. The space is roughly comparable to any mansion that occupied two “blocks” or machi, such as the Tsuchimikado, home to Fujiwara no Michinaga, which measured 240 meters north to south and 119 meters east

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to west. Hérail, Emperor and Aristocracy, 92–96; McCullough and McCullough (trans.), Tale of Flowering Fortunes, 2:845n23. 19 William McCullough, “The Capital and Its Society,” 115–16, 127; Hérail, Emperor and Aristocracy, 87–92; Murai, “Densha: Kōkyū no seikatsu,” 87–98. 20 The mansions of the Heian aristocracy, including the structures of the inner palace and the palaces of retired emperors (in no gosho) are now spoken of as variants of the shindenzukuri style, but the term is anachronistic. It came into use among scholars of classical texts in the Edo period (1600–1868). Sekiguchi Tsutomu, “Sumai to kazoku no kōsei,” 200–201. The terms used in Heian-period texts for aristocratic residences refer simply to structures within such compounds: the main hall (shinden), sometimes also called the house (ie); the opposing wings (tai, tai no ya), often characterized by their positionality—“eastern wing” hi( - gashi no tai), “western wing” (nishi no tai), “north wing” (kita no tai); and the covered bridgeways (watadono) that linked them. 21 On women’s ability to own, inherit, and bequeath property in the mid- and late Heian period, see Mass, Lordship and Inheritance, 9–36; Wakita, “Marriage and Property in Premodern Japan,” 78–87. 22 Ramirez-Christensen, “Self-Representation and the Patriarchy,” 53. 23 Taketori monogatari, 91. 24 “Lacking any venue for future growth” is my translation for oisaki naki, literally, “lacking space to grow.” Makura no sōshi, 27–28. For a complete translation in English, see McKinney (trans.), The Pillow Book, 22–23. 25 The Chief Equerry, one of the four courtiers involved in the “Judgments of Women on a Rainy Night” episode in chapter 2 of the Genji, expresses exactly the dis- missive attitude toward women who serve at court that Sei seems to have been defending against: “These women who serve at court—those one might dally with now and then—their relentlessly witty elegance may be amusing while you are seeing them but if you are yearning for someone whom you might properly visit and not forget, well, that sort of light-minded forwardness on her part will cause a rift. I took my cues from what I heard that night, and broke with her.” NKBZ 12:155–56; T 31. 26 TheGenji appears to be somewhat unusual in its use of these status-related distanc- ing techniques. In the late eleventh-century tale Yoru no nezame, for example, a sitting emperor plays a major role as one of the heroine’s suitors, and the narrator relentlessly exposes his interiority. See Peterson, “Re-Envisioning the Workings,” chapter 4. 27 As Takahashi Bunji has argued, the Genji narrator tends to confine concrete descriptions to characters, situations, and places that are old-fashioned or identifiable with cultural realms below the middle ranks to which Murasaki Shikibu belonged. Hence Yūgao’s lodgings and Suetsumuhana’s mansion and her physical appearance are described with particular vividness. “Heiankyō no fusai,” 121–33. 28 For what is known about Ariwara no Narihira, see Helen McCullough (trans.), Tales of Ise, 41–55; Newhard, Knowing the Amorous Man, 30–35. 29 Female characters are also sometimes identified asirogonomi in tenth- and

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eleventh-century tales (Takahashi Tōru, Irogonomi no bungaku, 29–32, 38). For a thoughtful discussion of the concept of irogonomi and its connections to the associated term suki, see Pandey, Writing and Renunciation, 83–91. The terms sukimono and mamebito typically refer to fictionalized aristocrats, not fictional sovereigns—although in mid-Heian texts, characters described as irogonomi usually have imperial bloodlines on one side of their pedigree. Takahashi Tōru, Irogonomi no bungaku, 30, 61–62; Pandey, Writing and Renunciation, 83–85. 30 Moriya, “Kagerō nikki zenshi,” 43–61; Mostow, “The Amorous Statesman,” 305–15. 31 Steininger, Chinese Literary Forms, 26–27. 32 Taketori monogatari, 54. 33 Heichū monogatari, 461–543. For a complete translation in English, see Videen, Tales of Heichū. The type is identifiable even in the absence of the label. As Takahashi Tōru notes, the term “irogonomi”—scarcely used in Ise monogatari and Yamato monogatari (mid-tenth century)—does not appear at all in Heichū monogatari. Irogonomi no bungaku, 66–67. 34 There are only four instances of the term irogonomi in the Genji if one counts the verb irogonomu. Its synonyms appear with far greater frequency: the Genji monogatari taisei lists 130 words related to suki and suku appearing in the tale. Takahashi Tōru, Irogonomi no bungaku, 28, 36. 35 NKBZ 12:134; T 23. 36 My search for usages of mamebito in the Genji yielded fourteen results. This is relatively high compared with other tales and memoirs of the decades immediately preceding it. There are three instances listed forUtsuho monogatari, and one case each in Ochikubo monogatari, Makura no sōshi, and Murasaki Shikibu nikki. 37 “Atemiya: A Translation,” 289. 38 Takahashi Tōru, Irogonomi no bungaku, 53–56. 39 Yūgiri’s construction as a filial son who is critical of his own father’s decidedly un-Confucian behavior echoes the profile of the hero Nakatada in Utsuho monogatari, a tale that thematizes the vicissitudes of scholar-officials, a class that was becoming increasingly marginalized by changes in the court bureaucracy in the late tenth century. Takahashi Tōru, Irogonomi no bungaku, 50–54; Steininger, Chinese Literary Forms, 19–27, 31–34. 40 NKBZ 14:168–69, 172–73; T 446, 448. 41 Takahashi Tōru argues that the mamebito and sukibito hero types the Genji inherits from Utsuho monogatari are combined in the characterization of Genji. Because he bears attributes of both types, his characterization generates a “par- adoxical ambivalence” that widens the range of possibilities for court fiction (Irogonomi no bungaku, 53–56). 42 For a study of how the principal wife (kita no mandokoro) of an actual Fujiwara regent exercised agency within her household, see Blair, “Ladylike Religion,” 1–22. 43 “Relationship between the Romance,” 112. 44 Similar anxieties about manifestations of the resentful dead within the mansions and bodies of the living can be seen in narratives of spirit possession and inter- familial rivalry in Eiga monogatari. See Watanabe, “Buried Mothers.”

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45 House restoration also figures as a medium for productive dialogue with the dead in Utsuho monogatari, notably when the hero Nakatada restores the neglected mansion of his maternal grandfather in order to provide a propitious site where his mother might transmit her sublineage’s miraculously acquired musical skills to her granddaughter Inumiya (SNKBZ 16:455–57). 46 Taking Orikuchi Shinobu’s essays on chinkon (ritual pacification of spirits) as a point of departure, Fujii sees the refurbishment of mansions as significant transactions between the living and the dead in the Genji (Genji monogatari no shigen, chapter 8). Haraoka’s refinements of Fujii’s thesis have also influenced my readings of the role of house construction in the first part of the Genji. See Genji monogatari no jinbutsu, 48–94. For a study of connections between literary texts and modes of ritual spirit pacification, see Plutschow, Chaos and Cos- mos; Takahashi Bunji, Monogatari chinkonron. 47 Fujimoto finds few sources prior to the Genji that contain accounts of spirit possession motivated by the jealousy of a wife (Genji monogatari no “mono no ke,” 38). 48 Bargen, A Woman’s Weapon. 49 See Fujii, Genji monogatari no shigen, chapter 8; Fujii, “Rokujō miyasudokoro no mono no ke,” 42–45. 50 “Text and Textile,” 598–99. 51 “Text and Textile,” 597. 52 Morris, World of the Shining Prince, remains the most influential example of this trend. 53 Mostow, “The Amorous Statesman,” 3. 54 Kagerō nikki, 310; Arntzen (trans.), The Kagerō Diary, 285. 55 Normally, only the mansions of great ministers (daijin) or those of higher status could sport gates of four pillars (literally, four legs). Kagerō nikki, 309n16. 56 Kagerō nikki, 309–10; Arntzen (trans.), The Kagerō Diary, 285. 57 The phrasing is odorokite“ hiki iru to mishi”; literally, “in surprise [I /she] pulled [it to me/her] and looked at [what] was in[scribed there].” 58 The girl’s adoption is deeply imbricated, of course, with the memoirist’s hopes for Michitsuna’s future career. The sequence suggests she was imagining grooming the daughter for presentation in the Rear Court, with Michitsuna as the girl’s backer (ushiromi). 59 Uemura (ed.), Kagerō nikki kaishaku taisei, 6:164–66. The Akashi Priest’s dream is detailed in his final letter to his daughter. NKBZ 15:105–6; T 610–11.

Chapter Two

1 I follow scholarly convention in calling the mansion the “Rokujōin”; in fact, the mansion’s sobriquets include the Rokujō-dono, the Rokujōin, and less specific toponyms, particularly before Genji is promoted to the position of “honorary retired emperor” or “in”—in chapter 33 (Fuji no uraba). See Suzuki Wataru, “Dairi to ingosho no kenchiku,” 89.

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2 The Nijō Tōin is completed in chapter 18 Matsukaze( ) when Genji is thirty-one, and the Rokujōin at the end of chapter 21 (Otome) when he is thirty-five. Characters’ ages follow the traditional Japanese method of counting: a child is in his or her first year during the calendar year of birth and becomes two with the new year. For a concise explanation of this practice, see T xxviii. 3 Takahashi Tōru calls attention to the functional homologies underlying Heian tale literature and hihina asobi (doll-play) (Genji monogatari no shigaku, 570–81). For an analysis of readers’ affective attachment to fictional characters and the usefulness of research on “theory of mind” to the study of fictional narrative, see Vermeule, Why Do We Care, chapter 2. 4 NKBZ 12:93; T 3. 5 NKBZ 12:96; T 4. 6 NKBZ 12:96; T 4. 7 NKBZ 12:95; T 4. 8 NKBZ 12:125; T 17. 9 NKBZ 12:125; T 17. Before Genji’s marriage to Aoi, there had been talk of marrying her to Suzaku, the heir apparent. That her father chose to wed her to Genji instead of a future emperor signifies the family’s loyalty to the Kiritsubo Emperor (Aoi’s mother is the emperor’s full sister), but it is easy to imagine that some household members—notably Aoi and her female attendants—might have been disappointed by the nonroyal match. 10 The Heian term for ritual pacification of unquiet spirits, tama shizume, does not appear in these passages, but the emperor’s wish to realize the Kiritsubo lineage’s unanswered prayers and thus placate Genji’s grandmother’s lingering grudge (urami) is implicitly the primary motivation for his actions. See Hara- oka, Genji monogatari no jinbutsu, 64–69. See also the entry for “tamashizume no matsuri” (festival for the pacification of spirits) in Ōbunsha kogo jiten, 765–66. 11 Mitani Kuniaki, Genji monogatari shitsukeito, 149. 12 “Kakaru tokoro ni, omouyō naramu hito o suetesumabaya to nomi, nagekashū oboshiwataru.” NKBZ 12:126; T 18. The Genji is known for frequently represent- ing its characters’ unspoken thoughts and feelings as interior monologues (shin- naigo), and passages where the narrator’s voice converges with a character’s by means of free indirect discourse. On his use of italics to demarcate characters’ unspoken thoughts, see Washburn (trans.), The Tale of Genji, xxxvi. Washburn does not italicize the passage on Genji’s fantasy regarding the Nijōin. 13 Chapters in the Genji often call attention at their margins to their own open- endedness. The Kiritsubo chapter’s closing image of young Genji, yearning for a wife he might install in his refurbished natal home, invites the reader to an- ticipate the possibilities that might come into being because of a character’s wishes. In this way, the image of the family mansion doubles as a figure for narrative. The trope is not confined to the Tale of Genji. Lippit analyzes connections between visual depictions of literal thresholds and narrative events in the twelfth-century Genji monogatari emaki (Genji scrolls), noting that seventeen

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of the surviving twenty scroll paintings depict events that take place on the outer corridors of a mansion. “Figure and Facture in the Genji Scrolls,” 97. Aris- tocratic courtship, the theme that instigates many Heian narratives, is conventionally depicted as a process that takes place at the thresholds of a mansion. For a taxonomy of such scenes in the Genji and earlier tales, see Bargen, Map- ping Courtship and Kinship. 14 Genji’s discomfort with Aoi and her disappointment with him are only hinted at in the Kiritsubo chapter but recur so often as motifs in the chapters that follow that it comes as something of a surprise to first-time readers to learn at the beginning of chapter 9 (Aoi) that Aoi is pregnant after eight unhappy years of marriage to Genji. 15 Fujii argues that Genji’s father, in his “defiant” naming of Reizei as heir apparent before he himself abdicates in favor of Suzaku (thus depriving Suzaku of the privilege of naming his own successor), is also portrayed as consciously carry- ing out the “dying will of the [Kiritsubo] house” (ie no ishi 家の遺志). Linking “dying will of the house” to the related terms “last words/dying requests” (yuigon 遺言), and orphan, or “child left behind by death [of a parent]” iji( 遺児), Fujii sees the entire first part of the tale as narrating the realization of the dying requests of the Kiritsubo house. Genji monogatari no shigen, 122–23; 150–55. 16 Haraoka, Genji monogatari no jinbutsu, 69. 17 Fujii quipped, “the Tale of Genji could be called literature of the erotic surrogate” (Genji monogatari no shigen, 145). In English, both Field (Splendor of Longing) and Shirane (pursuing different emphases in Bridge of Dreams) explore the ex- tent to which various forms of surrogacy create a thematic network governing the characterizations of Genji heroines in relation to Genji and Kaoru. In their foregrounding of the poetic topos of the yukari (link; erotic surrogate) and the theme of pseudo incest, Field and Shirane build on extensive secondary literature in Japanese, especially works by Mitani Kuniaki, Takahashi Tōru, Mita mura Masako, and other scholars associated with the Monogatari Kenkyūkai. Okada (Figures of Resistance; “Speaking For”) explores surrogacy in relation to the tale’s diegetic structures. A central trope for Okada is the Genji narrator’s persona as someone like a wet nurse or lady-in-waiting who “speaks for” the characters whose experiences she mediates, just as actual wet nurses and ladies- in-waiting served as proxies for their charges and masters/mistresses. Okada’s arguments point to connections between the intersubjective characteristics of narrative voice in the Genji (the tale’s frequent use of free indirect discourse and interior monologue) and the social structures of proxy communication that formed part of everyday life among the Heian aristocracy. 18 Murasaki’s waka compositions provide some of the sites where the reader is afforded more direct access to her thoughts, however mediated by the conventions of poetry. Field explores at length the narrative’s focus on Murasaki’s “internal journey” toward self-awareness (much of it mediated by her poetic compositions), which accelerates in the Wakana chapters after Genji marries the Third Princess Splendor( of Longing, 180–98, see especially 182–86). 19 NKBZ 12:280–81; T 86.

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20 Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 155. 21 NKBZ 12:332–33; T 107. 22 NKBZ 12:319; T 102. 23 NKBZ 12:335–36; T 109. 24 NKBZ 12:392–94 (I quote 393); T 139. 25 NKBZ 12:394; T 139. 26 NKBZ 12:305; T 97. The brief account of their encounter—which results in Fuji tsubo’s pregnancy—is elliptically narrated in chapter 5 (Wakamurasaki). It also includes Fujitsubo’s regretful memory of another “mortifying incident” (ayashi karishi o). Here as elsewhere in the Genji, sexual intercourse is not narrated; it occurs between the lines, as it were. The earlier encounter is not referenced anywhere else in any extant Genji chapters. 27 NKBZ 12:334; T 108. 28 Shirane, Bridge of Dreams, 48–49. 29 The Chief Equerry—a loquacious minor character whose authority the narrative marks as dubious—expounded on the attractiveness of cross-class marriages during the “Rainy Night conversation” of chapter 2 (Hahakigi). Improbably, Genji takes cues from this officious figure, at least during his youth. Left to his own devices once he is widowed, he forms permanent bonds only with women beneath him in social status. His ties to Murasaki, Hanachirusato, and the Akashi Lady all contribute to an interpretation of Genji’s marital behavior as exemplary, especially from the perspective of middle-ranking female readers, because they showcase his propensity for favoring women who are unfortunate or who excite tender emotions. Genji’s final marital choice to marry up, taking the Third Princess as bride, is the exception that proves the rule. See chapter 3 of this book and Tyler, Disaster of the Third Princess, 39–46. 30 NKBZ 13:63; T 186. 31 NKBZ 13:63; T 186. 32 NKBZ 13:63–64; T 186–87. As Childs points out, Murasaki’s feelings about her sexual initiation do not surface in the narrative until after she reads Genji’s letter the next morning (“The Value of Vulnerability,” 1070–72). 33 NKBZ 13:64–65; T 187. 34 NKBZ 13:69–70; T 188–89. Significantly, the proper ritual sequence of events is not strictly observed at the beginning of Murasaki’s wedded life; normally a bride’s natal or foster household celebrates her coming of age before she is wed. And although Genji takes pains to have the ritual rice cakes signifying the consum- mation of marriage made up and presented to her at the proper time, he is aware that he chose ritually inauspicious days for the initiation of their marriage. NKBZ 13:65; T 187. 35 NKBZ 13:168–69; T 235; NKBZ 13:198–99; T 248. On the space of Genji’s exile to Suma as “a Sinified, masculine world that excludes women and the realm of erotic adventure,” see Schalow, Poetics of Courtly Male Friendship, 119–25. I quote 125. 36 “Dairi to ingosho no kenchiku,” 86. As with a number of the mansions the tale describes, possible historical models are not hard to find. Suzuki notes that in Murasaki Shikibu’s day, Fujiwara no Michinaga’s Higashi Sanjō mansion,

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inherited from his father, Fujiwara no Kaneie, was built south of Nijō Ōji and facing Nishinotōin Ōji. The orientation of the Nijōin and the Nijō Tōin, with their primary gates opening onto one of the “great avenues” (ōji), signifies Gen- ji’s privilege as a member of the kugyō (senior nobles, possessing third rank or above). Stavros, Kyoto: An Urban History, 26. 37 For a summary of this debate as of the early 2000s, see Haraoka, Genji monogatari no jinbutsu, 92n1, 92n2. 38 Haraoka, Genji monogatari no jinbutsu, 85. 39 NKBZ 13:248; T 270. 40 Tyler has written sensitively on the series of conversations between Genji and Murasaki that begins in Miotsukushi, in which Genji, aware of Murasaki’s fears about his other women—each exceeding the previous one in terms of social status and/or potential emotional pull (the Akashi Lady in chapter 14; Prin- cess Asagao in chapter 20; Oborozukiyo and the Third Princess in chapter 34)— attempts to alleviate her fear and resentment by telling her about these women (Disaster of the Third Princess, chapter 1). 41 NKBZ 13:274–75; T 283. 42 The Reikeiden Consort never became one of his father’s favorites and never bore him a child. Her title of junior consort (nyōgo), however, indicates that her official status was higher than that of Genji’s mother, who was only an intimate (kōi). 43 NKBZ 13:166–68; T 234. As Tamagami points out, the sobriquet “Hanachirusato” is based on her residence—the villa (sato) of falling flowers. But the name ini- tially appears in chapter 11 to indicate the Reikeiden Consort and her house, only coming to indicate the heroine—the consort’s younger sister—in later chapters. GMH 13 (bekkan 1):423. 44 NKBZ 13:287–89; T 288. Scholars are divided over the identity of the house where Genji calls on the Reikeiden Consort and her sister. I follow Haraoka, who argues that it is the “palace” to the east of the Nijōin mentioned earlier and identified as “part of the inheritance from his father” (Genji monogatari no jinbutsu, 78). 45 Genji extends the associations of Hanachirusato and the Nijō Tōin with his patri- line later by making her the surrogate mother to his son Yūgiri and by choosing the Nijō Tōin as the site for sequestering the boy as he prepares for admission to the academy. NKBZ 14:21; T 383. Hanachirusato becomes mistress of the Nijō Tōin in chapter 18 (Matsukaze). After Genji dies and most of the women of the Rokujōin have died or dispersed, she returns to it. NKBZ 16:13; T 786. Haraoka argues that these events identify her as the house’s original owner and mistress and affirm the house’s identity as the mansion of her late sister, the Reikeiden Consort (Genji monogatari no jinbutsu, 73). 46 NKBZ 13:276; T 283. In the same passage, the narrator reports the prophecy Genji received about his offspring that now appears to be coming true: he will have three children, one of whom will become an emperor, one an empress, and the least of them a chancellor. 47 Hanachirusato’s spatial positioning points to her role as the mistress of the household. See NKBZ 13:387n4; T 333n1.

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48 NKBZ 13:387; T 333. 49 NKBZ 13:334; T 308. 50 NKBZ 13:467; T 368. The narrator characterizes Genji’s pursuit of Asagao as mameyaka (serious, ardent, in earnest). Had it been Genji who described it thus—for he frequently deludes himself—the reader might be less inclined to agree with Tyler’s assessment that Genji intends to marry Asagao (Disaster of the Third Princess, 27–37). 51 Genji’s interest in Asagao surfaced in chapters 2, 9, and 10 in fleeting references to their lukewarm but elegant correspondence and to her determination, hearing gossip about Lady Rokujō’s humiliation, to avoid suffering the same fate. NKBZ 13:13; T 166. Chapter 20 is the only chapter in which Asagao figures as a central character. 52 In an essay that had tremendous influence on later readings of the Asagao chapter, Shimizu argues that Genji’s pursuit of Asagao represents his displaced response to Fujitsubo’s death (Genji no onnagimi, 46–49). 53 “Onaji suji ni wa monoshitamaedo.” NKBZ 13:468; T 368. Asagao’s closer relationship to her father and her maternal relatives’ higher standing save her from falling into the precarious positions once occupied by Murasaki and Suetsumuhana. 54 The Akashi Lady’s anxiety about her status surfaces repeatedly in the narrative and is one of her signature attributes. See chapter 12 (Akashi), NKBZ 13:239; T 266; NKBZ 13:254; T 272; chapter 14 (Miotsukushi), NKBZ 13:292–93; T 290; NKBZ 13:298; T 292; chapter 18 (Matsukaze), NKBZ 13:387; T 333. 55 NKBZ 13:388; T 333. The Ōi River villa provokes descriptions of still other structures: it appears that Genji is building a villa at Katsura (Katsuranoin) and has commissioned construction of a prayer hall (midō) at nearby Saga. NKBZ 13:399; T 337. These building projects function as distractions aimed at other characters, serving as the initial excuses Genji gives to Murasaki for his visits to the area. They also contribute to the image of Genji’s increasing wealth and political prominence. 56 NKBZ 12:278; T 85. 57 The Akashi Priest was the son of a former great minister daijin( ) and reached the post of middle captain (chūjō), but his career stalled after that. His request for a posting as provincial governor was enough to define him as a disgruntled eccentric, as the gossip about him reported in chapter 5 attests. NKBZ 12:276–78; T 84–85. The comic aspect of the Akashi Priest’s religious fanaticism, which Genji and the narrator mock, downplays the intervention of the god of Sumi yoshi in the Akashi Lady’s marriage to Genji, as well as the more materialistic benefits accruing from her inclusion in Genji’s household. Her quarter at the Rokujōin will host the estate’s row of storehouses—buildings that signify the Akashi family’s considerable wealth, garnered during the Akashi Priest’s posting as provincial governor. 58 Transactions between the steward (azukari) of the Ōi River estate, its owner, the Akashi Nun and her husband (who manages it on her behalf), and Genji, who as son-in-law furnishes the house from his own coffers, clearly illustrate mid-Heian

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norms of cooperative ownership and custodianship of mansions. The gender dynamics are intricate—women may inherit houses and land and transmit them to their daughters, but husbands and fathers often manage them and dis- tribute the wealth (textiles, marriageable children) the household produces. This “cross-cutting” among members of a group organized vertically according to gender and status differentials is analogous to other Heian social structures, notably relations between the imperial house and the regency and between estate (shōen) owners and managers. Nickerson, “The Meaning of Matrilocal- ity,” 452; Cavanaugh, “Text and Textile,” 609. 59 Shimeishō, 79; Asao, Genji monogatari no junkyo, 353–56. Kaneakira was later re- instated as an imperial prince by Emperor En’yu to remove him as an obstacle to Fujiwara control of the regency. His reinstatement came at the behest of then-regent Fujiwara no Kanemichi, who was eager to secure Kaneakira’s position as Minister of the Left for his own son, Yoritada. McCullough and McCullough (trans.), Tale of Flowering Fortunes, 1:103. 60 Asao, Genji monogatari no junkyo, 354–62. 61 NKBZ 13:402–3; T 339; Asao, Genji monogatari no junkyo, 357. 62 NKBZ 13:232; Eiga monogatari, SNKBZ 32:95. 63 My use of the concept of liminality borrows from the formulations of cultural anthropologists, especially Turner’s discussions of liminality as the dynamic middle phase in tripartite rites of passage that mark transitions between social states or relationships. See Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors, 13–18, 231–70. 64 Turner, “Variations on a Theme,” 36. 65 NKBZ 13:431–32; T 352. 66 NKBZ 13:390–91; T 334. 67 NKBZ 13:419; T 348. 68 NKBZ 14:77; T 404. 69 Haraoka, Genji monogatari no jinbutsu, 86. The Akashi Lady’s inclusion in the Rokujōin is crucial to the narrative’s development of Genji’s character. He did not act precipitously on his original intentions, instead modifying them in light of both the Akashi Lady’s hesitancy to leave the periphery of the city and her personal sacrifice as the girl’s birth mother. 70 As he reveals in a speech in chapter 13 (Akashi), the Akashi Priest is the nephew of Kiritsubo’s father. The Akashi Lady is thus Genji’s maternal second cousin. 71 The Nijō Tōin, designed as complementary to the Nijōin, is associated with Genji’s father, who cooperated (intentionally or otherwise) in what must remain merely a covert realization of the Kiritsubo lineage’s imperial ambitions by designating Reizei heir apparent. As Haraoka argues, the patrilineally grounded “energy” of the Nijō Tōin therefore cannot draw members of the Akashi branch of Kiri tsubo’s lineage to it (Genji monogatari no jinbutsu, 89). 72 This is not to say that moving to the Rokujōin is of no consequence to Murasaki, only that her perspective is unreported. The first event staged there—the sched- uling of which speeds the completion of the mansion—will be a celebration of Murasaki’s father’s fiftieth birthday. This indirectly honors Murasaki as principal mistress of the mansion, but the narrative emphasizes the event’s conciliatory

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effect on relations between Genji and Murasaki’s father, Prince Shikibukyō. NKBZ 14:71; T 402. 73 NKBZ 13:425–26; T 350. 74 Why mention the wet nurse’s “full breasts” if not to underscore the fact that Mu- rasaki’s breasts are dry? The point is reiterated later when Murasaki playfully offers her own “beautiful breasts” to the child, and her women, finding “much to admire” in the image, lament, “Oh, why not our mistress too?” NKBZ 13:429– 30; T 352. The scene contrasts with the one other scene of (mock) breastfeeding in the tale, in which Yūgiri’s fecund principal wife Kumoi no Kari offers her breast to comfort her infant son before her husband’s appreciative gaze. Kumoi no Kari also has no milk, but not because she has borne no child—only because, like most elite women, she employs the services of wet nurses to feed her several children. NKBZ 15:348; T 702. 75 Murasaki represents a wifely ideal that no other heroine in the tale replicates, and which Murasaki herself must continue to perform until her dying days, when she finally speaks her deepest wish—to take the tonsure or, in other words, literally “to leave the house” (shukke), and thus stop being Genji’s wife. 76 “In its countless alveoli space contains compressed time. That is what space is for” (Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 8). 77 “Ikani zo ya, hito no omoubeki kizunaki koto wa, kono watari ni ideowasede to kuchioshiku obosaru.” NKBZ 13:425; T 350. 78 Genji has already received the prophecy that he will have three children. But that does not seem to prevent him from hoping there could be a fourth and that it might be a child born to Murasaki. Takahashi Tōru, Genji monogatari no taii hō, 48–57. Haraoka cites a passage from chapter 14 (Miotsukushi) supporting the view that Genji is hoping another child might appear. Some scholars interpret that potential child as a foster child, but Haraoka argues that the verb in question (ide monoshitamawaba) suggests blood offspring, not an adopted child (Genji monogatari no jinbutsu, 78). The line occurs in connection with building the Nijō Tōin, suggesting that Genji builds that mansion in anticipation of pro- ducing or acquiring more children: “As to the mansion he was building with such alacrity, Genji intended to gather there just this sort of lady, to take care of as he saw fit, and to look after any children that might come forth or be born.” NKBZ 13:289; T 288. In his banter with Murasaki at the opening of chapter 23 (Hatsune), Genji implicitly hints again at his wish for a child from her. The occasion is the first New Year’s Day they celebrate in the newly constructed Rokujōin, which falls, auspiciously, on the first Day of the Rat 子の日( ): “rat” is written with the character for “child.” GMH 5:161–62; NKBZ 14:138–39; T 432. 79 NKBZ 13:437; T 354. 80 NKBZ 13:485; T 374–75. Like other ghosts who appear in the Genji (the Kiritsubo Emperor, the Hitachi Prince, Kashiwagi, the Eighth Prince), Fujitsubo’s ghost watches over the interests of her child. She is angry because she thinks Genji has divulged the secret of Reizei’s paternity. He did not, but he has just attested to his deep attachment to Fujitsubo in a long conversation with Murasaki in which he compares his various women.

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81 Conventionally, a person’s social rank in life persists in the afterlife. As the narrator of the near-contemporary tale Eiga monogatari observes regarding the machi- nations of Retired Emperor Kazan’s posthumous spirit (onryō), “It makes you think how very frightening a thing is the spirit of one born to the upper ranks.” SNKBZ 31:389–90; McCullough and McCullough (trans.), Tale of Flowering Fortunes, 1:266. 82 NKBZ 13:451; T 359.

Chapter Three

1 NKBZ 13:300–301; T 293. After Lady Rokujō and her house are first introduced in chapter 4 (Yūgao), the place is consistently referred to as “palace” (miya), not “great hall” or “mansion” (tono). This reflects Lady Rokujō’s status as widow of an imperial heir apparent and her residence as a cut above mansions of the senior nobility. See NKBZ 13:299; T 293; NKBZ 14:70; T 401. 2 See, for example, Fukusawa, Genji monogatari no keisei, 124–33. During the 1970s and 1980s, the interpretation of the Rokujō mansion as symbolic of Genji’s identity as a pseudo-emperor became part of larger discussions about the construction of kingship (ōkenron) at the Heian court and earlier. For a brief analysis of the history of ōkenron—its origins in the writings of Orikuchi Shinobu and its relation to post-war Genji studies—see Kojima, “Ōken,” 158–59. The list of scholars who have explored this vein of interpretation is long. For a sampling of major essays on the subject, see Ishikawa, “Kenkyūshi,” 276–79. Andō, “Kenkyū bunken mokuroku,” 295–325, provides a more comprehensive bibliography. 3 As, for example, Prince Atsumichi (981–1007) did when he brought Izumi Shikibu (not a wife, merely a meshūdo, but one of his own choosing) to live in his Mina minoin, the mansion he shared with his principal wife, the daughter of Fujiwara no Naritoki. The latter subsequently fled the house, returning to the mansion of her grandmother, thus ending their marriage. See Eiga monogatari, SNKBZ 31:454–55; McCullough and McCullough (trans.), Tale of Flowering Fortunes, 1:305. See also Izumi Shikibu nikki, 149–51; Cranston (trans.), Izumi Shikibu Diary, 188–91. 4 Imai Gen’e links the increased political realism of the chapters beginning with Miotsukushi to Murasaki Shikibu joining Empress Shōshi’s salon and her con- tact thereafter with the empress’s politically powerful father, Michinaga. See Murasaki Shikibu, 136–37. 5 Shirane, Bridge of Dreams, 27–28. Genji’s elevation is one of several junctures in the tale where realism is trumped by fictionality: the position of jun daijō tennō is the only court title in the Genji that did not exist historically at the Heian court. 6 Though this is not the tack I take, I point the reader to an excellent phenomeno logical reading of Genji’s mansions as “the dissemination of his subjectivity— or his attempt to impose himself, to inhabit a space.” Tambling, “‘Kiritsubo’: Genji, Spacing and Naming,” 103–31. I quote 115. 7 Shirane, Bridge of Dreams, 35.

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8 “En-gendering Subjectivity,” 91. 9 The classic text here is Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking,” in Poetry, Lan- guage, Thought, 143–61, but other phenomenologists use similar paradigms to explore the meaning of built environments. For another classic example, see Bachelard, Poetics of Space. For a feminist critique of Heidegger’s essay on building, see Young, On Female Body Experience, 123–54. For a historicist critique of phenomenology as a method that “tends to eliminate [the site’s] substance along with its history,” see Wharton, Architectural Agents, 201–19; I quote 204. 10 NKBZ 13:275; T 283. 11 NKBZ 13:299; T 293. Genji generously sees to Lady Rokujō’s material needs, but their disastrous history makes them wary, and they refrain from renewing closer ties. On the distinctive use of the interjection makoto ya as a rhetorical strategy for introducing episodes concerning Lady Rokujō, see Yoshikai, “Rokujō miyasudokoro to ‘makoto ya,’” 99–118. 12 NKBZ 13:299; T 293. The references in Miotsukushi and in chapters 4 (Yūgao) and 10 (Sakaki) to Lady Rokujō’s fine poetic talents, her palatial mansion as an exemplar of aesthetic refinement, and her unconventional decision to accompany her daughter to Ise have led some to connect Lady Rokujō and her daughter to the historical figure of a consort to Emperor Murakami (r. 946–967), Saigū Nyōgo (the Ise Priestess Consort), so known because she entered the Rear Court after serving as the Ise Shrine priestess saigū( ). Her name was Kishi (929–985), and she bore Emperor Murakami a daughter, also named Kishi (949–987). Kishi was one of many ladies among Murakami’s Rear Court overshadowed by Fuji- wara no Anshi, who represented the Fujiwara regents’ house interests. In her own day, Kishi’s daughter Kishi also served as the Ise Shrine priestess, and her mother broke precedent by accompanying her daughter to Ise. Both mother and daughter were known for their poetry, and the mother was celebrated as mistress of a fine mansion that served as a salon for poets of her generation. See Tanaka Takaaki, Genji monogatari: Rekishi to kyokō, 275–302; and Tamagami, Saigū Nyōgo shū chūshaku, 302–13. For an excellent analysis in English of a poetry contest hosted by Princess Kishi at her mother’s mansion, and political profiles of the two women and other participants in the contest, see Bundy, “Men and Women at Play,” 221–60. 13 Aside from the lady’s implicit ambitions for her daughter, an incest taboo oper- ates here: connubial relations with both mother and daughter were forbidden by mid-Heian custom. On Genji’s flirtation with this taboo in his relations with Akikonomu and Tamakazura, see Fujii, Monogatari no kekkon, 41–63. 14 NKBZ 13:301; T 294. A literal rendering of Genji’s unspoken reflections at this moment would be: “‘How illogically she speaks,’ he thought.” Tyler translates the line as: “Genji failed to see why she spoke as she did.” 15 Gatten categorizes Lady Rokujō’s death as one of the “middling-good” deaths reported in the Genji because she is aware that she is dying and therefore able to prepare for it spiritually: “The Rokujō lady . . . lacks the luminosity of other dying heroines . . . though elegant to the end, [she] can barely be seen in the near- darkness of her room. Her middling-good death scene may be seen as symbolic

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of the conflict in her life—and after her death—between self-reflection and headlong passion.” “Death and Salvation,” 16. 16 NKBZ 13:303–4; T 294–95. 17 While Genji’s self-seclusion generally recalls the correct ritual behavior of a husband after the death of a wife, the terse narrative is unclear about the length of time he spends in reclusion. The prescribed mourning period in such cases was forty-nine days. Compare the lengthy narrative of Genji’s intensely emotional mourning for his official wife, Aoi, in chapter 9Aoi ( ). 18 Suzaku urged Lady Rokujō to send him her daughter, but the lady feared trouble from his other consorts and worried that his fragile health might reduce the possibility of her daughter’s happiness. See NKBZ 13:308; T 296. On Genji’s regrets about disappointing Suzaku in this matter, see the opening pages of chapter 17 (Eawase). NKBZ 13:360–61; T 321–22. 19 One may detect a hint of irony in the narrator’s report of Genji’s account of himself in relation to Lady Rokujō. In conversation with Fujitsubo, Genji expresses regret about the denouement of his affair with Lady Rokujō, but his wording makes it unclear who he thinks earned an “undeserved reputation” (sarumajiki na) because of it: himself? Lady Rokujō? Both of them? The NKBZ editors interpret Genji as remorseful that his “unreasonably wanton heart” (ajikinaki sukigokoro) earned Lady Rokujō an unfortunate name (NKBZ 13:309n22), and I agree with them because of the phrase immediately preceding: Genji describes Lady Rokujō as being “a person of exceptionally deep feeling, but she entrusted herself to my unreasonably wanton heart and even earned an undeserved reputation.” Tyler’s Genji appears a bit more self-deprecating—or self-pitying: his Genji regrets how his wanton ways earned him “both an unfortunate name and her own rejection” (296); Washburn’s interpretation agrees with Tyler’s (The Tale of Genji, 338). Seidensticker has Genji manfully taking all the blame on himself: “My loose ways were responsible for all the trouble” (The Tale of Genji, 288). 20 NKBZ 13:310; T 297. 21 My use of the terms “agency” and “agent” here follows the theorizations of Gell, who defines “agent” as persons or things that function as “the source, the origin, of causal events” (Art and Agency, 16). See also Wharton, who, arguing for a conceptualization of agency that does not assume consciousness/conscious intent, uses “agent” to name “spatial objects that have an effect on their animate environments independent of intention” (Architectural Agents, xiv). 22 NKBZ 14:72–74; T 402. 23 I am paraphrasing de Certeau’s formulation of distinctions between the map and the itinerary (Practice of Everyday Life, 119). I discuss the Genji narrator’s use of the mode of the itinerary below. 24 There is a large critical literature on the symbolic, rhetorical, and folkloric significance of the cosmological alignments between women, gardens, buildings, and seasons. There are also precedents in both Chinese and Japanese sources for a house that embodies four as a governing principle (four seasons, four cardinal directions, four wives). For a brief summary, see Field, Splendor of Longing, 111–17.

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25 NKBZ 14:75; T 403. 26 Scholars have produced refined diagrams—sometimes presented under the unin- tentionally ironic misnomer “reconstructed plans” (fukugenzu 復原図)—by collating descriptions of the Rokujōin from various parts of the Genji narrative with archaeological findings about Heian-era mansions, pictorial renderings of the inner palace and mansions both real and imagined that postdate Murasaki Shikibu’s day (such as the twelfth-century Genji monogatari emaki and the Nenjū gyōji emaki), and landscaping practices described in the medieval garden treatise Sakuteiki. See Ōta, Shindenzukuri no kenkyū, 223–34, and Ike’s lengthy caption describing the sources for his diagram of the Rokujōin in Genji mono gatari: Sono sumai, 147. These scholarly blueprints find an analogue in three- dimensional models of the Rokujōin that have become the subject of museum exhibitions. See the exhibit curated by Gotō Kunihara at the Kyoto Fūzoku Hakubutsukan, lavishly cataloged in Genji monogatari Rokujōin no seikatsu. A high-definition video featuring a model of the Rokujōin is a permanent exhibit at the Genji Monogatari Myūjiamu in Uji, southeast of Kyoto. 27 Tamagami, “Hikaru Genji no Rokujōin,” 7–8. See also Tamagami, “Genji monogatari no Rokujōin,” 49–61; Ike, “Genji monogatari no Rokujōin,” 15–26; Ike, “Hikaru Genji no Rokujōin,” 34–44. The genealogical charts created by medieval Genji commentators fulfill a function similar to modern diagrams and three- dimensional models of the Rokujōin in their mapping of salient blood and affinal ties between the tale’s fictional characters. These aids in creating a comprehensive imaging of information that actually appears only in dispersed locations across the narrative fall into a genre (or topos) that Heffernan, commenting on Homer’s description of the details of Achilles’s shield, calls “notional ekphrasis”: the verbal description of imaginary works of art within larger works of (verbal) art (Museum of Words, 14). 28 De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, 119–22. On distinctions between itineraries and maps and their roles in organizing fictional and narrative spaces, see also Tally, Spatiality, chapter 4. 29 The passage that opens chapter 18 Matsukaze( ), when Genji completes construction of the Nijō Tōin, offers an earlier instance of mapping, though not as elaborately developed as the map-like description of the Rokujōin. There, the narrator describes the layout of the Nijō Tōin and reports on Genji’s plans (never fully realized) regarding whom he will establish in each of the mansion’s three wings. See discussion in chapter 2 and figure 3. It is striking that this type of stage- setting overview of a place occurs only twice in the narrative—first to describe a place that will never fulfill the plan Genji envisions for it, and a second time to signal the apparent triumph of his visions. 30 Tuan, Space and Place, 44. For a brief account of the institutional history of the “Bureau of Yin and Yang” (Onmyō ryō) at the Nara and Heian courts, see Grap- pard, “Religious Practices,” 547–59. 31 The implicit rules about spatial positioning of birth mothers and their repression as objects of sustained narrative are breached following Genji’s marriage to the Third Princess in chapter 34.

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32 For a sense of the spatiality of the sphere Lady Rokujō’s spirit is imagined to occupy, consider the speech her spirit makes to Genji once transferred from Murasaki to the body of a medium in chapter 35 (Wakana ge): “You are strongly guarded. I feel so very far from where you are, and I cannot move closer. Even your voice comes to me only faintly, you see.” NKBZ 15:228; T 655. 33 NKBZ 15:90–91; T 605. Two of these three other celebrations take place on the east side of the Rokujōin: one in the shinden of the southeast quarter, sponsored by Tamakazura (NKBZ 15:48–55; T 589–92), and one in the shinden of the northeast quarter, sponsored by Reizei, with Yūgiri as his proxy and chief orchestrator of the event (NKBZ 15:91–95; T 605–7). A separate celebration is sponsored by Murasaki and takes place at the Nijōin (NKBZ 15:86–89; T 603–4). Tellingly, the celebrations overseen by Tamakazura and Yūgiri accrue the most narratorial attention. This is consistent with the narrator’s pattern of devoting the greatest discursive space to events in one or the other of the mansion’s eastern quarters and to characters whose social status places them below the high-ranking figures connected to Genji (in this case, Akikonomu and Reizei). 34 NKBZ 15:96; T 607. See figure 4. These architectural details are not revealed until the northwest quarter becomes the setting for the birth of the Akashi Daugh- ter’s first child in chapter 34. Ōta notes that although mansions made up of a shinden minus flanking wings are sometimes seen in Heian-era descriptions, the reverse plan—wings but no main hall—is extremely rare. He discovered only one historical analog: the Sanjō residence of Minamoto no Noritō, a governor of Tanba who appears in Eiga monogatari as part of the entourage accompanying Retired Empress Shōshi on a pilgrimage to Sumiyoshi in 1031. Eiga monogatari, SNKBZ 33:202; 205; 215n3, 216n4. Sakeiki (the diary of Minamoto no Tsuneyori) contains a description of the mansion in an entry for the twelfth month, sixteenth day of Chōgen 4 (1031), when its east wing became a tempo- rary residence for Emperor Goichijō’s second daughter, Princess Keishi (1029– 1093). Keishi’s ladies were housed in a north wing. No shinden is described at all. Sakeiki, quoted in Ōta, Shindenzukuri no kenkyū, 232. 35 TheGenji narrative nowhere specifies Lady Rokujō’s bloodlines. Sakamoto argues that it is therefore possible to imagine that Lady Rokujō and the Akashi family share blood ties. “Hikaru Genji no keifu,” 40–41. Genji’s first glimpse of the Akashi Lady contributes to the argument; her appearance reminds him of “the mother of the Ise Priestess.” NKBZ 13:247; T 269. See also Fujii, “Rokujō miyasudokoro no mono no ke,” 45. 36 This latter point has been thoroughly explored in the critical literature. Shirane and others note that the Rokujōin recapitulates in an architectural medium the textual architectonics of the volumes of seasonal poetry in the imperially commissioned waka anthologies, especially the Kokinwakashū, where the poems anthologized under the topics of autumn and spring far outnumber those for summer and winter. Shirane, Bridge of Dreams, 29, 231n7. 37 A genius for perpetually appearing lovelier than ever is one of the characteristics that Genji admires in (or projects on) Murasaki. The motif surfaces repeatedly

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throughout the story of their marriage. In chapter 34 he reflects, “This year she exceeds last year; today rarer still than yesterday.” NKBZ 15:82; T 601. 38 See the letter Yūgiri’s secondary wife, Koremitsu’s Daughter, sends his principal wife, Kumoi no Kari, when she hears gossip concerning Yūgiri’s marriage to Kashiwagi’s widow, Ochiba no Miya. NKBZ 15:473–74; T 752. For an example that hews closer to history than fiction, see the correspondence reported in Kagerō nikki between the memoirist, who was a secondary wife of Fujiwara no Kaneie, and Fujiwara no Tokihime, Kaneie’s principal wife. Kagerō nikki, 139; Arntzen (trans.), The Kagerō Diary, 74–75. 39 NKBZ 14:76; T 404. 40 A long-held wish, as evidenced by his disappointment when Reizei ultimately abdicates without an heir in chapter 35 (Wakana ge): “The lord at Rokujō re- flected privately on his disappointment that Emperor Reizei had stepped down without an heir. ‘Though he and the new heir apparent are both of my lineage, Reizei reigned without a sign of that burdensome worry. The sin remained hidden—how bitter it is, and somehow unfair that it was his destiny to fail to carry on the line into the future.’ But since this was a matter he could share with no one, Genji brooded in silence.” NKBZ 15:157–58; T 631. 41 By these lights, Genji’s mid-life infatuation with Tamakazura, the daughter of Lady Rokujō’s minor rival Yūgao and a Fujiwara daughter as well (she is Aoi’s niece) represents potentially an even more outrageous affront to the Rokujō lineage than his affair with Yūgao. 42 As her adoptive father and patron, Genji can count on Akikonomu making regular retreats to her quarters in the Rokujōin. Imperial women regularly withdraw from the Rear Court to avoid polluting the sacred space at the time of their menses, childbirth, illness, and so on. 43 Fujii, Genji monogatari no shigen, 158. 44 NKBZ 14:138–39; T 431–32. “Erotic banter” translates midaretaru koto, “something that would cause a woman (here, Murasaki) to blush,” according to Tamagami, who also notes that such remarks were de rigueur for the occasion of the New Year mirror cake ritual. GMH 5:162. 45 NKBZ 14:161; T 443. The final reference to Murasaki’s desire for a child of her own is the most overt. It surfaces when she accompanies the Akashi Daughter to the imperial palace on the occasion of the young woman’s presentation as a consort to the heir apparent. Having already decided it is time to cede her place as the consort’s mother to the Akashi Lady, “Murasaki reflects: ‘If only I had a daughter of my own, I would not have to hand her over to another.’ Genji and Yūgiri both realized this was the one and only matter in which Murasaki was want- ing.” NKBZ 14:442; T 569. 46 NKBZ 144:45; T 434. 47 Dilemma of the Modern, 35. 48 Dilemma of the Modern, 31–32. 49 NKBZ 15:175; T 638. 50 NKBZ 15:275; T 670–71.

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51 Genji’s loose remarks about Lady Rokujō are not the only provocation for her vindictive rage. Fujii argues that the demise of the idyll Genji enjoys for nearly a dozen years at the Rokujōin begins when Akikonomu’s chance to bear an imperial successor vanishes with Reizei’s abdication. Shigen to genzai, 156–79. 52 There is debate about the identity of the spirit that possesses the Third Princess. The standard interpretation is that the spirit is Lady Rokujō’s. I agree with Taka- hashi Tōru that the increased coarseness of the spirit’s speech (which gives pause, because even in her posthumous speeches, Lady Rokujō is normally eloquent) has to do with the spiraling decline of the Rokujōin and its master at this point in the narrative. Genji monogatari no taii hō, 112–17. However, Bargen makes a case, compelling in some ways, for interpreting the spirit as male: either the living spirit of the princess’s father, Retired Emperor Suzaku, or the ghostly spirit of her son’s father Kashiwagi. A Woman’s Weapon, 170–78. 53 Like Murasaki, the Third Princess is Fujitsubo’s niece; unlike Murasaki, she utterly fails to fulfill the romanticized promise of her wished-for identity as a yukari (link) to her aunt. For discussions in English of variations on the yukari theme that play out in the story of the Third Princess, see Field on Kashiwagi’s pursuit of the Third Princess’s cat as substitute for the princess herself Splendor( of Longing, 168–69) and Shirane on surrogacy and the Buddhist concept of attachment as the root of all suffering Bridge( of Dreams, 178). 54 On the dynamics of male rivalry involved in Genji’s marriage with the Third Prin- cess and the theme of vengeance (on Suzaku’s part) against Genji’s house, see Tyler, Disaster of the Third Princess, 63–95. 55 It is possible to infer that Lady Rokujō’s spirit behaved antagonistically toward Suzaku even earlier in the narrative. Suzaku visits the Rokujōin with Reizei at the end of chapter 33, and in the opening lines of the next chapter, the narrator notes, “immediately after that imperial procession to the Rokujōin, Retired Emperor Suzaku began feeling unusually unwell.” NKBZ 15:11; T 577. Tyler speculates that the source of Suzaku’s illness is his envy or dismay at what the opu- lent mansion signifies: “the magnitude of Genji’s triumph has dealt his brother a blow” (Disaster of the Third Princess, 82). But that reasoning seems problem- atic in light of the fact that Suzaku then begins planning to marry the Third Princess to Genji. However, if Suzaku’s illness is to be understood as the working of the house’s malevolent undead mistress, her efforts backfire in that Suzaku’s sense of his approaching death quickens his efforts to secure his favorite daughter’s future. 56 NKBZ 15:200–201; T 646. 57 NKBZ 15:227; T 655. The poem is Lady Rokujō’s, delivered through a medium brought in to exorcise her spirit from Murasaki. 58 NKBZ 15:59–61; T 593–94; NKBZ 15:168–69; T 636. 59 NKBZ 15:94; T 606. 60 NKBZ 15:95–96; T 607. 61 In line with others who, following Fujii, see Reizei’s abdication without an heir as the trigger for Lady Rokujō’s resurgence as a possessing spirit, Enchi notes that Akikonomu, still childless, moves with Reizei to the Reizeiin after his abdication,

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relinquishing her old home, the southwest quarter of the Rokujōin. Lady Roku- jō’s spirit now inhabits an empty nest, as it were. Only after Reizei’s abdication and Akikonomu’s departure from the mansion does Lady Rokujō’s spirit, long quiet, go on the attack. Enchi, Genji monogatari shiken, 135–36. 62 NKBZ 14:440–42; T 569. 63 Carter, “‘The End of a Year,’” 130. 64 Episodes involving the losses Genji suffers figure hugely in the Mumyōzōshi’s discussion of exemplary passages from the tale, even if the ladies in that early Kamakura fiction cannot bring themselves to admire Genji himself. For them, Genji’s appeal, such as it is, has to do with his failures and the many losses he suffers, not his successes. MMZ 40–50. 65 NKBZ 12:100; T 6. 66 The idea that Murasaki’s death precipitates a kind of “enlightenment” zenchishiki( 善知識) for Genji is suggested by the fourteenth-century digest Genji kokagami, which also refers to Murasaki’s death as “the source of Genji’s great lament” (kumokakure, kono on-nageki yue zo kashi). Genji kokagami, 391; 411. 67 Washburn, Dilemma of the Modern, 33. 68 Field, Splendor of Longing, 206. 69 NKBZ 15:515; T 769. 70 As Field notes, Genji’s grief feminizes him (Splendor of Longing, 201). 71 NKBZ 15:508; T 767. The Genji includes three descriptions of disastrous or nearly disastrous events around the Aoi festival: in chapter 9, the carriage fight between Aoi and Lady Rokujō on the day of the Purification NKBZ( 13:16–18; T 166– 68); in chapter 33, Genji recalls the disastrous events during the Aoi festival in chapter 9 and almost discloses those details to Murasaki (NKBZ 14:438–39; T 567–68); and in chapter 35, again on the eve of the Purification prior to the Aoi festival, Kashiwagi gains entrance to the Rokujōin and initiates his affair with the Third Princess NKBZ( 15:214–15; T 650–51). This is another of the many moments in Maboroshi where the narrative alludes to its own past. For the attentive reader, Genji’s lovemaking with Chūjō during the Aoi festival may engender a frisson of nostalgia or anticipated danger or both—in this instance, only the former is realized. 72 NKBZ 15:508–9; T 767–68. 73 The phrase “he hears a voice” is an attempt to preserve the ambiguity of the line in Japanese, where the origin of the voice remains dislocated in time. A lady- in-waiting cries out, but is it a memory or a real voice that Genji “hears”? NKBZ 15:510; T 768. 74 As Carter, Cranston, Field, and Shirane have amply demonstrated, to name only four writing in English. See Carter, “‘The End of a Year’”; Cranston (trans.), A Waka Anthology, 2:894–902; Field, Splendor of Longing, 200–216; Shirane, Bridge of Dreams, 129–32. The chapter commanded late Heian readers’ particular admiration. Maboroshi provides a template and rich source of allusions for the textualizing of grief in late Heian narratives of bereavement. Allusions to it figure largely in a number of important late Heian works of fiction and memoir. See in particular Kenreimonin Ukyō no Daibu shū (The Poetic Memoirs of Kenreimonin

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Ukyō no Daibu, early thirteenth century) and Sanuki no suke nikki (The Mem- oir of the Sanuki Assistant Handmaid, after 1108). On the relation between the latter and Maboroshi, see Sarra, Fictions of Femininity, 206–10. For full translations in English of both texts see Harries (trans.), Poetic Memoirs, and Brewster (trans.), The Emperor Horikawa Diary. Mumyōzōshi lists scenes from Maboroshi along with passages from Minori (the immediately preceding chapter that re- counts Murasaki’s death) as among the most moving (aware naru) in the Genji as a whole. MMZ 48–49. 75 NKBZ 15:528–29; T 775. 76 For a full text of the “Song of Everlasting Sorrow” (Chōgonka), see NKBZ 12:441–50; the line alluded to appears on 446. 77 The couplet is by Hsu Hun (mid-ninth century). Wakan rōeishū, 108. The translation is by Cranston (trans.), Waka Anthology 2:898. 78 NKBZ 15:529; T 775. 79 NKBZ 15:507; 514; 516. See also T 767; 769; 770. 80 NKBZ 15:531; T 776. 81 NKBZ 15:517–18; T 770–71. 82 NKBZ 15:520; T 771. 83 NKBZ 15:523; T 772. 84 NKBZ 15:526–27; T 774. 85 “The possession of the metonymic object is a kind of dispossession in that the presence of the object all the more radically speaks to its status as a mere substi- tution and its subsequent distance from the self.” Stewart, On Longing, 135, 139. 86 NKBZ 15:532–34; T 777–78. 87 In her version of the concluding chapter of Genji’s life, novelist Yourcenar has her dying Genji plagued by blindness and loss of memory (“Le dernier amour du prince Genghi,” 61–75). This is the exact opposite of what actually occurs in Maboroshi: insight and a merciless excess of memory plague Genji. 88 NKBZ 12:393; T 139. 89 Hinata, “Heiankyō no nenmatsu nenshi,” 219–26. 90 NKBZ 15:300; T 682. 91 NKBZ 15:503; T 763.

Chapter Four

1 NKBZ 14:87–88; T 410. 2 The limited access the narrative affords to Tamakazura’s thoughts arguably applies to the characterization of all the major heroines in these chapters as well—perhaps most conspicuously Murasaki, whose figure “withdraws” from the ten chapters in which Genji’s infatuation with Tamakazura runs its course. Fujii, “Tamakazura,” 84. 3 For discussion of distinctions traditionally made between major and minor chap ters and heroines of the Genji’s first part (chapters 1–33), see Gatten, “Order of the Early Chapters,” 43–44; Gatten, “Secluded Forest,” 11–16. Shirane discusses

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medieval Genji commentators’ understanding of the text as organized by a set of “base chapters” (seihen) interspersed with “parallel” (narabi) chapters, and the relation of this medieval tradition to modern scholarly debates on the textual formation of the canonical Genji (Bridge of Dreams, 59–62). 4 “Genetically and generically, Tamakazura belongs more properly to the [Nijō Tōin].” Field, Splendor of Longing, 118. 5 Premodern Genji commentaries, beginning with Ichijō Kanera’s Kachō yosei (1472), understand Yūgao’s sudden death to be the work of Lady Rokujō, whose “living spirit” (ikisudama) is thought to have possessed her. Later commentators followed suit until the view that Lady Rokujō’s spirit killed Yūgao became the standard interpretation of passages that are in fact rather ambiguous in the text. Bargen questions this time-honored interpretation, providing a summary of theories concerning the spirit’s identity in A Woman’s Weapon, 70–74. 6 Takahashi Kazuo, Genji monogatari no shudai, 299–319. 7 NKBZ 14:116–17; T 421. 8 In conversation with Tamakazura’s nurse at Hasedera, Ukon uses Genji’s dearth of birth children as an argument to deflect the nurse’s more commonsense desire to place Tamakazura with her real father. NKBZ 14:109; T 419. Fujii argues that Ukon’s idea of full propitiation would be a marriage between Genji and Tama kazura and that her plan to place Tamakazura with Genji instead of with Tō no Chūjō, agreed to by Tamakazura’s nurse, points to a mid-Heian loosening of the ancient taboo against a man having sexual relations with mother and daughter, even when the daughter is fathered by someone else—a taboo whose enticing whiff also permeates Genji’s relations with Akikonomu. Fujii, Genji monogatari no shigen, 240–41. See also Fujii, Monogatari no kekkon, 60–61. 9 Kobayashi, Genji monogatari ron josetsu, 73–75. Fujii argues that Genji consciously engages the spirit of Yūgao through his interactions with Tamakazura. He focuses especially on the short, quiet chapter 27 (Kagiribi), in which Genji arranges to have flares set about the garden in a gesture resembling the fires set for summer obon festivals to welcome the spirits of the dead. Fujii, “Tamakazura,” 83, and “Relationship between the Romance,” 113–16. 10 NKBZ 14:117; T 421. 11 Tō no Chūjō’s principal wife actively persecuted Yūgao, driving her into hiding and thus effectively quashing her husband’s liaison with the young woman. 12 NKBZ 14:119–20; T 423. The analogy is misleading because Yūgao’s father, the “Third Rank Captain,” would have been among the courtiers of high enough rank to appear before the emperor, whereas the Akashi Lady’s father was only a provincial governor with a reputation as “a crotchety fool the like of which the world has never seen.” NKBZ 12:259; T 75; NKBZ 13:430; T 352. Genealogically, Tamakazura outshines both her mother and the Akashi Lady since she is Tō no Chūjō’s daughter. 13 NKBZ 14:129; T 426. 14 NKBZ 14:121–22; T 424. 15 The double meanings of suji as “lineage,” (“plot” ikanaru suji; what lineage/plot), and “thread” (activated by the image of tamakazura, literally, jeweled tendrils, a

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woven chaplet or headdress) figure in the waka Genji jots down, “as though practicing his hand,” after he has his first look at Tamakazura. The tamakazura of his poem gives rise to the names for both the chapter and the heroine. NKBZ 14:126; T 425. “Koiwataru / mi wa sore naredo / tamakazura / ikanaru suji o / tazunekitsuramu” (O jeweled circlet, from she whom I longed for across the years / What lines have let you thread your way to me?) 16 NKBZ 14:116; T 421. 17 See Akiyama’s seminal article on the performative aspects of the Tamakazura chapters, “Tamakazura o megutte” (Genji monogatari no sekai, 114–34). 18 NKBZ 14:119; T 422–23. 19 NKBZ 14:121–22; T 423–24. Whether as imparted skills or affinity, Hanachiru sato’s signature trait—her congeniality—seems to affect the direction Tama kazura’s character takes. The ladies of Mumyōzōshi list both characters among the Genji’s “likable heroines” (konomoshiki hito), and rank Tamakazura as the finest exemplar of the type. MMZ 29–32. 20 NKBZ 14:200–201; T 460. 21 NKBZ 14:227; T 472. 22 Genji’s scheme for maintaining intimate access to Tamakazura under cover of sending her to the Rear Court is already a matter of speculation by other characters, if only because they assume he has already had his way with her. Yūgiri is particularly keen on uncovering what Genji is up to, so he reports the gossip to his father: “It seems that some are saying your intentions in keeping her here these last few years were not exactly proper; her father too surmises as much.” NKBZ 14:328–29; T 518. 23 Only after she attends the imperial procession do we learn Genji means to have her serve Reizei in a ceremonial capacity only. This is implied by Yūgiri’s comments in chapter 30 (NKBZ 14:326–27; T 518) and confirmed by Reizei’s comments in chapter 31. NKBZ 14:344; T 526. 24 NKBZ 14:287–88; T 502. 25 Reizei has known since chapter 19 (Usugumo) that Genji is his father. Genji deflects Reizei’s attempt to confront him with this knowledge, however, and continues to behave as if he were not Reizei’s father. 26 NKBZ 14:283; T 500. 27 Tō no Chūjō’s silent reflections when he learns the truth of Tamakazura’s lineage confirms that she will remain under Genji’s roof—literally and figuratively— even after her paternity is revealed: “After all, what would be the point of con- testing his plans for her.” NKBZ 14:302; T 507. At the donning-of-the-train cer- emony, Tō no Chūjō explicitly leaves his daughter’s fate in Genji’s hands: “I feel I should follow your wishes in all of this.” NKBZ 14:311; T 510. 28 NKBZ 14:320; T 515. 29 NKBZ 14:334–35; T 521. 30 NKBZ 14:320; T 515. 31 I differ here with Field (among others), who implies that Tamakazura was a “stolen prize” (Splendor of Longing, 144–59). 32 Fujii, “Tamakazura,” 85.

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33 NKBZ 14:389; T 543. In other words, Kashiwagi might have become the maternal uncle to an imperial prince through his half-sister Tamakazura. 34 NKBZ 13: 448–53; T 358–60. Akikonomu’s conventional sobriquet, which means “one who prefers autumn,” derives from this conversation. 35 NKBZ 13:451; T 359. Genji is urging her to bear an imperial heir and watch over the interests of the Akashi Daughter when she, in turn, goes to court as an imperial consort. 36 NKBZ 13:452; T 359–60. Akikonomu alludes to KKS 546, a waka attributed to Ono no Komachi (fl. mid-ninth century): “There are no seasons / that I do not love / and yet / those autumn evenings / how strangely they affect me.” NKBZ 7:233. 37 NKBZ 13:453; T 360. 38 Genji is thirty-five at the beginning of the Tamakazura chapters, and thirty-eight at the end of them. These ten chapters thus encompass only two and a half years of his life, with the first eight chapters devoted to a single year. By contrast, the preceding eight chapters cover seven years. Although understood as belonging to the Genji narrative’s first part, in terms of their pacing the Tamakazura chapters resemble the slower-paced second part of the tale (chapters 34–41) more than they do the relatively breezy narrative of the tale’s first twenty-one chapters. 39 Lefebvre, Production of Space, 35. Indeed, the Rokujōin in these chapters func tions as a testing ground for Tamakazura and Yūgiri in gender-specific ways: Tamakazura’s trials follow the paradigm of the stepdaughter tale, while Yūgiri’s relation to the Rokujōin and its female inhabitants is peripatetic, a diminished version of the noble-in-exile plot (kishu ryūritan). 40 On Longing, 65. 41 Readers interested in the extensive critical literature on the Genji’s “defense of fiction” might begin by consulting the discussions in Field, Splendor of Longing, 128–36; Okada, Figures of Resistance, 222–31; and Washburn, “Performance Anxieties,” 190–97. 42 NKBZ 14:207; T 462. Tyler interprets “Fujiwara no kimi” as Atemiya’s father, rather than the name of the chapter in which stories of her suitors figure prominently. Atemiya is not strictly, as Tyler puts it, “a Fujiwara lady”; her father is Minamoto no Masayori, the son of an emperor by a Fujiwara lady. Atemiya’s father was thus a first-generation Genji, but a Fujiwara on his mother’s side, and called “Fujiwara no kimi” (the Fujiwara lord) before he was given the Genji surname. Utsuho monogatari, 119. 43 According to Ishikawa Tōru, the similarities between Tamakazura and Atemiya end there—the real interest in Utsuho lies in the characterizations of Atemiya’s suitors, not the heroine herself. For Ishikawa’s analysis of how the characterizations of Tamakazura’s multiple suitors amplify characterizations inherited from the Atemiya chapter of Utsuho monogatari, see his Heian jidai monogatari bungaku ron, 237–58. 44 NKBZ 14:207; T 462. 45 NKBZ 14:202; T 460. 46 Okada, Figures of Resistance, 221.

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47 Bridge of Dreams, 97. 48 NKBZ 14:173; T 448; Splendor of Longing, 94–103. See also Mitani Eiichi, Mono gatarishi no kenkyū, 93–96. 49 NKBZ 14:326; T 518. 50 “Why should you not examine your own heart and tell me which one—Hotaru or Higekuro?” NKBZ 14:173; T 448. 51 NKBZ 14:286; T 501. Of course, this is precisely what Tō no Chūjō’s disastrous Ōmi daughter does, to hilarious effect. See NKBZ 14:312–14; T 511–12. 52 NKBZ 14:118; T 422. 53 NKBZ 14:153–54; T 437–38. Otokotōka, or as Tyler translates it, “the men’s mum- ming,” was a more or less annual event observed at the imperial palace and mansions of retired emperors. By Murasaki Shikibu’s day, the practice had died out. See Nishimoto, “Tamakazura: Otokotōka,” 348–51; Tamagami (ed.), GMH 5:200–201. In Hatsune, the carolers are portrayed as serenading the mansions of retired emperor Suzaku and Genji’s Rokujōin—another detail that antici- pates Genji’s elevation to the title of honorary retired emperor in chapter 33. 54 NKBZ 14:167; T 446. 55 NKBZ 14:168; T 446. 56 NKBZ 14:166; T 445. 57 NKBZ 14:173; T 448. 58 NKBZ 14:174; T 448. 59 NKBZ 14:174; T 449. 60 NKBZ 14:174–75; T 449. 61 NKBZ 14:177–78; T 450. 62 As the NKBZ editors point out, the physical gesture of taking Tamakazura’s hand is precisely what Genji refrained from doing with Akikonomu in a similar con- text. NKBZ 14:177n32. 63 NKBZ 14:178n5; T 450; NKBZ 12:194; T 48. The echo here is not flattering to Tama kazura. Nokiba no Ogi is the stepdaughter of the minor heroine Utsusemi. In- tent on pursuing Utsusemi, Genji ends up having a fleeting tryst with her rather gauche stepdaughter by mistake in chapter 3 (Utsusemi). In general, the narrator is somewhat free with details of Tamakazura’s physicality—something we never see in the characterization of the tale’s major heroines. Another minor heroine whose physicality is abundantly detailed is Suetsumuhana. NKBZ 12:366–68; T 124–25. On the significance of the Genji narrator’s reversal of protocol in describing Suetsumuhana—detailing her physical appearance before continuing on “for confirmation of her unattractiveness through a description of her attire,” see Pandey, Perfumed Sleeves, 37. 64 Childs has demonstrated that because vulnerability was a vital component of sexual appeal in elite accounts of romance and sex, feminine displays of emotional distress tended to heighten male passion: “Tears were therefore usually counter productive” for women seeking to avoid sexual intimacy (“Value of Vulnerabil- ity,” 1064). Thus, Tamakazura’s efforts to hide her tears bespeak her conscious effort to keep Genji’s passion for her at bay. 65 NKBZ 14:178–82; T 450–52.

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66 NKBZ 14:189; T 455–56. 67 NKBZ 14:187; 189; T 455–56; NKBZ 14:172; T 448. 68 NKBZ 14:221; T 469. 69 NKBZ 14:247–48; T 481. 70 NKBZ 14:248; T 482; NKBZ 14:271; T 492. 71 NKBZ 14:283; T 500. 72 NKBZ 14:284; T 500. 73 NKBZ 14:319; T 515. The Kokiden Consort is the eldest daughter of Tō no Chūjō’s principal wife. 74 NKBZ 14:327–29; T 518–19. 75 NKBZ 14:338; T 522. 76 NKBZ 14:337; T 522. 77 NKBZ 14:367; T 534. 78 NKBZ 14:337; T 522. 79 NKBZ 14:284; T 500.

Chapter Five

1 In terms of age, social status, motives, and the amount of narrative space dedi- cated to her dilemmas as a female householder, Tamakazura as widow differs radically from Lady Rokujō, the other notable widow and female householder, who brokers marriage arrangements for her daughter. 2 NKBZ 14:335; T 521. 3 Genji, still yearning for Tamakazura in the second and third months of the following year, resembles the image of the yearning mukashi otoko in the second and fourth episodes of Ise monogatari. Thus he ends his role as suitor by repris- ing the hero of one of the most-quoted tales of the day; not so unprecedented a performance after all, at least on the hero’s part. NKBZ 14:382; 385; T 540–41; Ise monogatari, 134–36; Helen McCullough (trans.), Tales of Ise, 70–72. 4 NKBZ 14:336–37; T 522. 5 NKBZ 14:341; T 525. 6 NKBZ 14:284; T 500. 7 NKBZ 14:359; T 531. 8 At the time of Higekuro’s marriage to Tamakazura, Kashiwagi was a middle captain in the Right Palace Guards, in which Higekuro was commander. His ad- vocacy of Higekuro’s suit would have had to do with his own political advancement. NKBZ 14:334; T 520–21. 9 NKBZ 14:334; T 521. 10 NKBZ 14:342; T 525. 11 We learn this in chapter 44 (Takekawa), where his sons bear the sobriquets “Fuji wara Adviser” (Tō no Jijū) and “Fujiwara Middle Counselor” (Tō no Chūnagon). 12 Suzuki Hideo argues that insofar as her marriage to Higekuro signifies a rejection of Genji, it amounts to an overturning of the ideal of the irogonomi hero that Genji represents (Genji monogatari kyokōron, 613–15).

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13 NKBZ 14:283; T 500. 14 NKBZ 14:372; T 536; NKBZ 14:354; T 529. See also NKBZ 15:47; T 589. 15 NKBZ 14:348; T 528. 16 NKBZ 14:349; T 528. 17 NKBZ 14:351; T 528. 18 Higekuro retrieves his sons from Prince Shikibukyō’s house but is not even allowed to speak with his daughter, Makibashira. In the long run he looks after the court careers of his sons, but the ties between father and daughter are sev- ered. His sons resume life in their father’s mansion with his new bride. Makibashira remains in her maternal grandparents’ household, and they later arrange her marriage to Prince Hotaru, Tamakazura’s rejected suitor. 19 Higekuro perceives his wife as “deranged” as he struggles to clean off the ashes. NKBZ 14:358; T 531. Even minor characters such as Moku no Kimi and Chūjō no Omoto, who are meshūdo (female attendants who also act as concubines), react to his doings with overt anger on behalf of his wife (and perhaps their own behalf). NKBZ 14:351–52; T 529. 20 NKBZ 14:365; T 533. “Ima wa tote / yado karenu to mo / narekitsuru / maki no hashira wa / ware o wasuru na” (Though now it seems / I must leave my home / o cypress pillar / so dear to me / forget me not). 21 NKBZ 14:372; T 536. 22 NKBZ 14:373; T 536. The prince’s daughter is lodged between Tamakazura and the Seiryōden—the emperor’s living quarters—and is thus slightly closer to the emperor; greater physical proximity to the emperor usually signifies higher status. See fig. 1 and the finer detail provided by Tamagami (ed.), GMH 6:263. 23 By the eleventh century, the mistress of staff’s status seems to have risen to a level above that of intimate (kōi) but below that of junior consort (nyōgo). Gotō Shōko, Genji monogatari no shiteki kūkan, 63. 24 NKBZ 14:372n17. 25 Gotō Shōko notes that Genji’s wishes for Tamakazura’s service as naishi no kami mark one of the tale’s departures from a realistic portrayal of court positions. On the basis of her survey of historical naishi no kami, she argues that Tamaka- zura is an unlikely candidate for the role; her mother’s inferior pedigree and her own obscure childhood mean she is not in the same league as the pampered, well-groomed daughters of regents who occupied the position beginning with the reigns of Emperors Daigo and Murakami, several generations before the appearance of the Genji. Tamakazura’s age and marital circumstances when she assumes the post are even more distant from the young, never previously married naishi no kami appointees in Murasaki Shikibu’s day, when Fujiwara no Michinaga placed three of his daughters in that office. One went on to become empress (chūgū), and a second became a junior consort (nyōgo). Gotō Shōko, Genji monogatari no shiteki kūkan, 78, 84. See also McCullough and McCullough (trans), Tale of Flowering Fortunes, 2:820–21. 26 GMH 5:200–201; GMH 9:321–22. 27 NKBZ 14:373; T 536–37.

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28 One night short of the full moon because the men’s caroling at court took place on the fourteenth night of the first (lunar) month. The full moon is on the fifteenth. 29 NKBZ 14:379; T 539. 30 NKBZ 13:378; T 538. 31 NKBZ 14:378–79n8. 32 Tamakazura’s postmarital presentation at court as mistress of staff represents another juncture where the Genji parts company with actual practices of Mura saki Shikibu’s day, but it also reprises an episode from the nearly contemporary tale Utsuho monogatari. In Utsuho, the heroine known as Toshikage’s Daughter is sent to the Rear Court as mistress of staff after her marriage to a prominent nobleman. The nobleman is Fujiwara no Kanemasa, whose frantic anxieties about the emperor’s interest in his wife provide fodder for the tale’s lampooning of him, previously identified and critiqued as an unbridled irogonomi—the very opposite of Higekuro’s identity as a (lapsed) mamebito. Apparently, male jealousy levels distinctions among fictional hero types. See Utsuho monogatari, SNKBZ 15:155–277. 33 NKBZ 14:381; T 540. According to Suzuki Hideo, it incenses Tō no Chūjō as well; however, I see nothing in the text to support this interpretation of her father’s feelings (Genji monogatari kyokōron, 612). 34 The nature of her “functionality” has been variously interpreted, yielding widely divergent conclusions. Fujii epitomizes the dominant view of Tamakazura as simply supplemental to Genji’s character construction by asking: “What dif ference would it make to Genji’s trajectory in the plot if Tamakazura had not appeared?” (“Tamakazura,” 83). At the other end of the critical spectrum, Yamada Toshihiro argues that Tamakazura functions as a tenjin nyōbo, a ben- eficial, otherworldly kind of figure who by her presence in the Rokujōin safe- guards its prosperity (Genji monogatari no kōzō kenkyū, 220–36). 35 Splendor of Longing, 159. 36 Woloch, The One vs. the Many, 42. 37 As the narrator remarks midway through chapter 31 (Makibashira), “How strange it was—while she touched everyone, whether man or woman, the lady had a way of setting all of them to brooding.” NKBZ 14:388; T 542. The fictional readers in Mumyōzōshi list “Tamakazura becoming the principal wife of Higekuro” among their inventory of “upsetting episodes” (kokoro yamashiki koto). MMZ 55–56. Fujii agrees with them, calling it “a sudden and unnatural development” (“Tamakazura,” 85). 38 NKBZ 14:388; T 542. 39 NKBZ 15:251; T 662. 40 For a sociologist’s interpretation of the mentality underlying the use of calcula tion and “finely shaded behavior in dealing with people” in European court societies, see Elias, The Court Society, 113–23. 41 During one of these outbursts, provoked by gossip about his daughter Kumoi no Kari’s indiscretions with Yūgiri, he rails at his own mother, reducing himself to angry tears and causing his elderly mother’s eyes to widen in dismay as she blanches beneath her make-up. The episode provides one of the emotional

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highlights of chapter 21 (Otome), part of the subnarrative about Genji and Tō no Chūjō as contrasting examples of fathers raising daughters who can be successfully deployed in the Rear Court. NKBZ 14:35–38; T 388–89. 42 Kanda, “Niou miya sanjōron,” 108–9. 43 Scholars have long debated the authorship of the Bamboo River group without reaching a conclusion. Despite a caveat that the matter is unresolvable, Ishida provides the most extensive case against the chapters’ authenticity on the basis of distinctive stylistic differences between them and both the first forty-one chapters of the tale and its final ten chapters Genji( monogatari ronshū, 481– 562). Gatten evaluates these debates in “The Secluded Forest,” 224–51, and “Order of the Early Chapters,” 14. See also Shirane, Bridge of Dreams, 223–26. 44 The usual interpretation of murasaki“ no yukari” is that it refers to Lady Mura saki’s ladies-in-waiting, the narrator(s) of the first forty-one chapters of the Genji. Mitani Kuniaki, Genji monogatari no shitsukeito, 178. Mori argues convincingly, however, that “murasaki no yukari” was an alternate name for the main chapters of the Genji. “Takekawa maki no sekai,” 17. 45 Medieval commentators interpret these to be “errors” in the lineage of certain characters from the main chapters (that is, Reizei and Kaoru). Mori, “Takekawa maki no sekai,” 17–19. 46 NKBZ 16:53; T 805. 47 In a more conventional vein, Enchi avows she “doesn’t dislike” the chapters of the Bamboo River group because their sketch-like portraits of marriageable daughters (Reizei’s First Princess; Makibashira’s daughter by Hotaru; and Tamaka- zura’s elder daughter) provide promising frameworks for further chapters cen- tered on female protagonists. Genji monogatari shiken, 140; I quote 138. 48 NKBZ 16:55; T 805. 49 NKBZ 16:54; T 805. The narrator opines that Higekuro’s inept and high-handed ways are to blame for Tamakazura’s current social isolation, but as the chapter opens, Higekuro has been dead for an indeterminate number of years. 50 NKBZ 16:61; T 807. 51 NKBZ 16:72; T 812. 52 NKBZ 16:76; T 814. The young man’s yearning unto death is reiterated at least three more times in the narrative, either by him or by his intimates. NKBZ 16:78, 79, 80. 53 NKBZ 16:81; T 816. 54 NKBZ 16:87–88; T 818; I quote NKBZ 16:88. 55 NKBZ 16:98; T 822. 56 The position of mistress of staff was an appointment connected to the naishi no tsukasa, one of the offices of the court bureaucracy; holders of the position might remain in office despite changes in reign. Tamakazura has been mistress of staff since Reizei was the sitting emperor. See Gotō Shōko, Genji monogatari no shiteki kūkan, 74–75. 57 NKBZ 16:95–96; T 822. The odds that placement in the Rear Court will bring her younger daughter happiness and her sons political advancement are low because the Akashi Empress easily outshines all other women in the Rear Court, and Tamakazura’s children do not have a senior male relative to look out

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for their careers. Perhaps, however, the Akashi Empress’s unparalleled dominance in the Rear Court is a benefit from Tamakazura’s viewpoint; because her daughter lacks strong male backers at court, she is less likely to be a threat to the great ones in the Rear Court, and therefore she invites no ill will (the precedent of Kiritsubo’s fate, however, suggests other possibilities). 58 NKBZ 16:96–97; T 822. 59 Yoru no nezame, NKBZ 19:318. For analysis of stepmother–stepdaughter dynamics, see Sarra, “Yoru no nezame,” 233–58. 60 NKBZ 16:56; T 806. This is my translation of urusaki mono no kokoro kurushiki ari. Tyler translates this particular qualifier as “tedious and touching,” but I think in this instance, the emphasis is decidedly on the young man’s tiresome qualities. Fujimoto argues that Tamakazura, whose signature traits include shrewdness, wit, and an adeptness at “handling men,” possesses a “masculine way of calculating things.” “‘Yukari’ chōsetsu no onnagimi,” 117–23. 61 NKBZ 16:54; T 805. 62 NKBZ 16:57–58; T 806–7. 63 NKBZ 16:65; T 809. 64 NKBZ 16:63; T 808. See also NKBZ 16:63n25. Kaoru’s admiration for Tamakazura is based on perceptions as erroneous as Tamakazura’s regarding him. As she speaks, he thinks: “‘Her years have hardly touched her at all!’ More than her tendencies as a mother to be brisk and practical, he felt how very young and guileless she seemed. ‘I would imagine that her elder daughter possesses these very same traits. And now that I think of what draws my heart to the princess at Uji, I realize that she, too, evinces this same beguiling manner.’” NKBZ 16:101–3; T 823–24. Tamakazura is far from young and guileless, as chapter 44 amply reveals. 65 NKBZ 16:63–64; T 808–9. 66 NKBZ 16:66; T 809. 67 NKBZ 14:373; T 536. 68 NKBZ 16:65; T 809. 69 NKBZ 16:90; T 819. 70 Yamada notes that the absence of Tamakazura from the carolers’ performance at the Reizeiin as well as the carolers’ omission of a stop at Tamakazura’s mansion foreshadows the decline of the worlds Reizei and Tamakazura inhabit. Genji monogatari no kōzō kenkyū, 212–17. 71 NKBZ 16:64; T 809. 72 NKBZ 16:104; T 824. 73 NKBZ 16:106; T 825.

Chapter Six

1 This prophecy is related in chapter 14 Miotsukushi( ). NKBZ 13:275; T 283. It supple- ments the prophecy the Kiritsubo Emperor solicits about Genji’s political prospects in chapter 1 (Kiritsubo) and the dream-diviner’s prophecy in chapter 5

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(Wakamurasaki) regarding the “setback” (tagaime) Genji will suffer after Fuji tsubo conceives. NKBZ 12:115–16; T 13; NKBZ 12:308; T 98. For discussion of these prophecies in relation to the narrative’s rhetorical posing of “riddles” (nazo), see Takahashi Tōru, Genji monogatari no shigaku, 240–49. 2 Cavanaugh “Text and Textile,” 614. 3 As Field puts it: “Being closed, [Genji] benefits from the aura of secrecy and the grandeur of the archaic hero—the grandeur without the excessive simplicity of mythic history” (Splendor of Longing, 216). 4 Cavanaugh, “Thinking about Thinking.” 5 Tyler, Disaster of the Third Princess, 41. 6 In this category is Prince Shikibukyō’s admiration of Genji’s “clever foresight” in silently engineering his former son-in-law Higekuro’s marriage to Tamakazura as retribution for the prince’s coolness to Genji when he was out of favor at court. As the reader knows, far from abetting it, Genji wishes that marriage had never happened. NKBZ 14:367; T 534. 7 Poetics of Courtly Male Friendship, 127. 8 NKBZ 12:406; T 144; NKBZ 13:12; T 165. 9 “Shirazugao o tsukurasetamaikemu.” NKBZ 15:245; T 661. 10 Tyler argues that the Kiritsubo Emperor’s remarks on Genji’s resemblance to Reizei leave room to “doubt the emperor’s candor” (Disaster of the Third Prin- cess, 69n12). Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s novella Yume no ukihashi famously explores this possibility. Fujii argues that much of what the Kiritsubo Emperor does after Kiritsubo’s death has to do with the fact that he alone is privy to the “last words” (yuigon) of the Kiritsubo house, and in naming Reizei as successor to Suzaku, the emperor is colluding with the will of the Kiritsubo lineage (Fujii, Genji monogatari no shigen, 150–55). 11 Reizei learns the truth about his paternity in chapter 19 from the priest who attended Fujitsubo on her deathbed. His thoughts are reported by the narrator and supplemented by his reported dialogue with Genji. NKBZ 13:443–47; T 355–58. 12 NKBZ 13:446–47; T 357–58. 13 NKBZ 13:433; T 353. 14 NKBZ 14:445; T 570. 15 NKBZ 13:443–47; T 355–58. 16 Consider Genji’s discomfort when his father dotes on Reizei in chapter 7, and his guilty response to his father’s rebuke regarding Genji’s disrespectful treatment of Lady Rokujō in chapter 9. In both cases, Genji reflects only on how bad it would be if the emperor knew of his greater wrong (fathering Reizei). NKBZ 12:401; T 142; NKBZ 13:12; T 165. 17 Genji perceives Reizei’s birth as the result of the “sin” (tsumi) committed with Fujitsubo, but also as partaking of the miraculous and the predestined, as all births do in the fictional world he inhabits. The fatedness of Reizei’s reign is further rationalized and reinforced by the authority of the prophecies Genji receives concerning the destiny of his three children.

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18 On the immense social and economic gap between the sixth court rank and the fifth rank, see William McCullough, “The Capital and Its Society,” 133–34. 19 The romantic bond between Kumoi no Kari and Yūgiri is first described in chap ter 21 (Otome); they marry twelve chapters later, in chapter 33 (Fuji no uraba). 20 The fictionalized readers of Mumyōzōshi find Yūgiri’s devotion to Kumoi no Kari extremely appealing and his behavior an improvement over Genji’s. Using a sobriquet borrowed from the Genji narrator, they repeatedly refer to him as “the earnest commander” (mamebito no taishō), a moniker that links him to “the fragrant commander” (Kaoru taishō), who, however, exceeds Yūgiri as an exemplar of “earnestness” in their view. MMZ 37–40. 21 As noted in chapter 1 of this book, the mansion they move into is their shared childhood home, the Sanjō mansion of their grandparents, Princess Ōmiya and the former Minister of the Left. The couple’s easy delight in one another corrects the connubial discontent the same mansion witnessed when Aoi, an unenthu- siastic bride, received a reluctant Genji there so many years before. 22 NKBZ 14:270–73; T 492–93. 23 NKBZ 14:274–75; T 494. The lady is probably Koremitsu’s Daughter, whom he eventually marries. Her lesser social status and pedigree—she is the granddaughter of one of Genji’s wet nurses—render her an ideal secondary wife. She poses no threat to Kumoi no Kari’s future status as principal wife. NKBZ 15:474–75; T 752. 24 NKBZ 14:277; T 495. 25 He insinuates as much to Genji, although he defends himself from possible rebuke by misrepresenting his own suspicions as gossip he’s heard about the presumptions of others. NKBZ 14:328–29; T 518. 26 NKBZ 15:353; T 704. Yūgiri’s grip on the truth seems tenuous at best; he immediately backs away from his own perceptions of a family resemblance between Kashiwagi and Kaoru: “No! How could such a thing be? He found it impossible to follow that line of thought any further.” 27 Compare with Seidensticker (trans.), The Tale of Genji, 2:666: “If Yūgiri’s suspicions were well founded, then to keep the secret from the bereaved grand father would be a sin”; Washburn (trans.), The Tale of Genji, 796: “If my suspicions have any merit, then it would be a sin not to inform Tō no Chūjō” (italics are Washburn’s). 28 In the manner of Fuijiwara statesmen of Murasaki Shikibu’s day, Yūgiri perpetuates the political success of Genji’s lineage by means of imperial marriage politics. However, the rigorous Confucian academic training that underpins his characterization does not reflect historical reality; senior nobles who became regents or great ministers in the eleventh century did not undergo extensive training as Confucian scholars. That aspect of Yūgiri’s characterization harks back instead to conditions in the early tenth century, a century prior to the author’s day. 29 The closing passage of chapter 39 Yūgiri( ) inventories Yūgiri’s offspring, matching the children up with the two mothers who produced them. NKBZ 15:474–75; T 752. 30 NKBZ 13:273–74; T 282.

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31 Yūgiri quotes this gossip about himself in self-defense in the midst of an argu ment with Kumoi no Kari regarding his courtship of Ochiba no Miya. NKBZ 15:460; T 747. The phrase is taken up later, apparently without irony, by one of the lady readers of tales in Mumyōzōshi, who hotly defends Yūgiri as an exemplar of the mamebito type. MMZ 37–38. 32 Consider the conversation between the Akashi Empress and her son Niou regarding his acceptance of Yūgiri’s daughter, Roku no Kimi, as a bride. Niou’s reluc- tance stems from his fear of being hemmed in by the excessive propriety at his future father-in-law’s household. NKBZ 16:370–71; T 932. 33 NKBZ 15:454–56; T 745–46. Yūgiri also lies to Kumoi no Kari, claiming that the letter from Ochiba no Miya’s mother (which his wife has just stolen) is really from Hanachirusato. NKBZ 15:414; T 731. 34 Chapter 39 narrates a turning point in Yūgiri’s trajectory by complicating his characterization as a romantic hero. The narrator exposes him as insensitive to Ochiba no Miya and her mother, whose illness Yūgiri exacerbates. Likewise, the discussion of Yūgiri in Mumyōzōshi presents his courtship of Ochiba no Miya as pivotal; the ladies don’t have much good to say about Yūgiri after his marriage to this third, highest-ranking wife. According to them, the episode de- stroys Yūgiri’s name as a mamebito, but they also blame Ochiba no Miya. In their view, she is a “trifling” heroine, presumably because she does not successfully resist her importunate suitor (as does, say, Asagao, who resists Genji and whom they praise as one of the “impressive women” [imijiki bito]). MMZ 38, 28. 35 Lady Rokujō’s admonitions to her daughter to guard against competing with her rivals are part of the speech her spirit makes during her possession of Murasaki. Akikonomu receives this message indirectly, through rumors of her mother haunting Genji’s wives. See NKBZ 15:228; T 655. In conversation with Genji, Akikonomu expresses her wish to take the tonsure to atone for her mother’s sins. NKBZ 15:376–78; T 714–15. 36 NKBZ 17:59; T 992. 37 NKBZ 15:29–30; T 583. 38 The ladies in Mumyōzōshi criticize Kashiwagi’s fascination with rank and status and see this as his primary motive for pursuing the Third Princess. MMZ 38. 39 Even Kashiwagi himself recognizes that his sin was not really so grave. NKBZ 15:220–21; T 661–62; NKBZ 15:285; T 677. 40 NKBZ 15:270; 270n11; T 669. See also Kashiwagi’s musings on “meeting [Genji’s] gaze” (NKBZ 15:285; T 677). 41 Yūgiri’s reflections on Kashiwagi’s suffering characteristically stop short of full comprehension: “In his heart, he had an inkling of what seemed to be trou- bling Kashiwagi’s spirit, but he couldn’t be sure his guess was correct.” NKBZ 15:307; T 684. 42 Ochiba no Miya’s mother gave Yūgiri the flute as a sign of her willingness to cede her daughter, Kashiwagi’s widow, as a bride. 43 NKBZ 16:11; T 785. 44 As Fujii notes, if the first parts of the Genji pose riddles (nazo kake) for which

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there are no answers, the Uji chapters reverse the structure and supply answers to questions that were not asked. In the Uji chapters, some characters already know the answers, but Kaoru doesn’t even clearly know what question he should be seeking an answer for. Genji monogatari no shigen, 199. 45 NKBZ 16:17; T 787. 46 NKBZ 16:19; T 788. Genji’s final wishes regarding Kaoru’s future are mentioned twice in Niou miya: both Reizei and the Akashi Empress recall that Genji was particularly anxious that his youngest son receive their special favor. The Akashi Empress’s memory of Genji’s instructions is narrated with specificity and emotion: “He is the last-born of my heirs, and it worries me that I will not be able to see him to adulthood.” 47 NKBZ 16:16; T 786–87. 48 NKBZ 16:16; T 786. Although Reizei treats Kaoru with solicitude, he is careful to discourage attachment between Kaoru and his daughter, the First Princess. Reizei’s attitude is oddly cautious; even if Reizei and Kaoru were half-brothers, there could be no harm in Kaoru marrying a paternal half-niece (Reizei’s First Princess and Kaoru are in fact first cousins, not niece and uncle). Kaoru is also nervous about an inappropriate attachment to the girl. These scruples are confused and confusing, but interesting because they suggest both characters fear being someday exposed as the perpetuators of false genealogies. 49 NKBZ 16:17; T 787. 50 NKBZ 16:18–19; T 787–88. 51 TheNKBZ editors interpret “there is a part (kata) of him that knows his real status” to mean Kaoru already knows that Kashiwagi, not Genji, is his father. NKBZ 16:23–24; 23n29; T 789. Tamagami’s gloss, however, preserves the seman- tic ambiguity of the phrase. GMH 9:232n4. 52 Takahashi Bunji, among others, discusses this aspect of Kaoru’s characterization in terms of an “illusion of piety.” He argues that in Kaoru’s case that illusion is generated not so much by the quality of “earnestness” (mame) that characterizes the classic mamebito, but by Kaoru’s anxiety about his paternity. “‘Dōshin’ to iu gensō kūkan,” 143–55. 53 NKBZ 16:63–64; T 808–9. 54 Tyler, Disaster of the Third Princess, 184. 55 GMH 9:232n4. 56 A fascination with Buddhism and the other world is unusual for a hero of Kaoru’s age (he is twenty), as is his lack of interest in the Eighth Prince’s daughters. Kaoru will visit the prince for perhaps two years or more before even attempting to glimpse them. 57 Unaware of the actual paternity of his interlocutor Kaoru, and thus the irony of making such a remark, Reizei justifies his interest in these princesses by recall- ing that Genji late in life took Suzaku’s Third Princess (Kaoru’s mother) to wife. NKBZ 16:121; T 833. Genji was in his early forties when he married the Third Princess; Reizei is a decade older at this point, roughly the age Genji was when Murasaki died.

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58 NKBZ 16:120; T 833. 59 NKBZ 16:124; T 834. The term nori no tomo is the Eighth Prince’s and it is meant self-deprecatingly, since Kaoru approached him as though the prince were spiritually advanced, a teacher rather than a peer. 60 NKBZ 16:157; T 846. 61 Kaoru’s nonpursuit of his mother’s feelings about his birth is characteristic of his protective attitude toward her; a nun since soon after Kaoru’s birth, she re- gards him as a child would a parent. NKBZ 16:17; T 787. 62 After she imparts the truth to him, Kaoru thanks Ben no Kimi: “Without this conversation I would have passed through this life bearing a heavy load of sin.” NKBZ 16:154; T 845. Later Kaoru expresses a desire to have services conducted for his father, but the narrative includes no account of him following through on the wish. NKBZ 16:170; T 853.

Chapter Seven

1 NKBZ 16:135–39; 151–55; T 838–40; 844–45. 2 NKBZ 16:11; T 785. 3 NKBZ 12:93; T 3. 4 Woolf, “The Tale of Genji,” 314. 5 “Kaoru remains the same from beginning to end.” Tyler, Disaster of the Third Princess, 172. See also Mitani Kuniaki, “Genji monogatari no daisanbu no hōhō,” 347–93. 6 Field makes a similar point in reference specifically to Ukifune, whose trajectory, she argues, exceeds the boundaries of the stepdaughter plot in which her story originates: “Through [Ukifune], the stepdaughter tale, mere static variant of the story of the traveling hero, bursts through the asymmetric relationship into an undefined beyond. Ukifune undistinguished looms larger than Kaoru.” Splen- dor of Longing, 296. 7 “Ge ni, sarubekute, ito kono yo no hito to wa tsukuriidezarikeru, kari ni yadoreru ka to mo miyuru koto soitamaeri.” NKBZ 16:20; T 788. 8 Tyler argues “that the treatment of Kaoru and his troubles is intended above all to elicit the reader’s pity for him without regard to the other characters involved, and that it employs visible artifice to this end.” Disaster of the Third Princess, 157. Although I find Tyler’s essay “Pity Poor Kaoru” full of insights about Kaoru’s characterization, I disagree with his claim that the narrative aims to elicit the reader’s pity for Kaoru. On the contrary, the narrator’s ironic distance from Kaoru, Niou, and Naka no Kimi, and her propensity for exposing the unattractive characteristics of all three (Kaoru especially) promotes the reader’s emotional detachment—or derisive laughter. 9 Jameson describes a similar shift in the character systems of Pére Galdós’s novels as “the deterioration of protagonicity, a movement of putative heroes and heroines to the background, whose foreground is increasingly occupied by minor or secondary characters” (Antinomies of Realism, 96).

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10 NKBZ 16:20; T 788. 11 NZBZ 16:103; T 824. 12 NKBZ 16:230; T 877. 13 Kaoru’s pettishness may remind readers of his real father, Kashiwagi, but the lack of ardor is his alone. “Manly amorousness” is my translation of wowoshiku, literally, “behaving as men do” (see Tyler’s “masculine impetuousness”). NKBZ 16:382; T 935. 14 Genji’s pursuit of Asagao involves similar circumstances and motives. Despite his lack of passion for the lady, Genji persists because he fears he might become the butt of humiliating gossip should he fail to acquire her. However, unlike his mamebito son and putative son, when faced with the heroine’s determined resistance, Genji relents and leaves off his pursuit. 15 NKBZ 15:465–66; T 748–49. 16 “Hono mitatematsuritamau”: literally, Yūgiri “faintly sees her.” I read this as a description of sexual coercion, but Childs, who has written extensively on courtship and seduction practices in Heian fiction and memoirs, suggests that Yūgiri renounces the use of force with Ochiba no Miya, although she admits that he does “consummate a marriage [with her] despite her continued resistance.” “Coercive Courtship Strategies,” 121; 121n12. 17 Tyler, Disaster of the Third Princess, 169. 18 Historically, if a princess or second-generation princess (daughter of a prince) lacked maternal backing because of her mother’s death and/or absence of a well-positioned maternal grandfather or uncles, there was little her imperial father could do to secure her future besides marry her off. However, any marriage an imperial princess made was a marriage down in terms of the rank and social status of her husband. For these and other reasons, imperial princesses often did not marry but risked an uncertain economic future if they remained single. Gotō Shōko, Genji monogatari no shiteki kūkan, 94–111. 19 Yamada points out that Ochiba no Miya occupies a unique position; aside from Makibashira, she is the only heroine of any weight to remarry. It was unusual for an imperial princess to marry; to marry twice makes her even more unusual (Genji monogatari no kōzō kenkyū, 289–90). I contend that Ochiba no Miya’s second marriage reduces her to a purely functional figure, sought after because of her royal pedigree and (perhaps) her status as a link to her late husband Kashiwagi. Yūgiri’s marriage to her completes his profile as a successful husband to three wives, but it ends her trajectory as a heroine of interest. 20 Compare the ageist irony directed at almost all the characters, including Genji, in the story of Asagao’s courtship. The narrator of the tale of second-generation ineptness we witness in chapter 39 (Yūgiri) directs her scathing irony exclusively at the mamebito hero who makes a mess of his courtship of Ochiba no Miya, one casualty of which is the lady’s mother, who dies convinced that Yūgiri has treated her daughter lightly and she will be exposed to scandal. 21 NKBZ 16:377; T 934. 22 NKBZ 16:255–56; T 886. 23 NKBZ 16:288–90; T 898.

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24 NKBZ 16:318; T 908. The impression that Ōigimi willed her own death is under- mined later, when the spirit possessing Ukifune seems to take credit for possessing and killing Ōigimi. NKBZ 17:283; T 1083. This revisiting of Ōigimi’s death suggests certain narratorial scruples. It retrospectively ameliorates Ōigimi’s image, casting doubt on the earlier presentation of her death as a sui- cide motivated by her grudge against Kaoru. 25 NKBZ 16:317; T 908. 26 Comparing Ōigimi’s death to the harmony that attends Murasaki’s death scene, Gatten notes: “there is silence, hostility, and reproach at Ōigimi’s deathbed.” “Death and Salvation,” 12. 27 NKBZ 16:238; T 880. Field comments: “An extraordinary vision, this: shrouded and thus invisible in her sister’s body, Ōigimi will be able to see (possess) Kao- ru’s and conclude a marriage of true minds” (Splendor of Longing, 242–43). 28 Although not proposing to wed Kaoru in the flesh, Ōigimi’s fantasy borders on incest. Carnal relations with full sisters was among the more potent incest taboos in the Heian sexual imaginary, hence the frisson of sexual impropriety in the opening episode of Ise monogatari, where the protagonist spies on two full sisters. In Murasaki Shikibu’s day, Fujiwara no Yukinari (972–1028) and Minamoto no Tsunefusa (969–1023) married women who were full sisters to each other (in each case, marrying a younger sister after the elder had died). On Yukinari’s marriages, see Eiga monogatari, SNKBZ 32:151–52; McCullough and McCullough (trans.), Tale of Flowering Fortunes, 2:484. On Tsunefusa’s marriages, Eiga monogatari, SNKBZ 32:225; McCullough and McCullough (trans.), Tale of Flowering Fortunes, 2:526. We see a gender-bent example from the same era in Izumi Shikibu’s serial involvement with two imperial princes. Izumi Shi- kibu nikki, 85–86; Cranston (trans.), The Izumi Shikibu Diary, 131. 29 NKBZ 16:378; T 934. 30 Compare Genji’s repeated denial of Murasaki’s wish to take the tonsure because it would distance them from each other. Murasaki resents the denial but unlike Ōigimi, refrains from voicing her resentment and reflects that acting against Genji’s wishes would be wrong in itself. NKBZ 15:479–81; T 755. After she dies, Genji’s first thought is to cut her hair as a token form of posthumous tonsuring, but Yūgiri persuades him it is too late to have any effect. NKBZ 15:493–94; T 760. Unlike Yūgiri, both Kaoru and Genji are inclined to hope that the dead are still watching and may still be influenced. 31 The insight that this is “exactly where she wanted him to be” is Schalow’s, but he makes a different point. Schalow sees Ōigimi and Naka no Kimi as mediators of Kaoru’s primary loss, the Eighth Prince (or more generally, the loss of a father). He interprets Ōigimi’s death as forcing Kaoru to “access her memory and the memory of her beloved father through Nakanokimi.” Schalow, Poetics of Courtly Male Friendship, 181. 32 Chapter 51 (Ukifune), chapter 53 (Tenarai), and chapter 54 (Yume no ukihashi). Even in chapter 52 (Kagerō), which describes the effect Ukifune’s disappearance has on Niou and Kaoru, the heroine’s very absence compels the attention of characters and readers alike, for we, too, are left in the dark as to her whereabouts.

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33 By my rough count, about a fifth of chapter 49, the first lengthy chapter following the account of Ōigimi’s death in chapter 47 (Agemaki), details scenes where Kaoru and Naka no Kimi meet and converse. Another two-fifths or more are devoted to Naka no Kimi’s interior monologues and scenes that involve her or her relationship to Niou indirectly (for example, Niou’s nuptials with Roku no Kimi). Kaoru’s circumstances have become one of several focal points of narratorial attention, and they do not claim the lion’s share. 34 No fewer than five of the thirteen chapters in part three feature openings that signal a significant change in the narrative’s character system. In three chapters this is achieved by introducing new characters (the Eighth Prince and his daughters in Hashihime, the Second Princess in Yadorigi, and the Prelate of Yokawa with his mother and sister in Tenarai). Even more powerfully, the disappearance of a major character opens two other chapters (Genji in Niou miya and Ukifune in Kagerō). Each time, it feels as if the tale is starting over, and except for the case of Yadorigi, anticipated shifts in character dynamics do materialize as a result of the character that appears or disappears in the chapter’s opening. 35 Kashiwagi also deferred marriage, apparently hoping to enhance his chances of marrying up. He was twenty-four or twenty-five when Suzaku, considering him far too junior, turned down his bid to marry the Third Princess. Seven years go by before Kashiwagi marries his Second Princess. NKBZ 15:208; T 648. 36 Kaoru thinks he would have been more enthusiastic about marrying had he been offered the First Princess instead. The narrator only hints at Kashiwagi’s interiority on his marriage to his Second Princess. His bride was the daughter of a “lesser imperial intimate” (gerō no kōi), and her younger half-sister, the Third Princess, whom Kashiwagi desired, was the daughter of a (higher-ranking) junior consort (nyōgo). This is partly why Kashiwagi, known for his overconcern with rank and political ambition, “thinks lightly of the Second Princess” and continues to nurse a grudge at having been earlier denied her higher-status younger sister. NKBZ 15:208; T 648. 37 A reader sympathetic to Kaoru might read this as a fantasy fueled by sublimated grief for Ōigimi, but it elicits an exceptionally harsh judgment from the narrator, who sees it as evidence of Kaoru’s shallowness: “Suddenly, this was all he could think about. What a deceptive heart was his! Going on with such preten- sion about the depths of his feelings, but his heart is fickle, like all men’s hearts. Nothing can soothe his sorrow for the love he lost?—well! this is so trifling it is egregious.” NKBZ 16:420–21; T 949. 38 As Tamagami points out, any mention of a Fujitsubo consort conjures the memory of the Fujitsubo consort whom Genji impregnated; the reader may well antici- pate some major transgression in the offing. GMH 11:90. 39 As one commentator quips, the circumstances of the two Fujitsubo consorts of parts two and three are “so similar you would think they were the same person.” Hinata, Genji monogatari no shudai, 28. 40 NKBZ 16:462–63; T 964. 41 On the irregularity of appointing so young a man to the position of acting grand counselor, see GMH 11:255–57.

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42 NKBZ 15:302; T 682. Kashiwagi dies soon after hearing the news of Kaoru’s birth, toward the end of the second month or very early in the third month of that year. In other words, Kaoru’s promotion to his father’s final title of acting grand counselor and his marriage to the Second Princess take place around the anni- versary of his father’s death. The reader might recall that Genji’s marriage to the Third Princess took place in the middle of the second month. NKBZ 15:55. 43 NKBZ 16:446; T 958. Kashiwagi had only advanced to the position of middle counselor (chūnagon) at the time of his marriage to the Second Princess but was at that point “very much the man of the hour” (ito toki no hito nari), with a promising future ahead as a favorite of the emperor. Kaoru now enjoys a similar de- gree of favor from this same emperor plus a more prestigious title. NKBZ 15:208; T 648. 44 NKBZ 16:464; T 964. Ōigimi died before he could install her at Sanjō, but work on the rebuilding presumably went on while his mother resided temporarily in the Rokujōin and Kaoru went into mourning confinement at Uji. He now creates a new space for his mother so she may comfortably shift her quarters to the west side of the house; she moves out of the main hall while Kaoru polishes up the east wing and places his bride close to his mother’s former quarters. Tama gami, GMH 11:263–66. 45 NKBZ 16:464–65; T 964. 46 The Minister of the Right in Genji’s youth was the father of Kokiden (the rival of Kiritsubo and Fujitsubo), Oborozukiyo (with whom Genji initiates a fateful affair after the first flower festival), and Shi no Kimi (Tō no Chūjō’s principal wife, and Kaoru’s paternal grandmother). 47 GMH 11:273–84. 48 NKBZ 16:469; T 966. The dream was Yūgiri’s, in which Kashiwagi’s ghost appeared to let him know the flute was “meant for someone else,” that is, his son Kaoru. NKBZ 15:347; T 702. 49 Kashiwagi’s signature envy of others’ successes in the game of marriage politics has migrated to a minor character on the sidelines: his younger brother Kōbai. The narrator explains that Kōbai had earlier sought the Second Princess’s mother as a bride and, failing in that, asked for the Second Princess as a substitute for her mother. Although he had been eager to attend the event, “there he sits, angry at heart,” the narrator tells us, because he thinks it “even unseemly” (mata araji kashi) that the emperor should so favor a nonroyal like Kaoru, even though he had “once hoped to receive the very same honor.” NKBZ 16:470–71; T 966–67. 50 NKBZ 17:237–42; T 1063–65. 51 Of which we learn only that “many of the senior nobles (kandachime) accompa- nied her carriage.” The description of the Third Princess’s entrance into the Rokujōin focuses instead on interior arrangements in the southeast quarter of the mansion, including the placement of her curtained bed, a detail that ges- tures with utmost restraint to the carnality of the match. Tellingly, no such detail is offered in the description of Kaoru’s wife’s entrance into the Sanjō mansion. NKBZ 15:55; T 592.

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52 A broad-eaved carriage (ajiro hisashi no kuruma) is an ox carriage fitted with a Tang-style roof, used by princes, princesses, and chancellors. The eaveless carriage (hisashinaki itoge [kuruma]) lacks the Tang-style eaves, but the body is covered with a multicolored brocade. Display carriages (idashi guruma) were so called because the ladies-in-waiting riding in them displayed the trains of their gaily colored robes outside the edges of the carriage’s blinds. NKBZ 16:473; T 968. 53 The excessive detail lavished on accounts of Kaoru’s nuptial celebrations and his bride’s procession echoes a similar excess in the narration of Kaoru’s nativity ceremonies in chapter 36. Kojima argues that the description of Kaoru’s nativity rites creates a strong ironic disjuncture between Genji’s private mortification and the rest of the participants to whom Kaoru’s birth is an occasion for great joy (“‘Ōchō joryū bungaku,’” 60–63). The trope is exaggerated in Yadorigi, as is the irony. The emperor rejoices that he is placing his daughter in the care of Genji’s son, but Kaoru—who should be mortified (because he’s not really Genji’s son) or at least grateful for the honor he is receiving—only wishes for greater honor (why not the First Princess instead of the Second?), and then realizes that all he wishes for is Ōigimi. 54 NKBZ 16:474; T 968. 55 NKBZ 16:442; T 956. 56 Ise monogatari, 135–36; Helen McCullough (trans.), Tales of Ise, 71–72. 57 NKBZ 17:89; T 1003. 58 NKBZ 16:378; T 934. 59 Tamagami interprets this passage as the narrator’s commentary, not Naka no Kimi’s reflections. Regardless of whom it may be attributed to, it is, as he points out, an unusually long observation and a “harsh judgment of Kaoru.” GMH 11:271–72. 60 “Forsaken” because, despite his knowledge that he is the only son of the eldest son of a Fujiwara house, Kaoru continues to pass as a Genji. A number of scholars note that the matter of Kaoru’s paternity drops from the narrative once Kaoru discovers the truth at the end of Hashihime. Kaoru is not shown reflecting on his paternity after chapter 46, nor does the narrator comment on its absence from Kaoru’s thoughts. Some see this as evidence that Kaoru’s character is not psychologically conceived. See, for example, Mitani Kuniaki, “Genji monogatari daisanbu no hōhō,” 96; Tyler, Disaster of the Third Princess, 180–82. I would argue that the issue of paternity has not so much disappeared as been displaced, following logic that is psychologically motivated: the multiple losses Kaoru sus- tains crowd out and prevent his assimilation of his first, instantiating loss, each new loss intensifying the experience of loss. This is a differently gendered re- prise of a structure put in play by Genji’s loss of his birth mother Kiritsubo and his stepmother/lover Fujitsubo. From such a perspective, Kaoru’s pursuit of the three Uji sisters is imbricated with his “processing” (to use a term from contemporary psychotherapy) of a chain of losses: the “real” father, who failed to engender a recognizable heir; his putative father (Genji) who hid Kaoru’s actual lineage; his elected father, the Eighth Prince, who died after giving his daughters mixed messages about marriage; and finally Ōigimi, who prefers to die

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rather than marry Kaoru. Significantly, Kaoru’s losses all have to do with his obscured genealogy and his uncertain prospects as progenitor of his own house. See also Pandey, who points out that the Yadorigi chapter is riddled with indica- tions of Kaoru’s excruciating consciousness of the dissonance between his “com- moner status” and the high honor he is afforded by other, higher-ranking members of the upper nobility, including the emperor (Perfumed Sleeves, 65–71). 61 NKBZ 16:387–88; T 937. 62 NKBZ 16:436–40; T 954–56. 63 NKBZ 16:444; T 957. 64 NKBZ 16:117; T 832. 65 Tamagami speculates that the Eighth Prince’s villa was made up of only a shinden (main hall) surrounded by galleries, but lacking supplemental tai no ya (wings). GMH 11:226. Constructing a memorial hall (midō) or private chapel specifically designated for the performance of devotions was not unusual. Such buildings, built on the grounds of private mansions, proliferated between the early eleventh and early thirteenth centuries. Stone, Right Thoughts at the Last Moment, 143. What is strange is whom Kaoru plans to house in the reconstructed building, and his motivation for placing her there. 66 NKBZ 16:435; T 954. 67 NKBZ 16:437; T 954. 68 In this respect, his behavior shadows that of his father, Kashiwagi, with the Third Princess’s Chinese cat. Having gotten possession of the wayward cat, he fondles and sleeps with it because he cannot do the same with the cat’s former mistress. 69 “Sama kotonaru tanomoshi hito”: Naka no Kimi characterizes him thus in her unspoken thoughts, and later calls him that in conversation with him. NKBZ 16:431, 436n1; T 953, 954. 70 There is little doubt in Kaoru’s mind that the Eighth Prince’s spirit is lingering between worlds. Regarding his plans to dismantle the main hall of the villa, he tells the Adept: “I know it seems heartless to pull down a place so connected to the late Prince, who fashioned it as his own home. Still—he appears to have intended to do so himself and so advance his own spiritual progress. But it seems he was so concerned about those he would leave behind he was not able to do it.” NKBZ 16:444; T 957. 71 He is sometimes portrayed as trying to sublimate his carnal impulses through engagement in devotional activities. In Yadorigi, the narrator notes he has been fasting since Ōigimi died, but as his preoccupation with Naka no Kimi mounts, he intensifies his devotions to the point that his mother (though a nun) becomes concerned and asks him to relent. NKBZ 16:389; T 938. 72 NKBZ 16:445–49; T 957–59. 73 NKBZ 17:70; T 996. 74 Similarly, when Niou later visits the remodeled Uji villa for the first time, bent on seducing Ukifune, the place appears to him “full of unfinished gaps.” NKBZ 17:111; T 1014. 75 NKBZ 17:91–92; T 1004.

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76 Ukifune’s mother describes the cottage as “odd” (koto yō nari). NKBZ 17:71. 77 “Strange little house” (ayashiki koie) is Ben no Kimi’s characterization of the place. 78 Meshūdo are female attendants who also serve informally as concubines. Kaoru spends the night with Azechi no Kimi “out of boredom,” the narrator notes, “as was his habit when sleep eluded him.” NKBZ 16:406–8; T 944–45. He has a similar relationship with Kozaishō, a more fully developed minor character of somewhat higher status who serves the First Princess intimately. In chapter 52 (Kagerō), Kozaishō shows (in Kaoru’s opinion), superior judgment and sensibil- ity because she prefers him to Niou. He also compares Ukifune unfavorably to her. NKBZ 17:235–36; T 1062–63. For an excellent exegesis of Kaoru’s relations with Kozaishō and the latter’s exquisite skills as a lady-in-waiting, see Pandey, Perfumed Sleeves, 80–81. 79 Toward women whose pedigree and rank render them appropriate for the position of principal wife—Ōigimi and the Second Princess—Kaoru displays ambivalence: whatever carnal impulses he harbors are hobbled by diffidence concerning the pursuit of marriage, house-building, and/or his own false pedigree. In the case of Ōigimi his diffidence is exacerbated by deference to the lady’s resistance (or so he tells himself and her). 80 NKBZ 12:210; 229–33; T 55; 63–64. 81 NKBZ 17:99; T 1010. 82 Bargen, A Woman’s Weapon, 53. 83 NKBZ 17:143; T 1026. 84 NKBZ 17:154; T 1031. 85 NKBZ 17:158–60; T 1032–33. 86 NKBZ 17:191; T 1047. “Down there” translates kashiko, a deictic similar to modern Japanese achira, signifying the speaker’s distance (spatial or social) from the object of her speech. With it, the narrator of Kagerō indicates she is (like Kaoru and Niou) situated in the capital, not Uji. 87 Conspicuously absent from this list is Naka no Kimi, whose reaction to Ukifune’s disappearance is only briefly reported as part of the account of Niou’s grieving and recovery. Naka no Kimi compares the ephemerality of her sisters’ lives to her own lot. This will be the reader’s last glimpse of Naka no Kimi, as she subsequently recedes from the narrative. NKBZ 17:213; T 1055. 88 Woloch, The One vs. the Many, 38. 89 Modleski, Loving with a Vengeance, 37. 90 “The Tale of Genji,” 314. 91 NKBZ 17:230–31; T 1061. After Ukifune vanishes, Kaoru offers to support the interests of her mother and her mother’s other children. 92 NKBZ 17:250; T 1068. 93 NKBZ 17:236; T 1063. 94 He is not to be confused with the Prince Shikibukyō who was Fujitsubo’s brother, Murasaki’s father, and Genji’s (and Higekuro’s) former father-in-law. 95 The Akashi Empress, learning of Miya no Kimi’s unfortunate situation (her late father’s principal wife is poised to marry her off to “a chief equerry who, besides lacking status to recommend him, was also something of an eccentric”), has

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taken pity on her and given her a place as one of the First Princess’s ladies- in-waiting. NKBZ 17:252; T 1068. 96 NKBZ 17:264; T 1073. 97 The Prelate recalls that this place, “once known as the Ujiin,” had belonged to Retired Emperor Suzaku, an incriminating detail in the world the Uji chapters evoke. NKBZ 17:268; T 1077. 98 Kozaishō, Kaoru, and the Akashi Empress are the masterminds of this plot; the latter two have a common interest in keeping Niou unaware. 99 “Partial success” because the Prelate is unable to induce the spirit to identify itself. Because he can neither ascertain nor placate its demands nor dismiss it, it may return to afflict Ukifune further. Royall and Susan Tyler make an excellent case for the spirit’s identity as Retired Emperor Suzaku, and for Ukifune’s continuing “derangement” after all attempts to exorcise the spirit. (Tyler and Tyler, “The Possession of Ukifune,” 177–209). Royall Tyler includes a revised version of this article in Disaster of the Third Princess, 97–129. 100 NKBZ 17:283; T 1083. 101 Alternatively, the Eighth Prince may be possessing his own (unrecognized) daughter as a means of punishing Kaoru for his neglect of her, thus following a pattern of father–daughter pairings seen repeatedly in spirit possession accounts chronicled in the nearly contemporary tale Eiga monogatari. For detailed analysis of the type of spirit possession narrative that expresses the frustrations of a family’s lineage, see Watanabe’s Flowering Tales, chapter 4. 102 Tyler (who identifies the spirit with Suzaku) argues that the spirit’s resentment concerns the Third Princess and is directed at Kaoru because he is Genji’s pre- sumed descendant. Tyler doesn’t speculate that Kaoru has compounded Genji’s insult to Suzaku by repeating it with Suzaku’s granddaughter, the Second Prin- cess. Disaster of the Third Princess, 114–15. 103 NKBZ 17:284–85; T 1083. 104 NKBZ 17:287–90; T 1085. On Ukifune’s astonishingly substantial poetic output in relation to other Genji heroines see Field, Splendor of Longing, 285–96; also Suzuki Hideo, “Genji monogatari sakujū waka ichiran.” In a similar vein, Ryu made a compelling case for the significance of Ukifune’s silent refusal to re- spond poetically to Kaoru’s final poem, in a presentation titled “Poetics of Link- ing via Her Final Words.”

Epilogue

1 Between 970 and 1031 (roughly Murasaki Shikibu’s lifetime), the inner palace suffered damage by fire at least nine times, including a conflagration at Ichijōin, the sato dairi where Emperor Ichijō lived while the inner palace was being repaired after a fire. Yokoi,Genji “ monogatari no ‘Rokujōin,’” 163–64. See also Ueshima, “Daikibozōei no jidai,” 15–23; McCullough and McCullough (trans.), Tale of Flowering Fortunes, 2:850–53.

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2 NKBZ 16:117; T 832; NKBZ 16:207; T 866. Yokoi, “Genji monogatari no ‘Rokujōin,’” 180–82. 3 Hurvitz (trans.), Scripture of the Lotus Blossom, 58–61. 4 The analogy between narrative voice and the figure of the possessing spirit (mono no ke) is explored by Takahashi Tōru, whose theory of narration as “psycho- perspective” embraces both Heian court fiction monogatari( ) and scroll paintings (emaki). See his Monogatari to e no enkinhō, chapters 1 and 2. 5 Tally, Spatiality, 6. 6 Haraoka, Genji monogatari no jinbutsu, 74. 7 “Japanese Marriage Institutions,” 146. 8 Bridge of Dreams, 133. 9 Katsuura, “Genji monogatari no shukke,” 443. 10 On the parameters of the concept of shukke and the several degrees of renunciation associated with it in the Heian period, see Groner, “Vicissitudes in the Ordination,” 65–108; Katsuura, “Tonsure Forms for Nuns,” 109–29; and Meeks, “Buddhist Renunciation,” 1–59. 11 The exception is the Akashi Priest, consistently depicted as an outlier figure, fanatic in his devotions, and having outrageously ambitious goals for his lineage. Arch, even broadly satirical or critical characterizations of minor male Buddhist de- vouts appear throughout the Genji. The Adept and his disciples treat the Uji sisters quite brusquely in the wake of their father’s death, displaying a lack of sensitivity that the narrator implicitly criticizes. The monks who discover Ukifune after her disappearance at Uji are depicted as so full of fear as to appear foolish. 12 Meeks, “Buddhist Renunciation,” 10, 18–20. 13 In this respect, the Genji conforms to narrative conventions prominently dis played in texts like Tōnomine Shōshō monogatari (The Tale of the Tōnomine Lesser Captain, ca. 962) and Jōjin Ajari Haha no shū (The Collection of Jōjin Ajari’s Mother, compiled 1071–1073). For a complete English translation of the former, see Mostow, At the House of Gathered Leaves, 46–103. 14 Nagai, “Ukifune,” 289. 15 Nagai characterizes Ukifune’s mother’s actions in Yadorigi and Azumaya as “shocking.” “Ukifune,” 287. 16 See Yamauchi (ed.), Genji monogatari gaihen, and Harper (trans.), “Dew on the Mountain Path” and “The ‘Sumori’ Fragments,” in Harper and Shirane (eds.), Reading the Tale of Genji, 272–336. For a complete translation of Yamaji no tsuyu with introduction, see Dearden, “A ‘Drifting Boat.’” 17 MMZ 74. Hamamatsu Chūnagon monogatari. SNKBZ 27. For a complete English translation see Rohlich (trans.), A Tale of Eleventh-Century Japan. 18 Torikaebaya monogatari, SNKBT 26:103–356. For a complete English translation, see Willig (trans.), The Changelings. 19 For a complete English translation of Ariake no wakare, see Khan, “Ariake no wakare.” 20 For exploration of this argument, see Sarra, “Yoru no nezame,” 233–58. 21 Sagoromo monogatari, SNKBZ 29–30. For a partial translation in English of the Naikaku bunko redaction of Sagoromo, see Dutcher, “Sagoromo.”

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22 MMZ 34. On the appropriation of Ukifune by the author of Sarashina nikki, see Sarra, Fictions of Femininity, 129–60; on the Nun Abutsu’s use of Ukifune as a figure for herself in her memoir Utatane (Fitful Slumbers, ca. 1260), see Laffin, Rewriting Medieval Japanese Women, 60–97. For a survey of Ukifune’s afterlife in late Heian memoirs, see Mostow, “On Becoming Ukifune,” 45–60. 23 NKBZ 14:204; T 461. 24 Eco, Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, 87.

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