indeed for two little boys. At the sight of them all, so caught up in the
festive gaiety, Genji thought of memorable occurrences on ancient festival
days.
"Our lads go off to have their Day of Light.
For me it is as if there were no sun."
And so he had made his way through the year, and the time had come
to leave the world behind. He gave his attendants, after their several ranks,
gifts to remember him by. He tried to avoid grand farewells, but they knew
what was happening, and the end of the year was a time of infinite sadness.
Among his papers were letters which he had put aside over the years but
which he would not wish others to see. Now, as he got his affairs in order,
he would come upon them and burn them. There was a bundle of letters
from Murasaki among those he had received at Suma from his various
ladies. Though a great many years had passed, the ink was as fresh as if
it had been set down yesterday. They seemed meant to last a thousand
years. But they had been for him, and he was finished with them. He asked
two or three women who were among his closest confidantes to see to
destroying them. The handwriting of the dead always has the power to
move us, and these were not ordinary letters. He was blinded by the tears
that fell to mingle with the ink until presently he was unable to make out
what was written.
"I seek to follow the tracks of a lady now gone
To another world. Alas, I lose my way."
Not wanting to display his weakness, he pushed them aside.
The women were permitted glimpses of this and that letter, and the
<P 734>
little they saw was enough to bring the old grief back anew. Murasaki's
sorrow at being those few miles from him now seemed to remove all
bounds to their own sorrow. Seeking to control a flow of tears that must
seem hopelessly exaggerated, Genji glanced at one of the more affectionate
notes and wrote in the margin:
"I gather sea grasses no more, nor look upon them.
Now they are smoke, to join her in distant heavens."
And so he consigned them to flames.
In the Twelfth Month the clanging of croziers as the holy name was
invoked was more moving than in other years, for Genji knew that he
would not again be present at the ceremony. These prayers for longevity
--he did not think that they would please the Blessed One. There had been
a heavy fall of snow, which was now blowing into drifts. The repast in
honor of the officiant was elaborate and Genji's gifts were even more lavish
than usual. The holy man had often presided over services at court and at
Rokujo~. Genji was sorry to see that his hair was touched with gray. As
always, there were numerous princes and high courtiers in the congrega-
tion. The plum trees, just coming into bloom, were lovely in the snow.
There should have been music, but Genji feared that this year music would
make him weep. Poems were read, in keeping with the time and place.
There was this poem as Genji offered a cup of wine to his guest of
honor:
"Put blossoms in your caps today. Who knows
That there will still be life when spring comes round?"
This was the reply:
"I pray that these blossoms may last a thousand springs.
For me the years are as the deepening snowdrifts."
There were many others, but I neglected to set them down.
It was Genji's first appearance in public. He was handsomer than ever,
indeed almost unbelievably handsome. For no very good reason, the holy
man was in tears.
Genji was more and more despondent as the New Year approached.
Niou scampered about exorcising devils, that the New Year might
begin auspiciously.
"It takes a lot of noise to get rid of them. Do you have any ideas?"
Everything about the scene, and especially the thought that he must
say goodbye to the child, made Genji fear that he would soon be weeping
again.
"I have not taken account of the days and months.
The end of the year--the end of a life as well?"
The festivities must be more joyous than ever, he said, and his gifts
to all the princes and officials, high and low--or so one is told--quite
shattered precedent.
<W Murasaki Shikibu>{Translated by Edward G.Seidensticker}
<T The Tale of Genji>
<K 5>
<C 42>{His Perfumed Highness}
<N 1>
<P 735>
The shining Genji was dead, and there was no one quite like him. It would
be irreverent to speak of the Reizei emperor. Niou, the third son of the
present emperor, and Kaoru, the young son of Genji's Third Princess, had
grown up in the same house and were both thought by the world to be
uncommonly handsome, but somehow they did not shine with the same
radiance. They were but sensitive, cultivated young men, and the fact that
they were rather more loudly acclaimed than Genji had been at their age
was very probably because they had been so close to him. They were in
any event very well thought of indeed. Niou had been reared by Murasaki,
her favorite among Genji's grandchildren, and still had her Nijo~ house for
his private residence. If the crown prince was because of his position the
most revered of the royal children, Niou was his parents' favorite. They
would have liked to have him with them in the palace, but he found life
more comfortable in the house of the childhood memories. Upon his initia-
tion he was appointed minister of war.
<N 2>
The First Princess, his sister, lived in the east wing of Murasaki's
southeast quarter at Rokujo~. It was exactly as it had been at Murasaki's
death, and everything about it called up memories. The Second Prince had
rooms in the main hall of the same quarter and spent much of his spare
<P 736>
time there. The Plum Court was his palace residence. He was married to
Yu~giri's second daughter and was of such high character and repute that
he was widely expected to become crown prince when the next reign
began.
Yu~giri had numerous daughters. The oldest was married to the crown
prince and had no rival for his affections. It had been generally assumed
that the younger daughters would be married to royal princes in turn. The
Akashi empress, Yu~giri's sister, had put in a good word for them. Niou,
however, had thoughts of his own. He was a headstrong young man who
did exactly what he wanted to do. Yu~giri told himself that there were after
all no laws in these matters, meanwhile making sure that his daughters had
every advantage and letting it be known that princes who came paying
court would not be turned away. Princes and high courtiers who flattered
themselves that they were among the eligible had very exciting reports
about the sixth daughter.
<N 3>
Genji,s various ladies tearfully left Rokujo~ for the dwellings that
would be their last. Genji had given the lady of the orange blossoms the
east lodge at Nijo~. Kaoru's mother lived in her own Sanjo~ mansion. With
the Akashi empress now in residence at the palace, Rokujo~ had become a
quiet and rather lonely place. Yu~giri had observed--it had been true long
ago and it was still true--how quickly the mansions of the great fall into
ruin. Enormous expense and attention went into them, and one could
almost see the beginning of the process when their eminent masters were
dead, and so they became the most poignant reminders of evanescence. He
did not want anything of the sort to happen at Rokujo~. He was determined
that there would be life in the mansion and the streets around it while he
himself was still alive. He therefore installed Kashiwagi's widow, the
Second Princess, in the northeast quarter, where he had lived as the foster
son of the lady of the orange blossoms. He was very precise and impartial
in his habits, spending alternate nights there and at his Sanjo~ residence,
where Kumoinokari lived.
Genji had polished the Nijo~ house to perfection, and then the south-
east quarter at Rokujo~ had become the jeweled pavilion, the center of life
and excitement. Now it was as if they had been meant all along for one
among his ladies and for her grandchildren. There it was that the Akashi
lady ministered to the needs of the empress's children. Making no changes
in the ordering of the two households, Yu~giri treated Genji's several ladies
as if he were the son of them all. His strongest regret was that Murasaki
had not lived to see evidences of his esteem. After all these years he still
grieved for her.
And the whole world still mourned Genji. It was as if a light had gone
out. For his ladies, for his grandchildren, for others who had been close to
him, the sadness was of course more immediate and intense, and they were
constantly being reminded of Murasaki too. It is true, they all thought: the
cherry blossoms of spring are loved because they bloom so briefly.
<N 4>
<P 737>
Genji had asked the Reizei emperor to watch over Kaoru. The emperor
was faithful to the trust, and his empress, Akikonomu, sad that she had
no children of her own, found her greatest pleasure in being of service to
him. His initiation ceremonies, when he was fourteen, were held in the
Reizei Palace. In the Second Month he was made a chamberlain and in the
autumn Captain of the Right Guards. This rapid promotion was at the
behest of the Reizei emperor, who seemed to have his own reasons for
haste. So it was that Kaoru was a man of importance at a very early age.
He was given rooms in the Reizei Palace and the Reizei emperor made it
his personal business to see that all the ladies-in-waiting and even the
maids and page girls were the prettiest and ablest to be had. Similar
attention went into fitting the rooms, which would not have offended the
sensibilities of the most refined and demanding princess. Indeed, the Reizei
emperor and his empress forwent the services of the most accomplished
women in their own retinue, that Kaoru might be more elegantly served.
They wanted him to be happy at Reizei and could not have been more
attentive to his needs if he had been their son. The Reizei emperor had only
one child, a princess by a daughter of To~ no Chu~jo~. There was of course
nothing that he was not ready and eager to do for her. Perhaps it was
because his love for Akikonomu had deepened over the years that he was
equally solicitous of Kaoru. There were some, indeed, who did not quite
understand this partiality.
<N 5>
Kaoru's mother had quite given herself up to her devotions. She
spared herself no expense in arranging the monthly invocation of the holy
name and the semiannual reading of the Lotus Sutra and all the other
prescribed rites. Her son's visits were her chief pleasure. Sometimes he
almost seemed more like a father than a son--a fact which he was aware
of and though rather sad. He was a constant companion of both the
reigning emperor and the retired emperor, and was much sought after by
the crown prince and other princes too, until he sometimes wished that he
could be in two places at once. From his childhood there had been things,
chance remarks, brief snatches of an overheard conversation, that had
upset him and made him wish that there were someone to whom he could
go for an explanation. There was no one. His mother would be distressed
at any hint that he had even these vague suspicions. He could only brood
in solitude and ask what missteps in a former life might explain the painful
doubts with which he had grown up--and wish that he had the clairvoy-
ance of a Prince Ra~hula, who instinctively knew the truth about his own
birth.
"Whom might I ask? Why must it be
That I do not know the beginning or the end?"
But of course there was no one he could go to for an answer.
<P 738>
These doubts were with him most persistently when he was unwell.
His mother, taking the nun's habit when still in the flush of girlhood--had
it been from a real and thorough conversion? He suspected rather that
some horrible surprise had overtaken her, something that had shaken her
to the roots of her being. People must surely have heard about it in the
course of everyday events, and for some reason had felt constrained to
keep it from him.
His mother was at her devotions, morning and night, but he thought
it unlikely that the efforts of a weak and vacillating woman could trans-
form the dew upon the lotus into the bright jewel of the law. A woman
labors under five hindrances, after all. He wanted somehow to help her
towards a new start in another life.
He thought too of the gentleman who had died so young. His soul
must still be wandering lost, unable to free itself of regrets for this world.
How he wished that they could meet--there would be other lives in which
it might be possible.
His own initiation ceremonies interested him not in the least, but he
<P 739>
had to go through with them. Suddenly he found himself a rather con-
spicuous young man, indeed the cynosure of all eyes. This new eminence
only made him withdraw more resolutely into himself.
The emperor favored him because they were so closely related, but a
quite genuine regard had perhaps more to do with the matter. As for the
empress, her children had grown up with him and he still seemed almost
one of them. She remembered how Genji had sighed at the unlikelihood
that he would live to see this child of his late years grown into a man, and
felt that Genji's worries had added to her own responsibilities. Yu~giri was
more attentive to Kaoru than to his own sons.
<N 6>
The shining Genji had been his father's favorite child, and there had
been jealousy. He had not had the backing of powerful maternal relatives,
but, blessed with a cool head and mature judgment, he had seen the
advantages of keeping his radiance somewhat dimmed, and so had made
his way safely through a crisis that might have been disastrous for the
