"I count not myself among the finer branches,
Yet hope that the fragrance may float upon the breeze."
He looked back time after time as he finally made his exit.
Higekuro had meant all along to take her with him but had kept his
plans secret, lest Genji oppose them.
"I seem to be coming down with a cold," he said to the emperor, as
if no further explanation were necessary. "I think I should take care of
myself, and would not want to have her away from me."
Though To~ no Chu~jo~ thought it all rather sudden and unceremonious,
he did not want to risk offending Higekuro. "Do as you see fit," he said.
"I have not had a great deal to do with her plans."
Genji was startled but helpless. The lady was a little startled herself
at the direction in which the smoke was blowing. Higekuro was enjoying
the role of lady stealer.
She thought he had behaved very badly, showing his jealousy of the
emperor so openly. A coarse, common sort of man--she made less attempt
than ever to hide her distaste.
Prince Hyo~bu and his wife, who had spoken of him in such strong
terms, were beginning to wish that he would come visiting. But his life was
full. His days and nights were dedicated to his new lady.
The Second Month came. It had been cruel of her, Genji was thinking.
She had caught him off guard. He thought about her a great deal and
wondered what people would be saying. It had all been fated, no doubt,
and yet he could not help thinking that he had brought it on himself.
Higekuro was so unsubtle a man that Genji feared venturing even a playful
letter. On a night of boredom when a heavy rain was falling, however, he
remembered that on other such nights he had beguiled the tedium by
visiting her, and got off a note. He sent it secretly to Ukon. Not sure what
view she would take of it, he limited himself to commonplaces.
"A quiet night in spring. It rains and rains.
Do your thoughts return to the village you left behind?
<P 508>
"It is a dull time, and I grumble--and no one listens."
Ukon showed it to Tamakazura when no one else was near. She wept.
He had been like a father, and she longed to see him. But it was, as he
suggested, impossible. She had not told Ukon how unseemly his behavior
had sometimes been and she now had no one with whom to share her
feelings. Ukon had suspicions of the truth, but they were not very precise.
"It embarrasses me to write to you," Tamakazura sent back, "but I am
afraid that you might be worried. As you say, it is a time of rainy boredom.
"It rains and rains. My sleeves have no time to dry.
Of forgetfulness there comes not the tiniest drop."
She concluded with conventional remarks of a daughterly sort.
Genji was near tears as he read it, but did not wish to treat these
women to a display of jewel-like teardrops. As the rising waters threatened
to engulf him, he thought of how, all those years ago, Kokiden had kept
him from seeing her sister Oborozukiyo. Yet so novel was the Tamakazura
affair that it seemed without precedents. Men of feeling did have a way
of sowing bitter herbs. He tried to make himself accept the plain facts, that
the lady was not a proper object for his affections and that these regrets
came too late. He took out a japanese koto, and it too brought memories.
What a gentle touch she had had! He plucked a note or two and, trying
to make it sound lighthearted, sang "The Jeweled Grasses" to himself. It
is hard to believe that the lady for whom he longed would not have pitied
him if she could have seen him.
Nor was the emperor able to forget the beauty and elegance he had
seen so briefly. "Off she went, trailing long red skirts behind her." It was
not a very refined old poem, but he found it somehow comforting when
his thoughts turned to her. He got off a secret note from time to time.
These attentions gave her no pleasure. Still lamenting her sad fate, she
did not reply. Genji and his kindness were much on her mind.
The Third Month came. Wisteria and _yamabuki were in brilliant flower.
In the evening light they brought memories of a beautiful figure once
seated beneath them. Genji went to the northeast quarter, where
Tamakazura had lived. A clump of _yamabuki_ grew untrimmed in a hedge
of Chinese bamboo, very beautiful indeed. "Robes of gardenia, the silent
<P 509>
hue," he said to himself, for there was no one to hear him.
"The _yamabuki_ wears the hue of silence,
So sudden was the parting at Ide$ road.
"I still can see her there."
He seemed to know for the first time--how strange!--that she had left
him.
Someone having brought in a quantity of duck's eggs, he arranged
them to look like oranges and sent them off to her with a casual note which
it would not have embarrassed him to mislay.
"Through the dull days and months I go on thinking resentfully of
your strange behavior. Having heard that someone else had a hand in the
matter, I can only regret my inability to see you unless some very good
reason presents itself." He tried to make it seem solemnly parental.
"I saw the duckling hatch and disappear.
Sadly I ask who may have taken it."
Higekuro smiled wryly. "A lady must have very good reasons for
visiting even her parents. And here is His Lordship pretending that he has
some such claim upon your attentions and refusing to accept the facts."
She thought it unpleasant of him. "I do not know how to answer."
"Let me answer for you." Which suggestion was no more pleasing.
"Off in a corner not counted among the nestlings,
It was hidden by no one. It merely picked up and left.
"Your question, sir, seems strangely out of place. And please, I beg of
you, do not treat this as a billet-doux."
"I have never seen him in such a playful mood," said Genji, smiling.
In fact, he was hurt and angry.
The divorce had been a cruel wrench for Higekuro's wife, whose lucid
moments were rarer. He continued to consider himself responsible for her,
however, and she was as dependent upon him as ever. He was very mind-
ful of his duties as a father. Prince Hyo~bu still refused to allow him near
his daughter, Makibashira, whom he longed to see. Young though she
was, she thought that they were being unfair to him, and did not see why
she should be so closely guarded.
Her brothers went home frequently and of course brought back re-
<P 510>
ports of his new lady. "She seems very nice. She is always thinking of new
games."
She longed to go with them. Boys were the lucky ones, free to go
where they pleased.
Tamakazura had a strange talent for disturbing people's lives.
In the Eleventh Month she had a son, a very pretty child. Higekuro
was delighted. The last of his hopes had been realized. As for the general
rejoicing, I shall only say that her father, To~ no Chu~jo~, thought her good
fortune not at all surprising. She seemed in no way inferior to the daugh-
ters on whom he had lavished such attention. Kashiwagi, who still had not
entirely freed himself of unbrotherly feelings, wished that she had gone
to court as planned.
"I have heard His Majesty lament that he has no sons," he said, and
one may have thought it a little impertinent of him, when he saw what
a fine child it was. "How pleasing for all of us if it were a little prince."
She continued to serve as wardress of the ladies' apartments, though
it was not reasonable to expect that she would again appear at court.
I had forgotten about the minister's other daughter, the ambitious one
who had herself been desirous of appointment as wardress. She was a
susceptible sort of girl and she was restless. The minister did not know
what to do with her. The sister at court lived in dread of scandal.
"We must not let her out where people will see her," said the minister.
But she was not easily kept under cover.
One evening, I do not remember exactly when, though it must have
been at the loveliest time of autumn, several fine young gentlemen were
gathered in the sister's rooms. There was music of a quiet, undemanding
sort. Yu~giri was among them, more jocular than usual.
"Yes, he _is_ different," said one of the women.
The Omi lady pushed herself to the fore. They tried to restrain her
but she turned defiantly on them and would not be dislodged.
"Oh, _there_ he is," she said in a piercing whisper of that most proper
young man. "_There's_ the one that's different."
Now she spoke up, offering a poem in firm, clear tones:
"If you're a little boat with nowhere to go,
Just tell me where you're tied. I'll row out and meet you.
"Excuse me for asking, but are you maybe the open boat that comes
back again and again?"
He was startled. One did not expect such blunt proposals in these
elegant rooms. But then he remembered a lady who was much talked about
these days.
"Not even a boatman driven off course by the winds
Would wish to make for so untamed a shore."
She could not think how to answer--or so one hears.
<W Murasaki Shikibu>{Translated by Edward G.Seidensticker}
<T The Tale of Genji>
<K 3>
<C 32>{A Branch of Plum}
<N 1>
<P 511>
Genji was immersed in preparations for his daughter's initiation ceremo-
nies. Similar ceremonies were to be held for the crown prince in the Second
Month. The girl was to go to court immediately afterwards.
It was now the end of the First Month. In his spare time Genji saw
to blending the perfumes she would take with her. Dissatisfied with the
new ones that had come from the assistant viceroy of Kyushu, he had old
Chinese perfumes brought from the Nijo~ storehouses.
"It is with scents as with brocades: the old ones are more elegant and
congenial.
Then there were cushions for his daughter's trousseau, and covers and
trimmings and the like. New fabrics did not compare with the damasks and
red and gold brocades which an embassy had brought from Korea early in
his father's reign. He selected the choicest of them and gave the Kyushu
silks and damasks to the serving women.
He laid out all the perfumes and divided them among his ladies. Each
of them was to prepare two blends, he said. At Rokujo~ and elsewhere
people were busy with gifts for the officiating priests and all the important
guests. Every detail, said Genji, must be of the finest. The ladies were hard
at work at their perfumes, and the clatter of pestles was very noisy indeed.
Setting up his headquarters in the main hall, apart from Murasaki,
Genji turned with great concentration to blending two perfumes the for-
mulas for which--how can they have come into his hands?--had been
<P 512>
handed down in secret from the day of the emperor Nimmyo~. In a deeply
curtained room in the east wing Murasaki was at work on blends of her
own, after the secret Hachijo~ tradition. The competition was intense and
the security very strict.
"Let the depths and shallows be sounded," said Genji solemnly,
"before we reach our decisions." His eagerness was so innocent and boyish
that few would have taken him for the father of the initiate.
The ladies reduced their staffs to a minimum and let it be known that
they were not limiting themselves to perfumes but were concerned with
accessories too. They would be satisfied with nothing but the best and
most original jars and boxes and censers.
They had exhausted all their devices and everything was ready. Genji
would review the perfumes and seal the best of them in jars.
<N 2>
Prince Hotaru came calling on the tenth of the Second Month. A
gentle rain was falling and the rose plum near the veranda was in full and
fragant bloom. The ceremonies were to be the next day. Very close since
boyhood, the brothers were admiring the blossoms when a note came
<P 513>
attached to a plum branch from which most of the blossoms had fallen.
It was from Princess Asagao, said the messenger. Prince Hotaru was very
curious, having heard rumors.
"I made certain highly personal requests of her," said Genji, smiling
and putting the letter away. "I am sure that as always she has complied
with earnest efficiency."
The princess had sent perfumes kneaded into rather large balls in two
jars, indigo and white, the former decorated with a pine branch and the
latter a branch of plum. Though the cords and knots were conventional,
one immediately detected the hand of a lady of taste. Inspecting the gifts
and finding them admirable, the prince came upon a poem in faint ink
which he softly read over to himself.
"Its blossoms fallen, the plum is of no further use.
Let its fragrance sink into the sleeves of another."
Yu~giri had wine brought for the messenger and gave him a set of
lady's robes, among them a Chinese red lined with purple.
Genji's reply, tied to a spray of rose plum, was on red paper.
"And what have you said to her?" asked the prince. "Must you be so
"I would not dream of having secrets from you."
This, it would seem, is the poem which he jotted down and handed
to his brother:
"The perfume must be hidden lest people talk,
But I cannot take my eye from so lovely a blossom."
"This grand to-do may strike you as frivolous," said Genji, "but a man
does go to very great troubles when he has only one daughter. She is a
homely little thing whom I would not wish strangers to see, and so I am
