In the eighth month and ninth month when the nights are growing longA thousand times, ten thousand times the fuller’s stick beats.
In the eighth month and ninth month when the nights are growing longA thousand times, ten thousand times the fuller’s stick beats.
In the eighth month and ninth month when the nights are growing longA thousand times, ten thousand times the fuller’s stick beats.
In the eighth month and ninth month when the nights are growing long
A thousand times, ten thousand times the fuller’s stick beats.
The young brother still waited upon him, but he no longer brought with him the letters which he had been used to bring. Utsusemi thought he had at last decided that her treatment of him was too unfriendly to be borne, andwas vexed that he should feel so. Then suddenly she heard of his illness, and all her vexation turned to consternation and anxiety. She was soon to set out upon her long journey, but this did not much interest her; and to see whether Genji had quite forgotten her she sent him a message saying that she had been able to find no words in which to express her grief at hearing the news of his illness. With it she sent the poem: ‘I did not ask for news and you did not ask why I was silent; so the days wore on and I remained in sorrow and dismay.’ He had not forgotten her, no, not in all his trouble; and his answer came: ‘Of this life, fragile as the utsusemi’s19shell, already I was weary, when your word came, and gave me strength to live anew.’ The poem was written in a very tremulous and confused hand; but she thought the writing very beautiful and it delighted her that he had not forgotten how, cicada-like, she had shed her scarf. There could benoharm in this interchange of notes, but she had no intention of arranging a meeting. She thought that at last even he had seen that there could be no sense in that.
As for Utsusemi’s companion, she was not yet married, and Genji heard that she had become the mistress of Tō no Chūjō’s brother Kurōdo no Shōshō; and though he feared that Shōshō might already have taken very ill the discovery that he was not first in the field, and did not at all wish to offend him, yet he had a certain curiosity about the girl and sent Utsusemi’s little brother with a message asking if she had heard of his illness and the poem: ‘Had I not once gathered for my pillow a handful of the sedge that grows upon the eaves,20not a dewdrop of pretext could my present message find.’ It was an acrostic with many hidden meanings. He tied the letter to a tall reedand bade him deliver it secretly; but was afterwards very uneasy at the thought that it might go astray. ‘If it falls into Shōshō’s hands’ he thought ‘he will at once guess that it was I who was before him.’ But after all Shōshō would probably not take that so very hard, Genji had vanity enough to think.
The boy delivered the message when Shōshō was at a safe distance. She could not help feeling a little hurt; but it was something that he had remembered her at all, and justifying it to herself with the excuse that she had had no time to do anything better, she sent the boy straight back with the verse: ‘The faint wind of your favour, that but for a moment blew, with grief has part befrosted the small sedge of the eaves.’ It was very ill-written, with all sorts of ornamental but misleading strokes and flourishes; indeed with a complete lack of style. However, it served to remind him of the face he had first seen that evening by the lamplight. As for the other who on that occasion had sat so stiffly facing her, what determination there had been in her face, what a steady resolution to give no quarter!
The affair with the lady of the sedge was so unintentional and so insignificant that though he regarded it as rather frivolous and indiscreet, he saw no great harm in it. But if he did not take himself in hand before it was too late he would soon again be involved in some entanglement which might finally ruin his reputation.
On the forty-ninth day after Yūgao’s death a service in her memory was by his orders secretly held in the Hokedō on Mount Hiyei. The ritual performed was of the most elaborate kind, everything that was required being supplied from the Prince’s own store; and even the decoration of the service books and images was carried out with the utmost attention. Koremitsu’s brother, a man of great piety,was entrusted with the direction of the ceremony, and all went well. Next Genji sent for his old writing-master, a doctor of letters for whom he had a great liking and bade him write the prayer for the dead.21‘Say that I commit to Amida the Buddha one not named whom I loved, but lost disastrously,’ and he wrote out a rough draft for the learned man to amend. ‘There is nothing to add or alter,’ said the master, deeply moved. Who could it be, he wondered, at whose death the prince was so distressed? (For Genji, try as he might, could not hide his tears.)
When he was secretly looking through his store for largesse to give to the Hokedō priests, he came upon a certain dress and as he folded it made the poem: ‘The girdle that to-day with tears I knot, shall we ever in some new life untie?’
Till now her spirit had wandered in the void.22
But already she must be setting out on her new life-path, and in great solicitude, he prayed continually for her safety.
He met Tō no Chūjō and his heart beat violently, for he had longed to tell him about Yūgao’s child and how it was to be reared. But he feared that the rest of the story would needlessly anger and distress him, and he did not mention the matter. Meanwhile the servants of Yūgao’s house were surprised that they had had no news from her nor even from Ukon, and had begun to be seriously disquieted. They had still no proof that it was Genji who was her lover, but several of them thought that they had recognized him and his name was whispered among them. They would have it that Koremitsu knew the secret, but he pretended to know nothing whatever about Yūgao’s lover and found away to put off all their questions; and as he was still frequenting the house for his own purposes, it was easy for them to believe that he was not really concerned in their mistress’s affairs. Perhaps after all it was some blackguard of a Zuryō’s son who, frightened of Tō no Chūjō’s interference, had carried her off to his province. The real owner of the house was a daughter of Yūgao’s second wet-nurse, who had three children of her own. Ukon had been brought up with them, but they thought that it was perhaps because she was not their own sister that Ukon sent them no news of their mistress, and they were in great distress.
Ukon who knew that they would assail her with questions which her promise to Genji forbade her to answer, dared not go to the house, not even to get news of her lady’s child. It had been put out somewhere to nurse, but to her great sorrow she had quite lost sight of it.
Longing all the while to see her face once more though only in a dream, upon the night after the ceremony on Mount Hiyei, he had a vision very different from that for which he prayed. There appeared to him once more, just as on that fatal night, the figure of a woman in menacing posture, and he was dismayed at the thought that some demon which haunted the desolate spot might on the occasion when it did that terrible thing, also have entered into him and possessed him.
Iyo no Suke was to start early in the Godless Month and had announced that his wife would go with him. Genji sent very handsome parting presents and among them with special intent he put many very exquisite combs and fans. With them were silk strips to offer to the God of Journeys and, above all, the scarf which she had dropped, and, tied to it, a poem in which he said that he had kept it in remembrance of her while there was still hope of their meeting, but now returned it wet with tears shed in vain. There wasa long letter with the poem, but this was of no particular interest and is here omitted. She sent no answer by the man who had brought the presents, but gave her brother the poem: ‘That to the changed cicada you should return her summer dress shows that you too have changed and fills an insect heart with woe.’
He thought long about her. Though she had with so strange and inexplicable a resolution steeled her heart against him to the end, yet each time he remembered that she had gone forever it filled him with depression.
It was the first day of the tenth month, and as though in sign that winter had indeed begun heavy rain fell. All day long Genji watched the stormy sky. Autumn had hideously bereaved him and winter already was taking from him one whom he dearly loved:
Now like a traveller who has tried two ways in vainI stand perplexed where these sad seasons meet.
Now like a traveller who has tried two ways in vainI stand perplexed where these sad seasons meet.
Now like a traveller who has tried two ways in vainI stand perplexed where these sad seasons meet.
Now like a traveller who has tried two ways in vain
I stand perplexed where these sad seasons meet.
Now at least we must suppose he was convinced that such secret adventures led only to misery.
I should indeed be very loth to recount in all their detail matters which he took so much trouble to conceal, did I not know that if you found I had omitted anything you would at once ask why, just because he was supposed to be an Emperor’s son, I must needs put a favourable showing on his conduct by leaving out all his indiscretions; and you would soon be saying that this was no history but a mere made-up tale designed to influence the judgment of posterity. As it is I shall be called a scandal-monger; but that I cannot help.
1Lady Rokujō. Who she was gradually becomes apparent in the course of the story.
2Lady Rokujō’s house.
3Rokujō.
4Genji was now seventeen; Rokujō twenty-four.
5The god of bridges. He built in a single night the stone causeway which joins Mount Katsuragi and Mount Kombu.
6Genji’s brother-in-law.
7His own palace.
8Foxes, dressed up as men, were believed to be in the habit of seducing and bewitching human beings.
9We gather later that she was only nineteen.
10I.e. covered part of his face with a scarf or the like, a practice usual with illicit lovers in mediæval Japan.
11Shin Kokinshū, 1701.
12Lady Rokujō.
13To summon a servant.
14The bringing of a corpse. Temples were used as mortuaries.
15I.e. pursued illicit amours.
16Pilgrimages to Kiyomizu Temple are made on the seventeenth day.
17Chūjō means ‘Captain’; see above, p.71.
18From Tō no Chūjō’s wife, who was the daughter of the Minister of the Right.
19Cicada.
20‘Sedge upon the eaves ‘isNokiba no Ogi, and it is by this name that the lady is generally known.
21Gwammon.
22For forty-nine days the spirit of the dead leads the intermediate existence so strangely described in theAbhidharma Kośa Śāstra; then it begins its new incarnation.