The sacred tree: Being the second part of 'The tale of Genji'

Several critics have asked to be told more about the writer of the Tale of Genji. Unfortunately little is known of Murasaki's life save the bare facts recorded in the first appendix of Volume I. What other knowledge we possess is derived from her Diary, which will be discussed in a later volume and is meanwhile available in Mr. Doi's translation. Reviewers have also asked for information concerning the state of literature in Japan at the time when the Tale was written. This I have supplied; and I have further ventured on a short discussion of Murasaki's art and its relation to the fiction of the West.

I have been blamed for using Catholic terms to describe heathen rituals. My reason for doing so is that the outward forms of medieval Buddhism stand much nearer to Catholicism than to the paler ceremonies of the Protestant Church, and if one avoids words with specifically Catholic associations one finds oneself driven back on the still less appropriate terminology of Anglicanism. Thus 'Vespers' is a less misleading translation than 'Evening Service' though the latter is far more literal.

Finally, I have thought it might be of interest to give a few notes concerning the transmission of the text.

Volume III is finished and will appear shortly.

Note on Pronunciation.—The G in 'Genji' is hard, as in 'gun.' Vowels, as in Italian.

CHAPTER X. THE SACRED TREE 39 XI. THE VILLAGE OF FALLING FLOWERS 94 XII. EXILE AT SUMA 99 XIII. AKASHI 141 XIV. THE FLOOD GAUGE 188 XV. THE PALACE IN THE TANGLED WOODS 225 XVI. A MEETING AT THE FRONTIER 252 XVII. THE PICTURE COMPETITION 258 XVIII. THE WIND IN THE PINE-TREES 282

LIST OF MOST IMPORTANT PERSONS

Akashi, Lady of Daughter of the old recluse of Akashi.

Akikonomu, Lady Vestal Virgin at Ise; daughter of Rokujō.

Aoi, Princess Genji's first wife.

Asagao, Princess Genji's first-cousin; courted by him in vain.

Chūjō Short for 'Tō no Chūjō.'

Chūjō, Lady Tō no Chūjō's daughter by his legitimate wife.

Chūnagon Maid to Oborozuki.

Emperor, The Old Genji's father.

Fujitsubo The Old Emperor's consort; loved by Genji.

Genji, Prince The Old Emperor's son by a concubine.

Gosechi, Lady Dancer at the winter festival; admired by Genji.

Hyōbukyō, Prince Fujitsubo's brother; Murasaki's father.

Iyo no Suke Husband of Utsusemi.

Jijū Maid to Suyetsumu.

Jōkyōden, Lady Consort of Suzaku.

Ki no Kami Son of Iyo no Suke by his first wife.

Kōkiden Original consort of the Old Emperor; supplanted first by Genji's mother, then by Fujitsubo.

Koremitsu Retainer to Genji.

Murasaki Genji's second wife.

Oborozukiyo, Princess Younger sister of Kōkiden.

Ōmyōbu Maid to Fujitsubo.

Reikeiden Lady-in-waiting at the Old Emperor's Court.

Reikeiden, Princess Niece of Kōkiden.

Rokujō, Princess Widow of the Old Emperor's brother.

Ryōzen, Emperor Son of Genji and Fujitsubo; successor to Suzaku.

Shōnagon Murasaki's old nurse.

Sochi no Miya, Prince Genji's half-brother.

Suyetsumu, Lady Daughter of Prince Hitachi; the red-nosed (Suyetsumuhana) lady.

Suzaku, Emperor Genji's half-brother; successor to the Old Emperor.

Tō no Chūjō Brother of Genji's first wife, Lady Aoi.

Ukon no Jō (Ukon) Faithful retainer to Genji; brother of Ki no Kami.

Utsusemi Wife of Iyo no Suke. Courted by Genji.

Village of Falling Sister of Reikeiden; protected by Genji. Flowers, Lady from the

┌ Prince Zembō, m. Lady Rokujō, and died young. │ │ │ └ Lady Akikonomu. │ │ ├ THE OLD EMPEROR. │ │ │ ├ Suzaku (his mother was Lady Kōkiden). │ │ │ └ Genji (his mother was Lady Kiritsubo). │ │ ├ Prince Momozono Shikibukyō. │ │ │ └ Princess Asagao. │ └ Princess Ōmiya, m. the Minister of the Left. │ ├ Aoi. │ │ │ └ Yūgiri. │ └ Tō no Chūjō. │ └ Lady Chūjō.

MINISTER OF THE RIGHT. │ ├ Kōkiden (eldest daughter). │ └ Oborozukiyo[1] (sixth daughter), wife of Suzaku, who is Emperor for a time, but soon retires.

A FORMER EMPEROR. │ ├ Prince Hyōbukyō. │ │ │ └ Murasaki (Genji's second wife). │ └ Fujitsubo. │ └ Ryōzen (supposed to be the old Emperor's child; really Genji's). Becomes Emperor in Suzaku's stead.

[1] Whom in this volume I call Oborozuki for short.

Genji is an illegitimate son of the Emperor; his mother dies soon after his birth. At the age of twelve he is affianced to Lady Aoi, the daughter of the Minister of the Left; but she is older than he is, and looks down on him as a mere schoolboy. Years go by and they are still on indifferent terms. Meanwhile Genji falls in love with Lady Rokujō, a widow eight years older than himself. She is passionately jealous of his wife (whom, however, Genji hardly ever sees) and relations with her become very difficult. Genji turns for consolation to Utsusemi, wife of a provincial governor: to Yūgao, a discarded mistress of his great friend Tō no Chūjō: to the fantastic Lady Suyetsumuhana, the 'lady with the red nose.' Utsusemi is carried away to the provinces by her husband; Yūgao dies, withered by the virulence of Rokujō's jealousy.

Meanwhile Genji manages to establish better terms with his wife, Aoi, only to lose her through the operation of the same baleful force that had destroyed Yūgao. Since his childhood Genji has had a passionate admiration for Lady Fujitsubo, his father's second wife and therefore his own stepmother. He has a son by her which is believed by the world to be the Emperor's child. Had this misdemeanour became known, Genji's enemies, led by Lady Kōkiden who had been his mother's rival, would have had an ample pretext for driving him away from Court. As it is, the actual cause of Genji's banishment (recounted in Vol. II) is his intrigue with Oborozukiyo, a much younger sister of his enemy, Lady Kōkiden.

At the end of Vol. I, Genji marries, en secondes noces, Lady Murasaki, a niece of Fujitsubo, whom he had some years before taken into his house and adopted.

INTRODUCTION

Fiction in Japan Previous to "The Tale of Genji"

The Tale of Genji was probably written about 1001–1015 A.D. We know the titles of a good many earlier stories and romances. About a dozen are mentioned in the Tale itself. But only three actual works of fiction survive, The Bamboo-cutter, The Hollow Tree ('Utsubo'), and the Room Below Stairs ('Ochikubo'). Besides these there are a few works which, though belonging to a rather different category, throw some light on the development of fiction and will be mentioned in due course.

The Bamboo-cutter dates from about 860–870. It is a harmless little fairy-story. An old peasant finds a minute child in a bamboo-stem. She grows up into a woman of surpassing beauty, is courted by numerous lovers to whom she sets a series of grotesque tasks which they entirely fail to perform. Finally celestial messengers arrive and carry her away to the sky.

The Hollow Tree cannot be much earlier than 980. No doubt in this interval of more than a hundred years much was written that is now lost. But it cannot be said that The Hollow Tree shows much sign of progress. As it exists to-day it is a very long book—more than half as long as Genji. Toshikage is the story of a man who on the way from Japan to China, regardless of geographical probabilities, gets wrecked 'on the coast of Persia.' In this country he falls in with supernatural beings from whom he obtains thirty miraculous zitherns and the knowledge of enchanted tunes. After a distinguished career on the Continent he returns to Japan with ten zitherns which he distributes among the grandees of the Court, keeping one for his small daughter, to whom alone he teaches the marvellous Persian tunes.

He and his wife die, the daughter marries unhappily and is finally left with no possessions save the marvellous zithern and a little son of twelve. They take refuge in a hollow tree, but soon discover to their consternation that their new home is the den of a bear who, returning from his day's hunting, is about to devour them, when the little boy makes a speech of several pages. The bear is so much moved that, far from molesting the intruders, it puts the hollow tree at their disposition and trots off to look for another home. Finally the wicked husband repents, takes back the wife and child whom he had deserted and all ends happily. The child embarks on its career as an infant prodigy and at the age of eighteen takes part victoriously in a musical competition at Court.

The remaining chapters deal chiefly with the rivalry of this young musician and other courtiers for the hand of the Prime Minister's daughter. They possess a certain historical interest as pictures of Court life, but are long-winded and boring to an almost unbelievable degree. Even Toshikage (the first chapter), which, when summarized, may sound mildly entertaining, is for the most part unendurably silly.

A little later, but not very far removed in date, is the Room Below Stairs. It is a feebly sentimental story about an ill-used step-child, somewhat in the manner of the edifying stories told in the Fairchild Family, but wholly lacking in the occasional felicities which spring unexpectedly from Mrs. Sherwood's pen. It is, however, a short book (only about 200 pages) and that is the best that can be said for it.

In none of these works is there any ability or desire to portray character. That is not in itself fatal to a work of fiction. The Arabian Nights are without it, and it exists only in the most rudimentary form in Defoe. But if this resource be neglected, something must take its place. There must be a fertility of narrative invention (as in Near Eastern fiction) or the building up of effect by sequences of actual word-texture (as in Virginia Woolf). Otherwise not literature but mere perfunctory anecdote will result, as has indeed happened in the case of Genji's predecessors.

Now Murasaki herself has every quality which these earlier writers lack. She exploits character, in a very restrained way, it is true, but with an unerring instinct how to produce the greatest effect with the least possible display. And to this she adds not only an astonishing capacity for invention, but also a beauty of actual diction unsurpassed by any long novel in the world. For none of these qualities was she indebted in any way to such of her predecessors as survive. Concerning lost works it is useless to speculate.

I have said that besides the three early stories there are other prose works which have some bearing on the history of Japanese fiction. To begin with there are the Tales of Ise, written somewhere about 890 A.D. They consist of 125 short paragraphs (often only two or three lines) containing little poems and a description of the circumstances under which they were written. They appear to concern the love-adventures of a single person, but are quite disconnected. I have translated one of the longer episodes in my Japanese Poetry. The Yamato Tales, about half a century later, also centre round poems. They consist of rather trivial anecdotes about courtiers of the period.

We now come to the one book which, though it is not a work of fiction and though it lacks the qualities of deliberate art which make Genji so astonishing, at least seems to move in the same world of thought and feeling. This is the Gossamer Diary ('Kagerō Nikki').

The writer was mistress of the great statesman Fujiwara no Kane-iye (929–999). By him she had a son called Michitsuna, and her name not being recorded she is known to history as 'Michitsuna's mother.' He made her acquaintance in 954 and Michitsuna was born the year after. But Kane-iye already had a wife, a legitimate family and numerous mistresses. Lady Gossamer (as we will for convenience call the writer of the Diary) could not expect undivided attention. This was a fact that she took years to recognize, and when the diary closes (in the twentieth year of their liaison!) she had indeed recognized her position, but was still as far from accepting it as at the start.

' Such entries are frequent from the beginning. Her grievance grew and grew. It became her whole life. When he did not come, she wept; when he came, she wept because he had not come sooner. She was immersed in perpetual devotions; while he, like our own eighteenth-century bucks whom in every particular he so strongly resembled, only turned religious when he was ill. Often he found her kneeling before an image of Buddha, lost in prayer; and one day, suddenly infuriated by this dismal reception, he kicked over her incense-bowl and, snatching the rosary from her hands, flung it across the room. He loved gaiety, noise, funny stories, practical jokes. She was shy, sensitive and, above all, terribly serious. His method of entertaining her was to repeat with immense gusto 'every piece of silly clownery or tomfoolery' that was current in the City, spiced with jokes and puns of his own.

She was incurably sentimental. Never for an instant could she recognize that time must bring changes, and after ten years she was still expecting him to court her with the ardour of arishi toki, 'the times that were.'

One night when she is awaiting him she lights the candles. No! She will let him find her in the dark, as in those old days when their love was still a secret escapade. She puts the candles out and, hearing him fumbling at the entry, cries Koko ni! (Here!) and stretches out her hand as she had often done before. But to-night he is in no mood for hide-and-seek. 'What game is this?' he cries angrily, 'light the candles at once. I cannot see my way into the room.' Then he asks if they can find him a snack of something to eat; he has had no supper. He eats his fish in silence, then says that he has had a tiring day, yawns, and falls asleep. At dawn his sons, the children of her rival, come to fetch him, and he calls her to the window to 'look what fine young fellows they have grown.'