Weird Ladies: Narrative Strategy in the Genji monogatari

Weird Ladies: Narrative Strategy in the Genji monogatariAuthor(s): Aileen GattenSource: The Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Apr., 1986),pp. 29-48Published by: American Association of Teachers of JapaneseStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/489516 .

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WEIRD LADIES: NARRATIVE STRATEGY IN THE GENJI MONOGATARI

by Aileen Gatten

There are two indisputably weird or anomalous characters in the Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji): Suetsumuhana, also known as the Hitachi or safflower princess; and an elderly court lady, Gen no Naishi no Suke (hereafter referred to as Naishi). They comprise half of the corpus of so-called comic characters in the Genji; the other two are the Omi lady (To no ChujZ5's daughter) and the minor provincial official in Kyushu who pays unwelcome court to Tamakazura. There is a basic difference between the two groups: the Omi lady and the man from Kyushu are aberrant because they are rustics, possessing all the quaint manners and crude accomplishments of the born provincial. But the safflower princess and old Naishi are not yokels: they are women of high birth, reared in the capital. Their bizarre qualities come from other quarters.

I would like to focus on two questions regarding the latter pair of ladies. First, what makes the safflower princess and Naishi anomalous characters? How can we tell what has been intentionally depicted as aberrant in characters from a thousand-year-old novel written by a member of a society whose customs and beliefs often strike us as thoroughly alien? Second, how does Murasaki Shikibu manipulate these two characters to perform different functions that elicit very different responses?



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The safflower princess is the heroine of two chapters in the Genji, "Suetsumuhana" ("The Safflower") and "Yomogiu" ("The Wormwood Patch"); she makes short appearances thereafter. The Genji narrative states that she was brought up by her old-fashioned father in the grand style befitting a princess. At the begin- ning of "Suetsumuhana," the chapter in which she is introduced, we are told that the princess has fallen on hard times: her parents are dead, she seems to have little financial support, and her house and garden badly need repair and attention. To make matters worse, she has been reared so strictly that she seems never to have been taught how to cope with society. The few suitors she attracts give up in disgust when their letters produce no response. The exceptional-- and eventually successful--suitor is of course Genji.

Naishi is a lesser but vivid character, an elderly, flirtatious court lady. Her cameo performance is in "Momiji no ga" ("An Autumn Excursion"). The young Genji, curious to widen his experience of women, and both fascinated and repelled by the coquettish Naishi, has a risque verbal exchange with her that leads to a love affair. Their romance ends in farce when the couple is discovered in bed by a rival, Genji's brother-in-law To no ChDuj. Genji, barely dressed, hides behind a screen, To no ChDjO draws his sword in mock fury, and old Naishi begs the young men not to come to blows over her. Naishi makes two more brief appearances in the Genji, the last as a nun, but she remains interested in men to the last.

These two characters might be called urban aristocratic grotesques. A grotesque, according to one definition, is a design or form characterized by distortion or unnatural combinations. In literature, grotesque characters are created through various means: the narrator's stance, the response of other characters, implicit and explicit contrast with those other characters, and the language chosen by the author to depict the grotesque character. Marcel

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Association of Teachers of Japanese

Proust gives a virtuoso performance of grotesque characterization in Le temps retrouve (The Past Recaptured). The narrator attends a party at which he discovers his old friends, lovers, enemies, and acquaintances transformed by the passage of time. Most have not changed for the better, including the formerly glamorous Duchesse de Guermantes:

I had just noticed [the Duchesse] walking between a double row of staring folk who, unconscious of the miraculous artifices of toilette and aesthetics which were being used on them and impressed by the tawny head of hair and the salmon-pink body barely emerging from its fins of black lace and wrapped round with strands of jewels, gazed upon the inherited sinuousness of its lines as they might have looked upon some ancient sacred fish, laden with precious stones...

Proust achieves his grotesque effect by exaggerating the artificiality of the Duchesse's elaborate toilette: the unnatural, salmon-pink color produced by excessive layers of makeup is the starting point for a fish metaphor that is first suggested and

finally stated explicitly near the end of the sen- tence.

Comparing an aged but meticulously made-up woman's skin to that of an "ancient sacred fish" is an effective device because we can be persuaded that there is something nonhuman--as well as dignified, sumptuous, and awe-inspiring--about an overdressed old duchess. But our view does not always coincide with the author's intent, particularly when we are

speaking of Heian literature. What jars the Heian

sensibility often does not bother modern readers at

all, and vice versa.

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The Murasaki Shikibu nikki, written around the first decade of the eleventh century, mentions an up- roar at court caused by ladies who enter the royal presence wearing robes layered in improper color combinations. Murasaki Shikibu describes two of the offending costumes. Both ladies seem to have been guilty of wearing what we would call gradations of color--one woman, for example, wears red underrobes and rose-colored overrobes with a light pink jacket. This does not strike us as a particularly inappropriate outfit; but the unfortunate ladies were roundly condemned for their bad taste.2 If Murasaki Shikibu had described only their costumes, omitting her contemporaries' reaction, even the most learned modern reader would have trouble understanding the intended significance of the passage. We know that the ladies lack taste only because Murasaki Shikibu tells us.

On the other hand, some perfectly proper Heian practices cannot help but strike us as odd. In the "Kashiwagi" ("Oak Tree") chapter of the Genji, the dying Kashiwagi prepares to receive his old frienc

Yugiri. Kashiwagi is too weak to get up to dress, so he must have his last interview with Yugiri in bed, wearing the Heian equivalent of a nightshirt. Certain proprieties must nevertheless be observed, since Yugiri is a man of high rank. Kashiwagi is helped to sit up in bed, and he puts on his hat. This is not a

nightcap, it is a tate-eboshi, a high-crowned court cap worn by the more eminent nobility. The text states that the court cap is Kashiwagi's concession to etiquette, his way of demonstrating that he really ought to be receiving his visitor in proper attire and out of bed. That he can manage only to put on the cap is a sign of his extreme weakness.

Heian gentlemen wore their hair long, tied up in a ponytail and bound into a neat topknot at the crown of the head. Unless a nobleman was in very private surroundings, he wore a hat that covered the topknot.

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To go outdoors or receive guests without one's hat would have been as shocking as a modern Western gentleman mingling in society in underwear or pajamas. Not only was it a sign of great deshabille, it showed disrespect. The Okagami (The Great Mirror) mentions one noble who was so conscientious about wearing a hat that if he happened to forget his he would cover his head with his sleeve.3 There is no doubt that Kashi- wagi's action is admirable, and was so interpreted by Heian readers. For those of us reading the text of "Kashiwagi" and Murasaki Shikibu's Nikki in the twen- tieth century, however, the response is bound to be different. We know how we are supposed to react, because the author tells us. But the great differences between our cultures ensure that we will not be entirely convinced; we are puzzled and mildly amused by the color controversy and the wearing of a dressy hat in bed.

All this is by way of saying that we may not grasp every cultural clue provided in the Genji monogatari, and we may well misinterpret others. Murasaki Shikibu nevertheless makes sure that most of the data about her characters will be correctly interpreted. She does this partially through conventional means, such as having her narrator comment favorably on a character's actions or appearance. The author also applies a less

predictable convention of characterization: she uses certain attributes and accomplishments as signs or markers that delineate and amplify a character's personality. The incense competition in "Umegae" ("A Branch of Plum") enhances the reader's impressions of those characters who blend the various kinds of incense.4 Other signs of taste and talent employed by Murasaki Shikibu in her characterizations include

calligraphic skills; the choice of writing paper appropriate to the season and circumstance; taste in

clothes, both for oneself and for others; a knowledge of waka, including the ability to quote from royal

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anthologies and personal collections; a talent for composing impromptu poems befitting the situation at hand; and familiarity with at least one musical instrument.

These are more than polite accomplishments in the Genji; rather, they are very much like symbols. When ladies in a Jane Austen novel play the piano or sing, their performance is generally used as a backdrop for the principal characters, not as a vital revelation of personality. Consider this evening scene from Pride and Prejudice:

...[Mr. Darcy] applied to Miss Bingley and Elizabeth for the indulgence of some music. Miss Bingley moved with alacrity to the piano-forte, and after a polite request that Elizabeth would lead the way, which the other as politely and more earnestly negatived, she seated herself.

Mrs. Hurst sang with her sister, and while they were thus employed Elizabeth could not help observing as she turned over some music books that lay on the instrument, how fre-

quently Mr. Darcy's eyes were fixed on her.... She could only imagine... that she drew his notice because there was something about her more wrong and reprehensible, according to his ideas of right, than in any other person present....

After playing some Italian songs, Miss

Bingley varied the charm by a lively Scotch air; and soon afterwards Mr. Darcy, drawing near Elizabeth, said to her--

"Do not you feel a great inclination, Miss Bennet, to seize such an opportunity of dancing a reel?"

She smiled, but made no answer.5

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We learn indirectly from the passage that Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst are accomplished at singing and playing entertaining airs on a pianoforte; but we know already that they are ladies of fashion, and because piano and song are part of any eighteenth- or nineteenth-century lady's repertoire, their performance is not in itself especially significant. We do not know if they played and sang well or poorly, perfunctorily or with feeling; or if their audience was moved, bored, or delighted by the performance. Its principal reason for being is to provide a foil, to give Mr. Darcy an opportunity to gaze intently at Elizabeth during a musical interlude, and for Elizabeth to misinterpret the meaning of his gaze. Pride and Prejudice has several scenes involving Elizabeth, Darcy, and a pianoforte. Such scenes forward the plot by stressing the conflict between the hero and heroine. Austen uses other aesthetic pastimes similarly: Emma Woodhouse's drawing sessions and Mr. Elton's "charade"

poem in Eama are there principally to further the sub-

plot of Emma's matchmaking; the drawing and the poem themselves only confirm what we have already been told about the characters--namely, that Emma is a fairly good portraitist, clever at exaggerating her subject's good points, and that Mr. Elton is an ass.

In the Genji, on the other hand, characterization is heavily dependent on the cultural signs allotted by Murasaki Shikibu. Genji's cousin Princess Asagao is a

good example: if we knew nothing of her waka style, calligraphy, talent for incense blending and presenta- tion, and general good taste, she would hardly exist as a character--her personality would be a blank. The narrator devotes very little space to a conventional

description of Princess Asagao. We have to form our view of her in accordance with the signs given us in the narrative.

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A character's handwriting is an essential comment on his or her personality in the Genji. A hand is not described as merely good or bad, it is analyzed in terms of depth, attractiveness, strength, and lasting impression. The configuration of the lines of a letter or poem, the gradations of ink, and the texture and color of the writing paper are other important contributing factors. The most admirable female characters have superlative handwriting, while the best that can be said of a character like the safflower princess is that her calligraphy is "commonsensical and straightforward" ("kotowari kikoete shitataka [nari]").6

Murasaki Shikibu's preoccupation with such details can be frustrating to those who do not realize the point behind emphasizing a character's flawless taste in clothes, or the ability to tie a love-letter to a flower in just the right stage of bloom. These are not random excursions into aremote aesthetic, but a subtle, varied way of giving depth and scope to a character. Jonathan Culler reminds us that "we must read a novel on the assumption that we have been told all we need to know: that significance inheres at precisely those levels where the novelist concentrates."7 In the Genji, this applies equally to admirable and peculiar characters. What Murasaki Shikibu tells us is what is significant.

One of the less significant traits of a Genji character is physical beauty. Of course the most admirable female characters are beautiful, but then they approach perfection in nearly every other respect as well. On the other hand, a lady is not condemned to being a grotesque simply because she is unattractive, nor do good looks guarantee a good character. Two other of Genji's ladies, Hanachirusato (the lady from the village of falling flowers) and Utsusemi (the lady of the locust shell) are plain women redeemed by sensi- tivity and taste; the rustic Omi lady and the man from

Kyushu are physically attractive but beneath notice in terms of accomplishment.

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Let us turn now to the two "weird ladies." What signs does Murasaki Shikibu use to inform us that Naishi and the safflower princess are indeed grotesques?

Naishi is well-born, intelligent, and greatly respected at court, where she holds the office of assistant handmaid. Twenty or thirty years earlier, she would have been a model court lady: she is attractive, a superlative biwa player, a fashionable dresser, and is prompt at composing poetic replies. She is also promiscuous; but that would hardly have been noticed at the sexually tolerant Heian court. Other court ladies in the Genji are equally indiscrim- inate in their choice of partners, yet are not condemned for it. But what is acceptable behavior for a twenty- five-year-old will not do for a woman whom the narrator of the Genji calls "very old indeed." Her age is later given as 57 or 58 (14: 290, 295). Old age was thought to begin at forty in the Heian period, and so Naishi is in fact an ancient creature in the eyes of her contemporaries. We know that her undiminished appetite for young men is inappropriate because of the responses her behavior elicits from the narrator, Genji, and his father the emperor. For example, the emperor sees Genji flirting with Naishi, and remarks to himself what an ill-matched couple they make ("nitsukuwashi- karanu awai kana"; 14: 292). Later in the story, during Genji's mock fight with To no Chuj5 in Naishi's

boudoir, the old lady creates a spectacle that the narrator calls "most unbefitting" ("ito tsukinashi"; 14: 295). Comments by narrator and characters are one way of emphasizing Naishi's weirdness.

There are other, hidden signs, implicit contrasts with characters in earlier literature and in the Genji itself. Murasaki Shikibu's contemporaries would imme-

diately have identified Naishi with the old woman in Ise monogatari (Tales of Ise) who makes a fool of herself over the young, handsome Narihira;8 a similar comic character, this time an old man, menaces the heroine of the Ochikubo monogatari (The Tale of

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Ochikubo). The implicit message is that the very old-- those over fifty--should abandon the way of the flesh and prepare for the life to come. This does not mean that Murasaki Shikibu disliked old women. There are plenty of elderly ladies in the Genji, some of whom are imposing figures. But they behave differently from Naishi. In most cases, they remain concealed behind curtains and blinds, models of reticence and experts at dignified poetic exchanges. One thinks of great ladies like Princess Omiya, the mother of To no Chujo and Aoi, or of Princess Ochiba's mother Miyasudokoro. Even the safflower princess' decrepit ladies-in-waiting are deeply concerned with proprieties.

The single most important sign of Naishi's character--her symbol, one might say--is her fan. In "Momiji no ga," Genji initiates his conversation with Naishi by tugging playfully on her train. She turns halfway toward him with her fan open and held beneath her eyes. The pose is typical of court ladies. At this point, the fan is described only as "splendidly decorated" ("enarazu egakitaru"; 14: 290); its

splendor, we are told, makes a jarring contrast with her dark, sunken eyelids and the wisps of hair framing her face. "What an inappropriate fan," Genji thinks (the word he uses in the original is again "nitsukawashikaranu"). He then examines it more closely:

A grove of tall trees was painted subtly on

paper so bright a red it positively shone. On one side of the fan were verses jotted down in a hand that, though thoroughly past its prime, was not without merit: "The woodland undergrasses / Have grown old and sere."

"Of all the poems she could have chosen," thought Genji. "Isn't she outrageous!" (14: 291)

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Heian aristocrats generally decorated their own fans. Naishi has chosen to color hers a shocking red; the grove of trees is probably painted in gold or sil- ver. So vivid a fan would overpower even a younger woman. Its effect is disastrous for Naishi. Not only is Genji struck by this evidence of Naishi's bad taste: the red fan also accentuates the very signs of age that she labors so hard to conceal.

But what is "outrageous"("utate") about the poetry quotation? Naishi quotes from a poem in the first miscellaneous section of the Kokinshu (17: 892): "The woodland undergrasses / Have grown old and sere / In the Oaraki forest: / Ponies do not linger there, / Nor do men come harvesting." The speaker laments that age has rendered her unattractive: her charms are the "woodland grasses," and the ponies and harvesters sig- nify lovers. Genji is shocked by the allusion because it amounts to a general invitation to visit Naishi's bedroom. But he cannot resist a teasing reply. "Yet in summer, that very forest," Genji says. He alludes to a poem in a personal waka collection, the Saneakira sh2: the poem celebrates the Oaraki forest as the summer home of a host of songbirds. Naishi's "forest," in other words, is already well frequented by many "birds." With so many lovers at her command, Genji hints, Naishi hardly needs another. Naishi is charac- teristically quick to reply. She recites a poem in which her undergrasses--though admittedly past their prime--are offered as food for Genji's pony. This is

probably as close as Genji ever comes to being propo- sitioned. The explicitness of Naishi's innuendo must have titillated Heian audiences, who were probably not accustomed to encountering so sexually aggressive an old lady in fiction. Narihira's elderly ladylove in the Ise monogatari uses one of her sons as a go-between. Naishi manages very well on her own.

These events take place in "Momiji no ga." In the

chapter that follows it, "Hana no en" ("The Festival of the Cherry Blossoms"), a character appears who is

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probably intended to stand in direct contrast to old Naishi. This is Oborozukiyo (the lady of the misty moon), a young lady new at court whom Genji seduces one lovely spring night. Oborozukiyo's naivete and youthful beauty contrast well with Naishi's rather hardened approach to love; but it is the young girl's taste, and Genji's response to it, that make the more striking contrasts. Like Naishi, Oborozukiyo alludes to a Kokinsha poem at her initial meeting with Genji, but Oborozukiyo's choice is chaste and romantic, a spring poem about the misty moon that neither shines nor is obscured. Her innocence and susceptibility captivate Genji, who is reluctant to leave her side even when dawn begins to break. This pretty scene contrasts with Genji's eagerness to escape Naishi's barrage of innuendo and reproach. But the most striking difference between the two ladies is their fans. Like Naishi's, Oborozukiyo's is carefully described. It is a cherry pink that shades toward rose; the rose-colored part has a painting of a misty moon reflected in water. Genji finds the fan "quite commonplace, but appealing because it was hers" (14: 309). Cherry-pink and rose are appropriate colors for a fan carried by a young lady in spring; the misty moon is evocative of late spring, and of the elegant poem the girl quotes earlier. It is perhaps significant that no other fans are so carefully described in the Genji. The garish red fan with its tasteless quotation and the cherry-pink fan celebrating the misty moon are placed in opposition, like the autumn and spring seasons in which the respective stories are set.

Naishi is grotesque because her originally acceptable behavior and taste no longer match her present age. The case is somewhat different with Suetsumuhana, the safflower princess. Like Naishi, Suetsumuhana refuses to act her age. On the other hand, taste is one of the few things the princess has in her favor. The taste is not her own, however: it is that of her father, the late Prince Hitachi, and of other long-dead relatives. In the absence of any personal aesthetic standards, Suetsumuhana unquestioningly adopts those set by her

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ancestors. Fortunately for the princess, her family was blessed with excellent taste. Although her blind loyalty to the antiquated family aesthetic occasionally produces dismaying results, by and large it is a beneficial attribute that does much to make the safflower princess a sympathetic figure rather than a repellent one.

The princess' oddness originates from two sources: her shyness and the decayed state of her tasteful, inherited possessions and surroundings. Both shyness and decay are purposely exaggerated by the author to obtain the desired bizarre effect. Of the two, the princess' shyness is undoubtedly the greater flaw.

The princess is repeatedly described as retiring and reticent, having been strictly brought up by an

elderly, old-fashioned father. But she proves to be more than ordinarily shy. When Genji first comes

courting, she agrees to receive him only if she need not say anything to him, and if he will address her

through closed shutters. The modern equivalent might be to leave a visitor standing on the doormat, conversing through a closed front door. When prospective lovers send poems and letters, the princess does not answer. This is rude, tasteless behavior, as one such hopeful, T6 no ChOuj, puts it (14: 243). During her first real encounter with Genji, the princess is speechless and

extremely bashful. Sheltered young girls are expected to be shy with men; but, as the text of "Suetsumuhana"

repeatedly states, grown women on their own, like the

princess, are to comport themselves in a more worldly manner. The princess, like old Naishi, refuses to

accept the fact that she has grown older and must act

accordingly.

Childishness is one aspect of the safflower

princess' grotesque character (the narrator calls her "ito uiuishige"; 14: 247). Another is her famous

ugliness: she is too tall and thin, and her long, drooping, red nose is compared to a safflower and an

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elephant's trunk. But looks are not crucial. Neither Genji nor his intermediary, the court lady Tayu no MyObu, wishes the princess were prettier: they would rather see her sweeter, brighter, more responsive and modern. Looks are less important than temperament in Murasaki Shikibu's view.

As noted above, the princess relies in matters of taste on standards set by long-dead forebears. Her taste in clothing is consequently conservative to the point of absurdity. The princess and her ladies dress in soot-stained clothing that is worn and shabby with age. Similarly, when Suetsumuhana sends Genii a gift of clothing at New Year's, he is "shocked" ("asamashi to obosu"; 14: 262) by the old-fashioned cut of the robe, by the material used, and by its color combinations (which are various gradations of red, as in the

Murasaki Shikibu nikki passage mentioned earlier).

When the princess is obliged to make an aesthetic decision, her lack of taste is obvious. The princess' poems, for example, are written on singularly unsuitable notepaper: not only is it discolored and puffy with age, it tends to be the kind of no-nonsense paper used for court documents and business letters. Her poetic diction is clumsy and overly observant of literary primers; her handwriting is strongly characteristic of early tenth-century styles. Having glanced at the first of the princess' letters, Genji "let it fall. It was not worth looking at" (14: 252).

The princess lives in a large, decaying mansion which seems to rot before our eyes. By the end of "Suetsumuhana" a gallery roof has fallen in; but true ruin begins with "Yomogiu," when the servants' quarters are struck by lightning and burnt down,and practically every part of the house but the central room of the main building has become unfit for human habitation. The garden is desolate and lonely. As the narrative progresses, the grounds become a tangle of weeds and

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vines, overgrown trees, and unruly bushes. Tree-spirits and foxes haunt the place. It seems a perfect setting for a ghost story: the princess' elderly attendants in their dirty dresses, eating meager meals off imported celadon, might easily be apparitions seeking to ensnare a tasty morsel like Genji. Yet the safflower princess' house and grounds are generally praised as "elegant" ("okashi"). The house and staff may be old and battered, but they are the best. When Genji peeps through the shutters one night and sees several ladies in their shabby but impeccably proper costumes, he does not wonder if he is frequenting a haunted house: he thinks the old ladies are "elegant," and imagines that there must be others like them in certain bureaucratic centers of the royal palace (14: 255).

It is the romance of the old house and the high status of its occupant that attract Genji and T5 no Chujo in the first place. Genji imagines the lonely mansion as the setting for one of those old stories about a sheltered, conservatively-reared heroine. Such stories no longer survive. We can conjecture from

Genji's expectations that the old stories he has in mind featured scenes in which the beautiful, reticent heroine, living out her days in a tumbledown mansion, played the koto on moonlit nights. Old Prince Hitachi

played the koto well; Genji first visits the princess' house eager to discover if she has inherited her father's talent. He hears her play, but only briefly and at a distance. His initial impression is that the

princess' koto sounds "elegant fokashi]; her style was not deeply moving, but the extraordinary quality of the instrument made it impossible to find many faults" (14: 238). The essence of Genji's first impression is re- stated frequently throughout the chapter: the safflower

princess, with no taste or talent of her own, is rescued time and again by accessories of superior quality. If the princess had played her brief musical selection on a mediocre instrument, Genji would have

thought her performance less than elegant. To make another analogy to our own world, a few chords played

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by an amateur pianist will sound much more impressive on a 1929 Steinway grand than on a living-room spinet of no particular pedigree.

Incense is another Hitachi family treasure that helps to compensate for the princess' shortcomings. Genji's first physical impression of her is favorable, thanks to her elegant, expensive scent. At the begin- ning of their first interview, Genji is given a seat before a firmly shut sliding door to await the princess' approach. Genji, who has already toncluded that he finds the old mansion more refined (okuyukashi) than fashionable modern houses, hears the princess nearing the other side of the door. "There was a sense of quiet composure and gentility, accompanied by the pleasant scent of sandalwood. 'Just as I expected,' thought Genji" (14: 249). He is disappointed later that night, after he discovers how shy and inept she really is; but the princess' romantic surroundings and her pleasant scent soften what might have been a far more negative reaction. He finds her "aware" and "namaitoshi," both adjectives connoting pity, sympathy, and concern. He is touched by her awkward ways and feels respect for her high rank. Genji's combined emotions convince him that the princess must be taken under his wing.

The princess' splendid, richly-scented sable coat (an exotic item to the eleventh-century reader) and the "exceedingly old-fashioned" gentleman's comb- and toiletry-boxes and mirror also have an antique charm for Genji (14: 266).

The princess' romantically decayed house and grounds, as portrayed in "Suetsumuhana," attract Genji to the Hitachi household and soften his initial impression of the princess herself. But the house has another role: to supplement the character of the grotesque princess, so enabling this awkward, unprepossessing woman to occupy center stage through two substantial chapters.

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Grotesques in the Genji appear to be sustainable only in short passages. They flourish in vignettes. The safflower princess occupies more space than any other grotesque character, urban or rustic, thanks to the added interest provided by her house and grounds. "Suetsumuhana," "The Safflower," true to its title, is about the red-nosed princess herself. It estab- lishes her character and sets up her connection with

Genji. The house occupies a subsidiary position at this point. But with "Yomogiu"--"The Wormwood Patch"-- the house becomes a character in its own right.

Genji is in exile at Suma during the major part of

"Yomogiu." Without his active, articulate presence, the chapter seems doomed, for the mute, static princess can offer little diversion on her own. When she is

paired with the tumbledown house, however, an interest-

ing plot takes shape. Because of the increasingly alarming decay of her house in "Yomogiu," the princess' life becomes more and more precarious. Most of the house is no longer inhabitable; all but the most loyal servants leave in despair or disgust; foxes and

spirits regularly manifest themselves in the neglected garden. The collapsing house underscores the princess' penury and isolation; it also provides the necessary background for the trials the princess undergoes in the course of the chapter. When her saintly brother the monk pays one of his rare visits, he is so

unworldly that the shocking state of the house and

grounds makes no impression. Needless to say, he does not offer any assistance.

Later in the chapter, the princess' obnoxious maternal aunt, a governor's wife, mocks her threadbare

elegance, scornfully offers her a job as the family governess, and finally takes away the princess' faith- ful young maid Jiju. Such indignities are unlikely to have been visited on a princess--unless she is living in conditions so wretched that, to insensitive members of society, she no longer merits treatment commensurate with her rank.

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The princess' ruined house also sends a signal to various connoisseurs and entrepreneurs who, correctly assuming that the princess needs income, inquire into purchasing the family antiques and timber. Thus the house provides the impetus for the princess' visitors to come and subject her to various trials. The trials, moreover, give the princess the opportunity to show herself at her best: she is brave in the face of adversity, a filial daughter who upholds her father's standards and admonitions.

The safflower princess and her house are an insep- arable couple. No single Genji character is so

strongly linked with his or her surroundings. The ominous presence of the Uji River does much to set the tone of the Uji chapters, and is strongly associated with the Eighth Prince and his family as a whole, but it would be difficult to identify it with any one character. Genji's beloved Murasaki has a "spring garden" at the Rokujo mansion, but it pales when com-

pared to the safflower princess' bizarre house and

grounds. One remembers that Murasaki's garden has all her favorite spring plants, arranged in the best of taste; but that is all. Who, on the other hand, can

forget the safflower princess' ruined mansion, its

garden choked with weeds and infested with mischievous

spirits, its grand, rotting gate so rarely used that the doddering gatekeeper cannot force it open? The mansion has a personality of its own. In fact, its air of decayed gentility evolves into a stronger, more

positive presence than that of the princess herself. Without her mansion--that is, after Genji moves her to his Nijo house at the end of "Yomogiu"--she loses her

appeal. She is trotted out occasionally to produce one of her typically odd poems or to look awkward in a tasteful set of robes chosen by Genji or Murasaki. But she has lost what is most appealing about her character: the sense of romantic decline that softens her grotesque qualities. Without the house, the princess becomes a dull if still bizarre lady.

Journal of the




The two weird ladies, old Naishi and the young safflower princess, are cast from the same mold, though the author's skillful characterization transforms them into different types of characters performing different roles. Naishi is a burlesque figure, a stock character whose purpose in each of her appearances is to provide a few laughs in the midst of some of the graver passages of the Genji. The princess is less easy to fit into a set role. She is a complex character, pitiable for her gaucheries but admirable for the staunchness with which she upholds paternal admonitions. Some have wondered if she serves any purpose at all. I suspect that "Suetsumuhana" was intended as a comic interlude after the tragic events in an earlier chapter, "Yugao ("Evening Faces"). Murasaki Shikibu is fond of paired chapters, particularly in the early part of the Genji: consider "Momiji no ga" and "Hana no en," depicting autumn and spring festivities at court; "Aoi" and "Sakaki," centering around two great Shinto events; and "Suma" and "Akashi," the chapters about Genji's exile by the Inland Sea. "Yugao" and "Suetsumuhana," the stories of the "evening face" and the "safflower," are strikingly similar in theme, structure, and

language.

The grotesque character is an anomaly in the

Genji; but such oddities as Naishi and the safflower

princess are actually very beneficial to the narrative.

They give variety to the first section of the novel, make the admirable female characters seem even more tasteful and talented, and give the radiant Genji the

opportunity to exhibit his magnanimous nature to the full. Weird ladies are welcome additions indeed to the Genji monogatari.

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48 Vol. 20, No. 1

NOTES

Marcel Proust, The Past Recaptured, Frederick A. Blossom, trans.; vol. 7 of Remembrance of Things Past (New York: Random House, 1927, rpt. 1932; 2 vols.), 2, p. 1035.

Ikeda Kikan and Akiyama Ken, eds., Murasaki Shikibu nikki; Nihon koten bungaku taikei 19 (Iwanami Shoten, 1958), pp. 507-08.

Helen Craig McCullough, trans., Okagcani: The Great Mirror (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 107.

Aileen Gatten, "A Wisp of Smoke: Scent and Character in The Tale of Genji," Monumenta Nipponica, XXXII: 1 (1977), pp. 44-46.

5jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (New York: DelI, 1959, rpt. 1970), p. 72.

Yamagishi Tokuhei, ed., Genji monogatari; Nihon koten bungaku taikei, vols. 14-18 (Iwanami Shoten, 1958-63), 14, p. 265. Henceforth sources of quota- tions from Genji will be given in parentheses.

Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics (Cornel 1 University Press, 1975, rpt. 1976), p. 232.

Helen Craig McCullough, trans., Tales of Ise:

Lyrical Episodes from Ten-CeCentury Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968), p. 110.

Journal of the



Documents

Weird Ladies: Narrative Strategy in the Genji monogatari