Twenty years later, Genji is the grandfather of a future emperor in the female line and can look forward to the greatest distinction possible for a commoner. However, he remains unsatisfied, and the reader overhears him nursing his disappointment that Reizei has no male heir (“Wakana Two”).^[5] In other words, Genji once aspired to found a line of emperors through his son, which only an emperor could do. And since he would have reigned if the Suzaku faction had not thwarted his father’s wishes, his thoughts suggest that he not only resented this injury done to his father, but also wished to redress it. Certainly, Reizei’s conception and birth set him on the path toward a hidden sovereignty of his own.

Suzaku has no son when Reizei is born, and Genji’s father (who ostensibly believes the child to be his) therefore has no difficulty appointing him as Suzaku’s heir apparent. However, he recognizes the threat to the boy’s future and does all he can to help Genji and Fujitsubo protect him. Then he abdicates and, roughly two years later, dies. The Suzaku faction’s victory, culminating in Genji’s exile, is now so complete that it is hard to imagine Reizei surviving long as heir apparent. Genji returns, however, and Suzaku’s abdication allows Reizei to succeed him after all. The path toward Genji’s destiny is now open.

From the start, Genji is so obviously the hero of the tale that he is bound somehow to succeed in the end, and Kokiden is such an ill-tempered villain that she is certain to fail. Moreover, the author has a Korean physiognomist predict in “Kiritsubo” that while Genji exhibits the signs of a born emperor and can also be seen as a “future [commoner] pillar of the court,” neither role fits him well.^[6] Something rarer awaits him, something that must still have to do with the throne.

After making love to Fujitsubo, Genji has a strange dream, of which a dream reader gives him “an interpretation beyond the bounds of all plausibility.” Next he hears that Fujitsubo is indisposed, understands that she has conceived, and understands too, thanks to the dream, that he will become the father of an emperor. The dream reader’s interpretation was shocking because a commoner cannot do that. The dream reader had also said, “I see too, my lord, that you are to suffer a reverse and that something will require the most urgent caution.”^[7] The “reverse” is presumably the Suzaku faction’s temporary victory and Genji’s exile, and the matter requiring caution must be Genji and Fujitsubo’s new secret. If that secret comes to light, their son will never be the emperor that, for Genji’s sake, he is destined to be.

Many readers have taken Genji’s affair with Fujitsubo, and Reizei’s resulting conception, as a self-evident sin. Certainly, no one could condone a young man’s wronging his father, still less his sovereign, this way. Reizei’s birth and accession may even seem to cast doubt on the integrity of the imperial line.^[8] Seen from this perspective, his conception is less a step forward on the path of Genji’s destiny than a crime that must be purged before any such step can be taken. However, the narrative leaves room for other readings as well. Richard Okada suggested that Genji’s father may have known, and that if he did, he probably was neither surprised nor displeased.^[9] This essay proposes that the Kiritsubo Emperor did indeed know and approve what Genji had done, and that the Sumiyoshi deity, the guardian of the throne, considered Reizei rather than Suzaku to be the Kiritsubo Emperor’s legitimate successor. Seen this way, Genji’s offense is the occasion for his rise.^[10]