Whatever heights a man may achieve in his life, not even the gods can make him invulnerable. Time and his own failings assure decline. The theme of time in the tale is well recognized. The characters age, their sorrows build, and the narrator’s repeated evocations of Genji’s beauty, in defiance of time, only remind the reader that he, too, is mortal. Meanwhile, personal flaws and weaknesses shape his governing sorrows. One flaw is vanity, and another—more a weakness than a flaw—is his love for Murasaki. That love, with its increasingly plain element of blind clinging, makes him vulnerable, and to one character the author gives the reason, the will, and the occasion to hurt him. Rokujō, whom his vanity and carelessness injured so deeply in the early chapters, strikes when that vanity places him in harm’s way.
“Genji and Murasaki” suggested that Genji’s rise in the world causes a mismatch between what Murasaki means to him privately and the way she appears in relation to his public self; sought to explain in that light Genji’s motive for accepting the Third Princess; and argued that in doing so Genji over-reaches his good fortune. Rokujō precipitates the disaster that follows.
Genji’s thoughts about many women in the tale betray vanity, but Rokujō’s case is special. It also illustrates a difference between Parts One and Two. Her relationship with Genji in Part One takes such a dramatic course that no reader could forget her. However, her role in Part Two, this time as an angry spirit, has a more obviously calculated character. The living Rokujō of Part One is fascinatingly complex, but after her death (“Miotsukushi”) there is no reason to believe that she will play any further role in Genji’s life. When she reappears after all (“Wakana Two”) it is nineteen years later, and she serves a clear purpose in the plot. Certainly, she moves the story forward in Part One as well, but this part, although richly suggestive, does not feature the long chain of demonstrable causation that characterizes the central drama of Part Two. Rokujō’s two interventions as a spirit are critical links in this chain.
The gifted and high-strung Rokujō (the living woman) is a minister’s daughter and the widow of an heir apparent. Nothing about her encourages anyone, even Genji, to take her lightly, but Genji does. It is one thing for him to visit this daunting woman when he pleases, but he suspects that being committed to her for life would be a different experience. His inner conflict over her appears first in comparison with the undemanding Yūgao, whom a jealous spirit then kills. Is it a phantom of the living Rokujō? Intentionally or not the narrative diverts the reader from any certain conclusion, but most assume a connection with her.
Genji’s relationship with Rokujō properly requires him, considering who she is, to marry her (that is, to acknowledge her publicly), regardless of his private feelings on the matter. In the tale, rank above all governs a man’s treatment of a woman. If he is high and she low, he can treat her more or less as he pleases, but the higher she is, and the better supported, the more respect she commands. Although a fatherless widow, Rokujō means a good deal to the Kiritsubo Emperor himself. When she decides to accompany her daughter (the new High Priestess) to Ise, so as to remove herself from her excruciating impasse with Genji, Genji’s father rebukes his son.
“His Late Highness thought very highly of [Rokujō] and showed her every attention, and I find it intolerable that you should treat her as casually as you might any other woman. I consider the High Priestess my own daughter, and I should therefore appreciate it if you were to avoid offending her mother, both for her father’s sake and for mine. Such wanton self-indulgence risks widespread censure.” The displeasure on his countenance obliged Genji to agree, and he kept a humble silence.
“Never cause a woman to suffer humiliation,” [Genji’s father] continued. “Treat each with tact and avoid provoking her anger.”[37]
This pointed warning foreshadows the “carriage quarrel” and its aftermath, as well as Rokujō’s role in Part Two. Soon her living spirit attacks Genji’s wife, Aoi, and eventually kills her. The obvious thing for Genji to do after Aoi’s death is finally, after a period of mourning, to recognize Rokujō. Rokujō’s women assume that he will do so, and no doubt their mistress entertains the same hope. Instead, Genji avoids her and secretly consummates his marriage with Murasaki. After long and acute mental suffering, Rokujō leaves at last for Ise, shamed and defeated.
The operations of Rokujō’s living spirit allow the author to remove the excessively respectable Aoi from the narrative, establish Rokujō as a potential threat to Genji in the future, and seal the long intimacy of Genji and Murasaki’s married life. Rokujō therefore plays a vital role even early on, but the author will not call on her again for twenty-five chapters and many hundreds of pages. When she does, it is less Rokujō’s spirit that starts the trouble than Genji’s ill-judged self-satisfaction.