After Rokujō’s death, Genji adopts her daughter, Akikonomu, who apparently brings with her the land for Genji’s Rokujō-in estate. The estate is finished in “Otome,” and in “Fuji no uraba” Genji becomes honorary retired emperor. To celebrate he invites Emperor Reizei to visit him, as no commoner could do. Reizei then invites Suzaku, and “Fuji no uraba” closes with an account of the wonders of a day in which nothing seems amiss, except that near the end Suzaku, in a poem, “sound[s] perhaps a little piqued.”[38] The next chapter (“Wakana One,” the first of Part Two) begins, “His Eminence Suzaku began feeling unwell soon after His Majesty’s visit to Rokujō.”[39] This opening may hint that the magnitude of Genji’s triumph has dealt his brother a blow.
Feeling death approaching, Suzaku longs at last to act on an old desire to leave the world, but he cannot bring himself to do so until he has found a suitable husband for the Third Princess. “Genji and Murasaki” covers this subject in detail. After long and delicate negotiations Genji accepts her, only to be brought up short by the discovery of what she is really like.
This marriage upsets Murasaki, and a rift opens between the two. She asks him to let her become a nun, but he refuses, apparently aware that he really and truly cannot live without her. In time, his failure to comprehend her feelings leads to a scene of palpable estrangement that takes place in “Wakana Two.” Instead of sympathizing, he lectures her on her good fortune and goes on to compound his blunder by musing to her aloud about some of the women he has known. The first of these is Rokujō, of whom he speaks disparagingly. “She was someone of unusual grace and depth,” he says, “but she made painfully trying company. I agree that she had reason to be angry with me, but the way she brooded so interminably over the matter, and with such bitter rancor, made things very unpleasant.”[40] In closing he congratulates himself on having made Rokujō’s daughter empress, and in that connection he remarks complacently, “I expect that by now, in the afterworld, she has come to think better of me.”
This is dangerous gossip. Quite apart from what Rokujō once did to Aoi, the “Asagao” chapter ends with a precisely parallel passage in which Genji reminisces to Murasaki about Fujitsubo and then has a dream in which Fujitsubo (who died in the preceding chapter) reproaches him angrily. It is surprising that he should do it again, especially about Rokujō. Retribution comes swiftly. By dawn Murasaki is seriously ill, and some months later the report goes out that she has died. Genji rushes to her side and orders one last, desperate exorcism. Finally the afflicting spirit moves into a medium, through whom it says to Genji,
I kept my eye on you from on high, and what you did for Her Majesty made me pleased and grateful; but perhaps I do not care that much about my daughter now that she and I inhabit different realms, because that bitterness of mine, which made you hateful to me, remains. What I find particularly offensive, more so even than your spurning me for others when I was among the living, is that in conversation with one for whom you do care you callously made me out to be a disagreeable woman.[41]
The speaker is Rokujō, provoked by Genji’s chatter to Murasaki and far less interested than he supposed, now that she is dead, in all he has done for her daughter. Below, and only for the purposes of this essay, this scene will be called Possession One.
In Possession One, Rokujō’s target is Genji, whom she attacks through his beloved Murasaki. However, the exorcism blunts her effort, and Murasaki revives. Rokujō then bides her time, and events elsewhere during this acute phase of Murasaki’s illness give her a new opening to act. Six years earlier (in “Wakana One”) the young Kashiwagi caught a glimpse of the Third Princess and remained obsessed with her. He now steals in and makes love to her while Genji is away nursing Murasaki. She conceives. Genji soon discovers the affair, and the frightened Kashiwagi avoids him until, at a party that he cannot avoid attending, Genji taunts him and looks into his eyes. Genji’s glance drives the spirit from his body. At last he dies, just after learning of the birth of Kaoru, his son by the Third Princess.
After the birth, the shamed and terrified Third Princess believes herself to be dying. She says to Genji, “in a much more grownup manner than usual,”
I still doubt that I will live, and they say that sort of sin [dying as a consequence of childbirth] is very grave. I think I shall become a nun, because that might help me live longer, or at least it might lighten this burden of sin if I am to die after all.
He answers, “You will do nothing of the kind. It is out of the question. What you have been through has frightened you, I imagine, but it hardly threatens your life.”
Privately, however, he wonders whether that might not be a good idea.
The poor thing is all too likely to come under a cloud again if she goes on with me this way. I doubt that with the best will in the world I can change my opinion of her anymore, and there will be some difficult times; people will note my indifference, and that will be unfortunate, because when [Suzaku] hears of it the fault will appear to be entirely mine. Her present indisposition makes a good excuse to let her do it—I might as well.[42]
He hopes above all to avoid Suzaku blaming him for neglecting the Third Princess, and he assumes that Suzaku does not know the truth. Allowing her to become a nun might achieve that, even though at heart “the idea repelled him,” as it did in Murasaki’s case as well. His calculations are pointless, however, because Suzaku has already blamed him repeatedly and has even taken countermeasures against Genji’s neglect of his daughter.[43] Suzaku also suspects that his daughter’s child is not Genji’s, having worked this out when he learned of her pregnancy:
His Eminence, cloistered on his mountain, heard about her condition and thought of her with tender longing. People told him that Genji had been away for months and hardly visited her at all, at which he wondered despairingly what had happened and resented more than ever the vagaries of conjugal life. He felt uneasy when [Murasaki] was seriously ill and Genji, so he heard, spent all his time looking after her. Moreover, he reflected, [Genji] seems not to have changed his ways since then. Did something unfortunate occur while he was elsewhere? Did those hopeless women of hers take some sort of initiative without her knowledge or consent?[44]
This is exactly what happened. Genji is wrong to imagine that he can escape Suzaku’s informed censure. It is already upon him.
A few days after the birth, the Third Princess cries out in despair that she may never see her father again. Genji informs Suzaku, “who was so devastated that he set forth under cover of night, despite knowing full well that he should not. His sudden, completely unannounced arrival took Genji by surprise and covered him with confusion.”[45]
The Third Princess immediately begs her father to make her a nun, which he does over Genji’s protests:
[Suzaku] silently reflected that after accepting the daughter offered him with such boundless trust, Genji had failed in his devotion to her, as [Suzaku] himself had been greatly disappointed to learn over the years, although he had never been able to voice his reproaches and so had been reduced merely to deploring what other people thought and said. Why not take this opportunity to remove her from [Genji], he thought, without exposing her to ridicule by leaving the impression that she had merely despaired of him?[46]
At last, Suzaku’s dissatisfaction with Genji is explicit. He makes his beloved daughter a nun to save her from him.
Now Rokujō’s spirit speaks (through an unidentified medium) in order to claim victory (“Kashiwagi”).
The spirit afflicting Her Highness came forth during the late night prayers. “Take that, then!” it ranted. “You thought you were ever so clever getting the last one back, which was so annoying that I just kept lying in wait. Now I can go.” It laughed aloud.[47]
“The last one” is Murasaki. This speech (Possession Two) is strange, but it defines a critical articulation point in the plot.
[38] TTG, 574; GM 3:462.
[39] TTG, 577; GM 4:17.
[40] TTG, 646; GM 4:209.
[41] TTG, 655; GM 4:235.
[42] TTG, 679; GM 4:302.
[43] Suzaku had the reigning emperor (his son) raise the Third Princess’s rank, which then placed still greater and thoroughly unwelcome pressure on Genji to treat her properly.
[44] TTG, 665; GM 4:267.
[45] TTG, 680; GM 4:303.
[46] TTG, 680–1; GM 4:306.
[47] TTG, 682; GM 4:310.