The argument so far can be summed up as follows. In Part One, Genji and Suzaku act out a story pattern from Japanese myth, in which a younger brother triumphs over his elder. The pattern involves a trial (Genji’s exile) and supernatural assistance (Genji’s father and Sumiyoshi). Genji’s rise culminates in “Fuji no uraba,” when he is appointed honorary retired emperor and plays host to both Reizei (the reigning emperor) and Suzaku (retired).
It has often been suggested that the story originally ended with “Fuji no uraba.” If Part Two was indeed conceived and begun later, a simple editorial touch at the end of “Fuji no uraba” (Suzaku feeling “perhaps a little piqued”), combined with the opening line of “Wakana One” (Suzaku becoming “unwell soon after His Majesty’s visit to Rokujō”), sufficed to link the two. The theme in Part Two is the younger brother’s fate after his triumph.
Having gained every advantage open to him, the man of uncontested power loses his way in consonance with his own characteristic failings. Tempted in passing by the knowledge that the Third Princess, like Murasaki, is Fujitsubo’s niece (his erotic weak spot), and attracted above all by the idea of adding the last touch to a public glory that is already complete, Genji yields to vanity and accepts her. He assumes that Murasaki will understand and resign herself in the end, but she cannot. He assumes that the Third Princess will have something of the personal quality he imagines, but she does not. Worse, he takes it for granted that, once Suzaku has entered the religious life, no father-in-law will trouble him with reproaches or demands; but Suzaku cannot give up caring about his favorite daughter. Murasaki sickens and eventually dies, Kashiwagi deals Genji a stinging blow, the Third Princess rejects Genji to become a nun, and her plight drags her father down as well.
No wonder the precipitating agent for all this, Rokujō’s spirit, is supernatural. A thousand years later, the hero of a novel would follow a natural path to success, but the Genji author appealed to the supernatural instead. Then she did the same to achieve Genji’s decline. To a degree, Rokujō’s spirit indeed functions as the ghost of Genji’s past. Its influence arises from Genji’s past misdeeds and enduring failings, as summed up in his treatment of Rokujō, and it acts in Part Two as a destructive counterpart to Sumiyoshi in Part One. In effect it is an agent of karma, just as Sumiyoshi and the spirit of Genji’s father were when they furthered the destiny of a man visibly favored even from birth by the gods.