An important difference between the two heroes, and between the parts of The Tale of Genji that feature each, emerges from an analysis of the theme of erotic surrogacy, or substitution. Sometimes in the tale a man’s affection shifts from one woman to another when the first passes beyond his reach, and the second woman then becomes to him a replacement, or surrogate, for the first. As Schalow pointed out, this motif appears at the very beginning of the tale.

Genji loses his mother while he is still too young to remember her. His father, the reigning emperor, eventually marries Fujitsubo because she looks so like Genji’s mother, and this resemblance fascinates Genji when he learns of it. Fujitsubo is sixteen when she comes to the palace, and Genji eleven. Puberty therefore separates them, but only provisionally. Nonetheless, as noted in “The Disaster of the Third Princess,” Genji’s father encourages close contact between the two. He says to Fujitsubo:

Soon the young Genji “lost no chance offered by the least flower or autumn leaf to let her know in his childish way how much he liked her.”^[15] At his tender age he is already courting her, and eventually he will make love with her: first out of the reader’s sight, then visibly in “Wakamurasaki,” when he is eighteen and Fujitsubo twenty-three. The image of his mother, merging into that of his father’s empress, gives his love for Fujitsubo the authority almost of destiny and a compelling power that ennobles his desperate transgression.

Fujitsubo is beyond the adult Genji’s reach, except for rare, furtive moments that cause her intense distress; hence his excitement when he comes across a girl of about ten who resembles her (“Wakamurasaki”). He instantly and explicitly understands why the girl so attracts him, and the attraction is confirmed when he discovers that she is Fujitsubo’s niece. Thus he defines for the reader the motif of erotic substitution associated with the tale.

Norma Field made this motif a “central part of her study” of The Tale of Genji,^[16] and her particular emphasis on it has encouraged writers on the tale in English to take its validity for granted. It has been cited repeatedly to assert that all the women with whom Genji enters into love relationships are in one way or another, directly or indirectly, surrogates for Fujitsubo and, through her, for Genji’s mother. However, nothing explicit in the narrative supports this reading, which is not current in Japanese scholarship.^[17] On the contrary, the narrative distinguishes the link (for Genji) between Fujitsubo and Murasaki from that between Fujitsubo and any other woman by giving it, twice, a particular name: murasaki no yukari. The narrative does not explicitly extend this “murasaki tie” either backwards from Fujitsubo to Genji’s mother, or forwards from Fujitsubo and Murasaki to the Third Princess. In practice, however, scholars accept that to varying degrees the murasaki no yukari, which according to the letter of the text involves only Fujitsubo and Murasaki, links all four.

With respect to Fujitsubo and the murasaki no yukari proper, the young, naive Genji of the earliest chapters might well believe that, if only he had Fujitsubo, he would never again look at another woman. However, he would probably not remain exclusively faithful to her if he did. As it is, nothing connects her to his other affairs, for which the narrative suggests other sources of inspiration. For example, the vistas opened for him by the “rainy night conversation” (“Hahakigi”) prompt his adventure with Utsusemi and his pursuit of Suetsumuhana, which itself parodies a passage of that same conversation and is also driven by rivalry with his friend Tō no Chūjō. The narrative never links Yūgao, Rokujō, or Oborozukiyo to Genji’s preoccupation with Fujitsubo. Having established the motif of the erotic surrogate, it therefore strictly limits its range and presents a gallery of other affairs unrelated to it. The motif of erotic substitution outside the extended murasaki no yukari series appears only once, briefly, in Part One. In “Hotaru” Genji pleads with Tamakazura because to him (intoxicated as he already is with desire) she looks so like her mother, Yūgao. However, nothing further happens.

This is the extent of the “surrogate” motif in Part One and (counting the Third Princess) Part Two. In Part Three, the word for what sounds in English like the same motif changes from yukari to katashiro. The narrative in the Uji chapters describes Ukifune three times (from Kaoru’s perspective) as a katashiro for Ōigimi. Yukari and katashiro are not synonyms.^[18] Shirane translated the first as “link” and the second as “doll, substitute.”^[19] The first therefore designates an association between persons, and the second a more or less impersonal, or depersonalized, object.^[20] Katashiro is all but synonymous with hitogata and nademono, both of which also describe Ukifune in relation to Ōigimi, seen from Kaoru’s point of view. All three refer to a human effigy (of paper or some other material) that is first rubbed (nade-) against the body, in order to transfer impurities into it, and then sent floating away down a stream or out to sea. Among these three terms, only hitogata occurs, once, before Part Three. In Genji’s next-to-last poem in “Suma” it refers directly to such an effigy.^[21]

The Uji chapters therefore give the surrogate motive a new, sharper outline, and a character at once more tangible and less personal. After Ōigimi’s death, Kaoru becomes infatuated instead with her younger sister Nakanokimi, who suddenly looks and sounds to him just like her. When his dangerously indiscreet attentions threaten her marriage to the jealous Niou, she deflects them by telling him about Ukifune, a younger half-sister unknown to the reader, to Kaoru, and, until recently, even to herself. The way she steers Kaoru toward the abruptly invented Ukifune betrays the kind of plot manipulation inevitable in any fiction, but never so obvious in Parts One and Two. Kaoru then spies on Ukifune, sees that she resembles Ōigimi, and pursues her instead. In the next-to-last chapter (“Tenarai”) the author extends the surrogate motif even further. Kannon’s miraculous intervention brings Ukifune to the nun of Ono as a surrogate for the nun’s late daughter, and the nun urges Ukifune on her late daughter’s widower as a surrogate for his wife.

The more this motif recurs in Part Three, the more depersonalized the surrogate herself becomes. Kaoru professes the highest respect for Ōigimi, but after her death he assimilates the living Nakanokimi to his remembered image of her. Ukifune then appears when Kaoru laments to Nakanokimi that he longs to “make a doll [hitogata] in [Ōigimi’s] likeness…and pursue my devotions before [it].”^[22] Thus Ukifune enters the story as a doll memento of someone else.

Genji’s evolving relationship with Murasaki, his murasaki no yukari link with Fujitsubo, takes the opposite course. In Part One, he delights in her intrinsic quality and repeatedly loses sight of how closely she resembles Fujitsubo. Rediscovering this resemblance turns him not toward idolatrous worship of a memory, but toward growing recognition of Murasaki’s own worth. Fujitsubo dies in “Usugumo.” Near the end of the next chapter, “Asagao,” Genji and Murasaki are looking out over their moonlit, snow-covered garden.

Genji’s heart has been “divided” not by the memory of Fujitsubo, but by his failed courtship of Princess Asagao. When Murasaki’s pose recalls “the lady he had loved” (Fujitsubo), he understands that Murasaki, in her own person, gives him all he had ever wanted from Fujitsubo, and he renounces his thoughts of Asagao. That night Fujitsubo comes to him in a dream, angry and accusing, and he awakens in anguish. The meaning of this dream is debated, but at any rate, Fujitsubo disappears at this point from the narrative. Thereafter she belongs to the past, and however cruelly Genji may fail in Part Two to understand Murasaki, he treats her fully as herself, not as a stand-in for someone else. In contrast, Kaoru ends up worshiping an idol.

For Ukifune, the process of objectification continues as the end of the book approaches. Unlike Ōigimi and Nakanokimi, who are both princesses, she is the child of an illicit affair. Because her father refused to recognize her, she grew up in the household of a provincial governor and so ranks far below her half-sisters. Kaoru accordingly treats her as a mistress and visits her when he has time. Despite his preoccupation with her, she remains nothing to him in herself. Then she disappears, to end up at Ono, where the Ono nun’s former son-in-law pursues her like a stalker, without even knowing who she is. After she becomes a nun, a glimpse of her at her devotions only spurs him on, and he decides that he will have her.^[24] She has become a mere sex object.

In “Kagerō,” after Ukifune’s disappearance, Kaoru similarly depersonalizes his wife. The First Princess preoccupies him, and he has recently managed to spy on her unseen. He saw her seated among her women (who include his mistress, the gentlewoman Kozaishō), wearing only transparent silk gauze in the summer heat and holding a piece of ice. The sight so stirred him that he now seeks to replicate it at home by dressing his wife (also a princess) in similar gauze, which she never normally wears, and having her, too, hold a bit of ice. Thus he turns her into a doll of the First Princess. Unfortunately, his wife has never interested him, and to his chagrin, this simulacrum of an erotic vision purloined elsewhere still leaves him unmoved.

Kaoru’s behavior in this scene can be understood not unreasonably to demean both his wife and himself, although the scene also offers the possibility of cruel humor. Mitani Kuniaki remarked that in a world as pervaded as the Uji chapters by “liminality” or “ambiguity,” any scene may turn at any moment, intentionally or not, into farce,^[25] a breath of which may be felt here. However, the gauze and ice hint at the chief effect probably intended. Taken together, these material props constitute a device that figures in the three erotic scenes discussed below. It distracts the reader’s attention from the unhappiness of the woman in order to focus it solely on Kaoru’s feelings. Nothing the woman herself says or does damps Kaoru’s ardor; the prop does that. In three of the four cases (as here), and perhaps in all of them, it means something particular to him alone. Once the narrator focuses the reader’s attention on this object, through Kaoru’s present or reminiscing gaze, the woman in the scene no longer matters. Kaoru is alone with his disappointment, and the reader is free to pity him.