In four passages of the tale, a man looking at a beautiful man, or picturing him mentally, realizes that if he were a woman he would want to stay with the man forever. In two cases the watcher explicitly finds the man desirable, while in the third, desire seems not to be involved. In the fourth, desire is likely but unstated.
The first passage occurs in “Aoi.” Genji is mourning Aoi, his late wife, when Tō no Chûjō (“the Captain,” Aoi’s brother and Genji’s great friend) enters the room.
[5] The Captain, gazing at [Genji] with his mind as always on pleasure [iromekashiki kokochi ni uchi-mamoraretsutsu], knew that if he were a woman [onna nite] his soul would stay with Genji instead of setting off for the hereafter. Genji was in a very casual state of dress, and he simply re-threaded the cords of his dress cloak when the Captain sat down beside him…The Captain could hardly keep his eyes off him.[18]
Tō no Chûjō watches Genji with a fascination encouraged by Genji’s casual dress. Instead of wishing Genji were a woman, however, he imagines himself as one pointedly unlike his sister, Aoi. Aoi never desired Genji, and she indeed left him for the hereafter. Could this roundabout way of elaborating on the desire explicit in the passage be meant to blur it, or to deflect attention away from it?
The next passage, however, lacks any obvious element of desire. In “Wakana One” Suzaku says to himself, as he considers marrying his favorite daughter to Genji,
[6] I would want to be close to [Genji] if I were a woman [onna naraba], even a sister. That is the way I felt when we were young. No wonder women cannot resist him![19]
He is probably thinking both of his beloved Oborozukiyo, who loves Genji instead, and of his daughter’s future happiness. Desire returns in a much later passage that repeats the pattern of [5]. In “Agemaki” Niou considers his friend Kaoru, who is wasting away with grief after the death of Ōigimi:
[7] After so many days of tears [Kaoru’s] features had changed, though not for the worse, because they now had so fine a beauty and grace that [Niou], who deplored his own waywardness [ono ga keshikaranu ōn-kokoro narai ni], saw that he would certainly lose his heart to him, if he himself were a woman [onna naraba].[20]
Niou contrasts Ōigimi’s rejection of Kaoru with the way he would feel about Kaoru if he himself were in Ōigimi’s position, and he explicitly does so in a mood of erotic excitement. In all three passages ([5] to [7]), a man therefore views another man from the perspective of a particular woman, one well known to himself and the reader. The only instance that breaks this pattern is the last, from “Tenarai.” The governor of Kii, a retainer of Kaoru, appraises Niou:
[8] His Highness of War is the one of really striking beauty, though. I would gladly be a woman in his intimate service [onna nite naretsukōmatsuraba].[21]
Since the speaker is talking to a group of women he hardly knows, his remark presumably puts personal feeling in conventionally accepted terms. This topic will reappear below.