Yugao
Title
Waley keeps the title in Japanese, which is a good idea as it is after all also the nickname of the protagonist. Seidensticker has "Evening Faces," and Washburn "The Lady of the Evening Faces." Tyler has "The Twilight beauty", which is very poetical.
Chronology
Position in the Genji
Synopsis
Genji is on his way to visit a certain lady in the Sixth Ward (Lady Rokujo, a widow of exalted status with whom he has been carrying on a passionate affair - we will meet her in a later chapter), but makes a detour to the Fifth Ward to pay a sick call on his old nurse, who has become a Buddhist nun, but who is now on the verge of death. Here he also meets Koremitsu, her natural son, who is his "milk brother," menotogo, so called as Koremitsu's mother was Genji's wet nurse. But Koremichi is also Genji's trusted servant and accomplice. He plays his most prominent part in Yugao.
[Yugao, by Yoshitoshi -
a vine-wrapped Yugao in the light of the harvest moon]
While waiting for the door of the nurse's dwelling to open (her gate is locked), Genji notices white yugao flowers of an eerie beauty blossoming on the "strange fence" next door. The house itself is in fact quite shabby - this is a rather low neighborhood, and the street is dirty and cluttered. The yugao (literally "evening face," more poetically "twilight beauty") is a bright green vine on which white flowers grow. In English it is called "calabash," "bottle gourd," and also "white-flowered gourd." Because of the large gourds, which are the main aspect, it is not a very elegant flower, although the white blossoms are very nice. And, importantly, like the lotus flower with its heavy symbolism in Buddhism, this flower also grows from the mud. In this scene in Genji, its freshness contrasts sharply with the dilapidated state of the neighborhood.
The lowly flower makes Genji feel a strong esthetic delight, although he sees it for the first time - it was not highly regarded by the Heian aristocracy. The association of the yugao flower with this particular woman suggests her humble origins. She is a commoner just as this flower is a very common one. Moreover, there are references to the fact that the yugao blooms briefly only at night and then dies, which foreshadows Yugao's early and unexpected death.
The whiteness of the flowers is enhanced by the whiteness of the blinds in the openings of Yugao's raised latticed shutters. Such shutters are called hajitomi or shitomi and they can generally be found in traditional architecture. In the Genji story, the attendants of Yugao are full of curiosity looking at Genji through the upper part of the shutters, making him wonder how tall they are.
[Raised lattice work shutters]
Genji playfully asks for one of the flowers and a servant girl brings it out to him on a scented white fan on which the following verse has been written by a mysterious woman:
might it be
who one thinks?
an evening face
made more radiant
by the dew!
[kokoro-ate ni sore ka to zo miru shiratsuyu no hikari soetaru yugao no hana]
This is a rather coquettish poem, which arouses Genji's curiosity, so he asks Koremitsu to peep into the house where she lives - a mediated form of kaimami! He also has inquiries made. It appears that a mysterious young woman of lower status has recently started living there in seclusion with a number of her maids. Later Genji will learn she is 19, so two years his senior. Without revealing his identity, Genji starts visiting her (accepting the invitation she in fact made via her poem), again with the help of Koremitsu - who in fact is a bit jealous as he himself also felt interested in this beautiful neighbor.
What is easily overlooked here, is how subversive this scene is. It was normal in courtly circles that the man would begin the poem exchange. But here gender roles have been reversed and it is the usually reticent woman who - although unintentionally - makes the first move. In fact, this happened because of a case of mistaken identity, for Yugao wrongly thought that her former lover had reappeared. Yugao only realizes her mistake when she receives Genji's reply (and immediately closes her shutters). But Genji returns under the pretext of visiting his dying nurse, this time in a shabby disguise, and starts visiting Yugao. As he is obviously incognito, Yugao in her turn is not motivated to reveal her identity.
Although he knows next to nothing about her, Genji becomes very fond of the childlike Yugao. She has the frail beauty of the ephemeral flower that forms her eponym and she seems a bit afraid of Genji. As the orphaned daughter of a Middle Captain of the Third Rank (as becomes clear later), she belongs to the middle rank within the hierarchy of Heian court aristocracy. Genji's affair with Yugao occurs during a period of emotional confusion for him: married to the cold Aoi, the sister of his friend To no Chujo, he remains preoccupied with the memory of his mother, Kiritsubo (also a woman of the middle rank), whose image he cherishes as that of the archetypal woman. On top of that, his father has remarried with Fujitsubo, a woman who has an uncanny resemblance to Genji's mother, and for whom he has conceived an incestuous love. To forget those feelings - or to erect a smokescreen - Genji engages in numerous minor amorous affairs (anyway, something expected of someone of his status in Heian times), but in reality Fujitsubo is always on Genji's mind.
Genji becomes intimate with the "Twilight Beauty," but he hates the place where his new love lives - in the early morning all kinds of rough voices can be heard from the other houses in the street (these are just normal tradesmen, but apparently aristocratic ears are rather tender!), and so he decides to move her elsewhere. It is impossible to take her to his Nijo residence (which would mean to the world that Genji officially married her - after all, men in the Heian period, although being married, could officially recognize other women as secondary wives besides the main consort) - Yugao's rank is so low that that would have political repercussions for them both. He has to find neutral territory and decides on the uninhabited villa Kawara-in of Minamoto Toru, once famous for its garden with landscapes replicated from elsewhere in Japan. But now this is a rather forbidding place, as the garden is running wild and the house falling to pieces. The isolation of the villa is of course also symbolic of Genji's refusal to acknowledge Yugao.
Near dawn on the night of the full moon of the eight month, Genji takes Yugao - with her lady-in-waiting Ukon - to the deserted and dilapidated estate, almost looking like a haunted mansion. You can already see it coming: the love story suddenly changes into a ghost story. They hear ominous sounds in the empty house, and Yugao starts to tremble violently, but Genji finds her fearfulness charming - as a man of his time, he even thinks it makes her more seductive. Later that night, Yugao falls into a trance and is possessed by an evil spirit. Her trance fades into death. At the very moment she dies, Genji sees a frightful apparition: that of a strange woman sitting at Yugao's side, and he realizes that it must be a mono no ke - a vengeful spirit. Genji is so horrified and shocked, that he himself falls ill - he will be sick for more than a month. That whole night, Genji is frightfully alone in the haunted house, for he has only brought a few lowly servants. Koremitsu is not with him and it takes until morning before Koremitsu is found and comes to help Genji. It is Koremitsu who later carries Yugao's dead body out and arranges for her funeral rites.
Despite the danger of being seen by others, Genji decides to attend Yugao's funeral at Toribeno. Like a necrophiliac he almost can't accept the reality of her death. When Yugao's body is cremated on an open fire, fed by the weird shapes of the outcasts who make it their business to help at cremations, Genji watches how the smoke of the pyre disappears into the sky and - perhaps for the first time - realizes his own mortality.
It is only after her death that Genji finally discovers who the mysterious Yugao was. Her lady-in-waiting Ukon tells him that, before encountering Genji, Yugao was the mistress of Genji's friend To no Chujo - remember the nightly talk in the Hahakigi chapter, in which To no Chujo in fact reported about just such a woman. Because of the jealousy of To no Chujo's main wife, Yugao had left him and gone into hiding with their daughter. This was a strong act of defiance: it took courage for a woman to leave the man she was wholly dependent on and elect the hardship of bringing up their daughter without his support.
Now that Yugao is dead, Genji offers to provide for that child (called Tamakazura, she will appear again later in the novel). By the way, Ukon was raised by Yugao's father and grew up
together with Yugao, to whom she was extremely attached. She now even wants to follow her mistress into death, but gives in to
Genji's pleas and enters his service.
At the end of this chapter, we also get to know the finale of Utsusemi's story: in the tenth month, Utsusemi leaves the capital, accompanying her husband to the province of Iyo.
Genji-e
In painting, the Yugao chapter is often suggested by painting a motif of white flowers on a trellis or fan.
In the painting by Tosa Mitsunobu, we see Genji at Yugao's residence. He is wearing a sort of hunting cloak to hide his true status.
No Plays
Yugao's story inspired two No plays: Hajitomi and Yugao.
Hajitomi begins at Unrin'in temple, where the waki, a priest, announces a Buddhist service on behalf of flowers used as altar decorations. Suddenly, a woman (the shite) appears and offers a yugao flower, telling the priest its name. In the second part, a villager tells the priest the tale of the love affair between Genji and Yugao in a sort of flashback (kuse). The priest then visits the Gojo area, where he finds a lonely house around which yugao are blooming. Yugao's spirit appears and dances, asking the priest to pray for her soul. In the No play, the woman Yugao is fused with the ephemeral flower after which she has been named.
In contrast, the No play called Yugao is set in the rundown villa where Yugao meets her end. A priest comes upon a woman who tells him about Yugao's death. That night the woman reappears in her true form as the ghost of Yugao killed by an evil spirit.
Visiting
The deserted villa where the finale of Yugao plays out, has been speculatively identified as the Kawarain, the estate of Minamoto no Toru, a 9th c. minister and poet. He was born the son of Emperor Saga and is sometimes mentioned as the model for Genji in The Tale of Genji. One of his poems has been included in the Hyakunin Isshu. Minamoto no Toru had built a beautiful garden in the estate, in which he recreated the coastal landscape of Shiogama (now Miyagi Pref.). He also held frequent poetry parties.
Interestingly, as another Hyakunin Isshu poem (by Egyo) shows, a century after Toru's death, the Kawarain is already covered in weeds. It had become a sort of pilgrimage site for poets, who would come there to write poetry together, often in a melancholic mood.
That estate of course is no more, but some scholars think that it may have been incorporated into Shosei-en Garden (also called Kikokutei). That garden was laid out in the early 17th c. and was later given to Higashi Honganji temple. It has been landscaped in the go-round style, with various buildings arranged around a central pond.
Shosei-en is localed north of Kyoto Station, just east of Higashi Honganji. Access for a small fee. See my post about Shosei-en.
Toribeno, where the body of Yugao is cremated in a sad scene, was one of a number of large cremation grounds found in the outskirts of Kyoto. Bodies were cremated here with the help of outcasts, who built the pyres and kept the fires burning. But the bodies of those less well off were just thrown in the fields here, to be eaten by birds and other animals. Toribeno happily doesn't exist anymore, but in about the same spot we now find the huge graveyard of the Nishi Honganji temple. It lies between Gojozaka or the Slope of Fifth Avenue and the Kiyomizu temple. See my post about the Nishi Otani Cemetery.
[Nishi Otani Cemetery]
[Photos (Nishi Otani Cemetery is my own work; other photos via Wikimedia Commons]