September 11, 2022

Reading The Tale of Genji (34): Spring Shoots I (Wakana I)

 Wakana I

Title

"Wakana" means "new shoots" or, if they are to eat, something like "spring greens." Genji uses the word in a poem at a wakana banquet arranged by Tamakazura in honor of his 40th birthday.

Picking young greens in the fields and eating these (or giving them to an important person as a wish for good health and longevity) was a romantic custom of the palace that formed part of the extended New Year festivities. It was considered to guarantee good health in the new year and is the predecessor of the modern custom the eat Seven Herb Porridge (nanakusa-gayu) on January 7. Also see this poem by Emperor Koko about that custom, in Hyakunin Isshu.

Waley translates "Wakana, Part I", Seidensticker "New Herbs, Part I", Tyler "Spring Shoots I" and Washburn "Early Spring Genesis: Part 1" As this was an extremely long chapter, at some point it was split into parts 1 and 2 - and even so these two parts are each longer than most other chapters in the Genji. So this is an important part of the novel.


Chronology

This chapter follows in chronological sequence on the previous one, from Genji's age thirty-nine in the 12th month to age forty-one in the 3rd month two years later.


Position in the Genji

When Yang is at its zenith, Yin starts to grow again, and Yang will diminish. In the previous chapter we saw Genji at the zenith of his glory, but in this and the following chapters in his personal life several awkward and shocking things will happen. The train of negative occurrences is set in motion when Genji agrees to the wish of the Cloistered Emperor Suzaku, who is in failing health and wants to enter a temple, to marry his daughter the Third Princess as she has no guardian. She will become Genji's official wife, after his deceased wife Aoi. Although this will cause great pain to Murasaki, Genji's "unofficial" principal wife, he goes ahead. Soon after the marriage, Genji notices the immaturity and childishness of the Third Princess, with whom he has nothing in common. She will become the instrument with which Fate will strike him several years later...



[Wakana I, by Tosa Mitsunobu. Harvard Art Museums]


Synopsis

Genji's older brother, the Cloistered Emperor Suzaku has fallen ill after his visit to Rokujo and thinks of entering the priesthood. The temple he plans to enter is already under construction in the outskirts of the capital, but he hesitates because he feels anxious about the future of his beloved daughter, the Third Princess (Onna San no Miya), who does not have a guardian. Near the end of the year, she has her donning of the train (mogi), meaning that she is old enough to marry. The ex-emperor worries about that marriage, and - after first having him carefully sounded out through others and having rejected other possibilities - he finally decides to ask Genji to marry her. After much deliberation, Genji accepts his offer, in the first place because she is the niece of his great love from the past, the late Empress Fujitsubo. But it is also a case of over-extension by the status-conscious Genji, who feels the only thing still lacking is a legal wife of high status. Murasaki, who has been recognized as his "virtual legal wife" (without becoming Genji's official principal wife, because her status is too low), feels upset, but she prepares to accept the Third Princess as Genji's legal wife, hiding her true feelings.

The new year has come, and on the 23rd day Genji goes through the ceremony of sampling the new herbs, which have been collected by Tamakazura in honor of his fortieth year and which are arranged in four aloe-wood boxes.

Around the 10th of the second month, the Third Princess is married to Genji and moves into Genji's Rokujo Estate, but Genji is disappointed with her extreme immaturity and lack of talent. Meanwhile, Murasaki keeps her sorrows to herself, acting with outward calm. At the end of the second month, the Cloistered Emperor Suzaku moves into his mountain temple.

Genji starts visiting Oborozukiyo again, his "forbidden" love of the past ("forbidden," because she was to become the bride of Emperor Suzaku; the exposure of the relationship between her and Genji was one of the reasons for Genji's exile to Suma). They both feel a strong nostalgia for the past, when they were secret, but careless lovers. It is a riddle why Genji restarts this relationship (if only for a while, for Oborozukiyo soon takes holy orders) - why cause more pain to Murasaki? Perhaps he wants to prove to himself that he can take everything that belongs to his half-brother Suzaku, in a sort of unconscious competition: not only his daughter, but also the wife who in the past was meant for the emperor?

In summer, the young lady Akashi (now the Consort of the crown prince) is pregnant and withdraws from the palace to Rokujo (as we saw in the first chapter in the case of Genji's mother, giving birth was seen as polluting and not allowed in the palace).

In the 10th month, Murasaki dedicates on image of the Healing Buddha, Yakushi Nyorai, for Genji's fortieth year, to the temple Genji has years ago built in Sagano, to the west of the capital. Likewise, after the twentieth of the 12th month, Akikonomu has sutras read at the Seven Great Temples in Nara for the same purpose.

In the first month of the next year, a continuous great rite begins for the safe delivery of the baby of the Akashi princess. In the beginning of the 3rd month, she smoothly gives birth to a son, who becomes the heir apparent.

Although she and her mother are in all their glory, they shed tears when they read a personal letter from her father, the Akashi Priest, who is entering on his deepest and final reclusion - he literally vanishes into the mountains, leaving the world behind.

At the end of the third month, a kickball (kemari) match is held at the Rokujo Estate. At one point Kashiwagi (25 or 26), the son of To no Chujo, happens to catch a glimpse of the Third Princess when her cat becomes entangled in one of the blinds and exposes her to view - a case of kaimami again! She has long been on Kashiwagi's mind, and now he falls hopelessly in love. For the time being, all he can get is her cat, which he secretly carries home and keeps as a reminder of her. He is happy that her perfume still sticks to the fur of the cat...


Genji-e (Information from JAANUS)

The scene most frequently chosen (as in the painting above), and the most significant to the development of the subsequent plot, occurs in the spring while Genji and Prince Hotaru watch Kashiwagi and his three younger brothers play kickball. A cat pulls at a string and opens the curtains, allowing Kashiwagi to catch sight of the Third Princess, with whom he immediately falls in love. 

Other scenes selected for illustration from this chapter include: Genji sitting with Murasaki in the middle of the Second Month, as she copies poems to distract herself from her distress about Genji's new marriage; and, around the same period, Genji returning at dawn from the quarters of the Third Princess, standing on the veranda and looking at patches of snow on the white sand of the garden while waiting for Murasaki's servants to let him in.


Reading The Tale of Genji