Reading The Tale of Genji (51): Ukifune (A Drifting Boat)

 

Ukifune

Title

Waley keeps "Ukifune;" Seidensticker translates "A Boat upon the Waters," Tyler "A Drifting Boat" and Washburn "A Boat Cast Adrift". Ukifune is the nickname of the unrecognized daughter of the Eighth Prince. Literally, Ukifune means "A Boat Set Adrift"; as usual, her real name is not specified. 

Chronology

This chapter takes place in spring when Kaoru is 27.

Position in the Genji

Ukifune is a daughter of the Eighth Prince Hachi no Miya and half-sister to Oigimi and Naka no Kimi. In this chapter Niou continues his pursuit of Ukifune. One night when Kaoru is away from Uji, Niou allows himself to be mistaken for Kaoru and thereby seduces Ukifune. Returning from the capital Kaoru eventually realizes the situation. Ukifune finds herself in love with both men and contemplates suicide as the only solution.

[Ukifune, by Tosa Mitsunobu. Harvard Art Museums]

Synopsis

Niou can not forget the young woman he has seen by chance at his Nijo mansion. Naka no Kimi keeps the whole story from him, but on New Year's Day, he sees a letter sent to Naka no Kimi from Uji and so discovers Ukifune's whereabouts - and the fact that she is now Kaoru's mistress.

One night, Niou secretly visits Uji, sneaks into Ukifune's bedroom disguised as Kaoru, and sleeps with her. Discovering that it was Niou, Ukifune is dumbfounded, and upset over the entanglement with her sister’s husband and the scandal that will inevitably ensue. She is horrified by her gross negligence, but Niou is very much in love with her and also stays the next day with her in Uji.

Ukifune then gradually warms to Niou's passionate character, so different from the reserved and indecisive Kaoru.

In the Second Month, after a long absence, Kaoru again calls at Uji and, happy to see how mature Ukifune has become, promises to bring her to the capital.

When Niou learns that Kaoru's feelings toward Ukifune are still continuing, he races through the deep snow to Uji. There he boards a boat with Ukifune and crosses the river to a house on the other shore where they can be alone. Along the way, he instructs the boatman to stop at a small island in the river, where he composes a poem vowing eternal love:

the years may pass
but the heart that pledges
undying devotion
by the top of Orange Tree Isle
will never change

Ukifune's response is the source of her name:

the color
of Orange Tree Isle
may never change
but this drifting boat (ukifune)
knows not where it goes

(both poems tr. Janet Goff, Noh Drama and the Tale of Genji, p. 182-83)

They then spend two intoxicating days together in their hideaway.

Thereafter, Ukifune receives letters from both lovers announcing plans to take her to the capital. She is thrown into emotional turmoil.

In the Third Month, messengers from both men encounter each other at Uji. As a result, Kaoru learns of Niou's visit and presses Ukifune to tell him everything that has been going on between her and Niou. Ukifune is now back in his house in Uji and he puts the guards on high alert to keep Niou away,

Ukifune, caught in a dilemma between Kaoru and Niou, becomes increasingly distraught and finally decides to throw herself into the river. Her final parting poem is intended for her mother:

joining my own cry
to the dying echoes
of the sounding bell
tell her my life has ended
in this world of endless night.

(tr. Cranston, A Waka Anthology, Volume Two, p. 961)

This reminds me of the stories of Unai and the Maiden of Tegona, two women who happen to figure in similar stories that gave rise to several Manyoshu poems and also Noh plays: both girls, in their independent stories, are torn between two suitors, without being able to make a choice, and in the end they both commit suicide by jumping into the river...  weird stories, as to modern readers there seems to be no psychological justification for such a suicide. Perhaps it is an extreme example of what the Japanese call "enryo," "deference to others." Both stories seem to have haunted the imagination of the ancient Japanese, and Murasaki Shikibu must have known them and used this theme in her novel (see my article A Kobe Tragedy: The Story of Unai for more on one of these stories at this blog).

Genji-e (Information from JAANUS)

Scenes chosen for illustration include: 1 Naka no Kimi, Niou's wife, receiving a New Year's greeting from Ukifune along with a whiskered basket with an artificial pine branch and red berries attached, while Niou is present. 2 At the end of the First Month at Uji, Niou breaks through a reed fence and spies on Ukifune, her head pillowed on her arm and surrounded by her women who are sewing and spinning thread. 3 The most often depicted scene (also in the above): in the Second Month after a heavy snowfall when the moon is in the morning sky, Niou takes Ukifune out in a boat on the Uji river to Orange Tree Isle, accompanied by her maid and a boatman. 4 Niou taking Ukifune, dressed in white, to the house of the governor of Inaba across the river, where they watch the setting sun and write poems. 5 Ukifune weeping as a guardsman delivers a letter from Kaoru. 6 Outside Ukifune's residence in Uji at night, Niou, having been stopped from entering by Kaoru's guards, dismounting from his horse and speaking with Ukifune's servant Ukon.

Noh play

The Noh play Ukifune was written in the early 15th c. by a warrior-poet named Yokoo Motohisa, and was set to music by Zeami. It begins at Uji, where the waki, a priest, comes upon a woman in a brushwood boat who tells him Ukifune's story and disappears. The priest later goes to Ono, where Ukifune had been taken to live by a nun after being found dazed beneath a tree at Uji (this part will be told in the next chapters of the novel). In response to his prayers, the woman returns in her true form as the ghost of Ukifune and describes Ukifune's possession by an evil spirit, as  related in the Tenarai chapter (chapter 53).
This possession also provides the kernel for the second play about Ukifune, Kodama Ukifune, that takes place entirely at Ono.

Reading The Tale of Genji