RELATIONSHIP TO EARLIER CHAPTERS
“The Picture Contest” takes place from spring to autumn, a year or so after the time covered by “The Pilgrimage to Sumiyoshi.”
PERSONS
Genji, the Palace Minister, age 31
Her Highness, the former Ise Priestess, the Ise Consort, 22 (Akikonomu)
Her Cloistered Eminence, 36 (Fujitsubo)
His Eminence, the Retired Emperor, 33 (Suzaku In)
The Mistress of the Household, of Akikonomu
His Majesty, the Emperor, 13 (Reizei)
The Kokiden Consort, Tō no Chūjō's daughter, 14
The Acting Counselor (Tō no Chūjō)
His Highness of War (Hyōbukyō no Miya)
Genji's love, 23 (Murasaki)
Hei, Jijū, and Shōshō, gentlewomen on the Left, the Umetsubo side in the contest
Daini, Chūjō, and Hyōe, gentlewomen on the Right, the Kokiden side in the contest
The Viceroy Prince, Genji's brother (Hotaru or Sochi no Miya)
The former Ise Priestess's entry into palace service had Her Cloistered Eminence's willing support, but Genji worried that she had no one in particular to do for her all she would need to have done, and he therefore refrained from taking up the matter with His Eminence; and since he had decided to bring her for the time being to Nijō, he pretended instead to know nothing about it. However, he generally honored his parental responsibility toward her.
Incense jar
His Eminence was thoroughly disappointed, but for the sake of appearances he gave up writing to her. When the day came at last, however, he had her specially presented with the most beautiful sets of robes; with a comb box, a toiletry box, and a box for incense jars, all extraordinary in their way; and with such incenses and clothing perfumes as to fill the air far beyond a hundred paces.1 The idea that Genji might be watching had no doubt put him on his mettle.
Genji was there at the time, and the Mistress of the Household showed him everything. He knew at first glance from the comb box just how marvelous they were in the exquisite refinement of their beauty.
On the gift knot that graced the box of ornamental combs he saw written,
“Did the gods decree, when the time of parting came and I, in your hair,
set the comb of last farewell,2 that we should not meet again?”
This gave him pause. He was very sorry, and his own heart's wayward fancies made it clear enough that His Eminence must have been smitten by her on that occasion when she left for Ise. How might he feel about having his hopes thwarted this way, now that she was back after all those years, and just when he could look forward to their being fulfilled? Was he bitter in retirement, after resigning the throne? I would be upset if I were he, Genji reflected. What can have moved me to force this through and make him so unhappy? He felt very bad. Yes, he had once been angry with His Eminence,3 but he could only think fondly, too, of his gentle nature, and in his confusion he fell for a time into abstracted gloom.
“What sort of answer does she have in mind? And what about His Eminence's letter itself?” However, the Mistress of the Household was too nervously discreet to produce it. Genji heard the gentlewomen protesting vainly to their mistress, who was then unwell and in no mood to reply, that it would be rude and unkind of her not to, and he chimed in, “You really must, you know, if only for appearances”; and despite her confusion she remembered so vividly being touched as a girl by his graceful beauty and his many tears, and the memory brought with it such sad thoughts of her mother, that she managed after all,
“When I went away, you gave me that last command never to return,
and now I am back again, the memory makes me sad.”4
That was probably all. The messenger received various gifts. Genji, who wanted desperately to know what she had said, could hardly ask.
His Eminence's looks were such that one would have gladly seen him as a woman, but Her Highness5 did not seem unworthy of him, and they would have made a handsome pair. It even occurred to Genji to wonder indiscreetly whether she might not privately regret his having been disappointed, since after all His Majesty was still very young. The thought was torment, but there was no turning back. He explained what needed to be done,6 told the Upkeep Consultant,7 whom he favored, to see to his orders, and set off for the palace.
Out of deference to His Eminence, Genji refrained from any ostentatiously paternal gesture and only assured her well-being. Her residence had long boasted many worthy gentlewomen, and even the ones who were often at home gathered around her now, so that she lived there in admirable style. Genji's old feeling for her mother returned, and he thought, Ah, if only she were still alive, how pleased she would be to have brought her daughter this far herself! By any standard she was a wonder and a very great loss. No, there will never be anyone like her! Such had been her rare distinction that many things recalled her memory.
Her Cloistered Eminence was at the palace, too. The news that someone special was coming caught His Majesty's interest in a charming way. He was quite grown-up for his age. “Yes,” his mother told him, “she is a very fine lady, and you must mind your manners with her.”
He was secretly worried that a grown-up might make forbidding company. She arrived very late that night. She was very discreet and quiet, and so small and slight that he thought her very pretty indeed. By now he was used to his Kokiden lady, whose company he enjoyed and with whom he felt quite at ease, but this new one was so dauntingly self-possessed, and Genji treated her with such respectful formality, that he found it difficult to think ill of her, and he therefore divided his nights equally between them, although when he set off by day in search of youthful amusement, he usually went to the Kokiden. The Acting Counselor had nursed a particular ambition when he presented his daughter to His Majesty, and it did not please him to find her now in competition with the new arrival.
His Eminence at the Suzaku Palace considered the reply to his poem on the comb box and realized how difficult it was to give her up. Then Genji appeared, and the two began a conversation during which he happened to mention the High Priestess's departure for Ise, since he had touched on it before; though he concealed his interest in her. Genji pursued the matter so as to learn more about his feelings, without letting on that he already knew, and he felt sorry when he gathered how strong they were. He longed to know what feature of her beauty had so smitten him, and he chafed that he could not see her for himself. She was too profoundly deliberate in manner to allow any youthful liberty into her deportment, or he would have glimpsed her by now, and what hints he caught of her appearance were so unfailingly encouraging that he imagined her to be flawless.
His Highness of War could not bring himself to make any move of his own, now that His Majesty was fully taken up by this pair of ladies, and he bided his time instead, confident that His Majesty would surely not turn his daughter away once he was older.
His Majesty loved painting above all, and perhaps because he liked it so much, he was also extremely good at it. The Ise Consort painted very prettily, too, and so his interest shifted to her. The way they did paintings for each other meant that he went to see her often. He had been taking a pleased interest in the younger privy gentlemen who favored the same art, and he was charmed even more by this lovely lady whose paintings were not copybook exercises but entirely her own and who, reclining sweetly beside him, would pause gravely to consider the next stroke of her brush. He therefore visited her frequently and liked her far better than before.
This news spurred the Acting Counselor, always so forward and quick to rise to a challenge, to gather his wits (Why, am I to be bested?), call in expert painters, swear them to silence, and have them turn out the most beautiful work on the finest papers. “Pictures of scenes from tales have the most charm and give the greatest pleasure,” he said; and he chose the prettiest and most amusing tales and set the painters to work illustrating them. He also had his daughter show His Majesty paintings of the round of monthly fest
ivals, done in a novel format with accompanying text. When His Majesty wanted to look at them with the Ise Consort, the Kokiden side would not bring them out at all; instead they hid them and would not let His Majesty take them to the rival. “The Acting Counselor is such a boy at heart!” Genji laughed when he heard. “He will never learn!”
“It is quite wrong of the Acting Counselor to upset you this way by deliberately hiding them and keeping them from you,” he said. “Some of mine, though, are from early times, and you shall have them.” At his residence he had cabinets full of paintings old and new thrown open, and with his darling he thoughtfully selected those most pleasing to modern taste. The ones on subjects like “The Song of Unending Sorrow” or the story of Ōshōkun were attractive and moving, but they were also ill omened, and he decided for now to leave them out.8
He removed the record of his travels from its box and took the opportunity to show it to his love. It would have drawn willing tears from anyone in the least familiar with life's sorrows, even if the viewer was only barely acquainted with the circumstances, and for these two it brought back still more vividly the unforgettable nightmare that had engulfed them both. She let him know how unhappy she was that he had not shown it to her before.
“Rather than lament all alone, as I did then, I, too, should have gone
to see for myself this place where the seafolk spend their lives,”
she said. “I would have worried a great deal less.”
Touched, Genji replied,
“Still more vividly than in those sad days now past, when I suffered them,
those ordeals return to mind, bringing with them many tears.”
He must at least show these pictures to Her Cloistered Eminence. Choosing the scrolls least likely to be flawed and the most apt at the same time to convey a clear picture of “those shores,”9 he dwelled in thought on the house at Akashi.
The Acting Counselor redoubled his efforts when he learned that Genji was assembling his own paintings, and he was more attentive than ever to the excellence of rollers, covers, and cords. It was the tenth or so of the third month, a delicious time of mild skies and expansive moods, and since no festival was under way now at the palace, both ladies spent their days absorbed in nothing else, until Genji saw that he, too, might as well do what he could to catch His Majesty's eye. He began marshaling paintings in earnest. Both sides had a great many. Since illustrations of tales were the most attractive and engaging, the Ise Consort's Umetsubo10 party had theirs done for all the great classics of the past, while the Kokiden side favored tales that were the wonder and delight of their own time, so that theirs were by far the more brilliantly modern. Those of His Majesty's own gentlewomen who had anything to say for themselves spent their time, too, rating this painting or that.
Her Cloistered Eminence, too, was then at the palace, and she neglected her devotions to look through each side's paintings, since she could not resist the desire to see them. When she heard His Majesty's women discussing them that way, she divided the contestants into two sides, Left and Right. On the Umetsubo side there were Hei, Jijū, and Shōshō, while on the Right were Daini, Chūjō, and Hyōe—in other words the quickest and most astute gentlewomen of their time. Their lively debates delighted her. In the first round The Old Bamboo Cutter, the ancestor of all tales, was pitted against the “Toshikage” chapter of The Hollow Tree.11
“This tale about the bamboo is certainly hoary enough, and it lacks lively touches, but Princess Kaguya remains forever unsullied by this world, and she aspires to such noble heights that her story belongs to the age of the gods. It is far beyond any woman with a shallow mind!”12 those of the Left declared.
The Right retorted that the heavens to which Princess Kaguya returned were really too lofty to be within anyone's ken, and that since her tie with earth involved bamboo, one gathered that she was in fact of contemptible birth. She lit up her own house, yes, but her light never shone beside the imperial radiance!13 Abe no Ōshi threw away thousands and thousands in gold, and all he wanted from the fire rat's pelt vanished in a silly puff of smoke;14 Prince Kuramochi, who knew all about Hōrai, ruined his own counterfeit jeweled branch.15 These things, they claimed, marred the tale.
The paintings were by Kose no Ōmi and the calligraphy by Ki no Tsurayuki.16 The whole was on utility paper backed by Chinese brocade, with a red-violet cover and a rosewood roller—a quite common mounting.17
“Now, Toshikage,” the Right proclaimed, “was overwhelmed by mighty winds and waves that swept him off to unknown realms, but he still got where he wanted to go, spread knowledge of his wonderful mastery through foreign lands as well as our own, and achieved the fame to which he had so long aspired: that is the story the tale tells, and the way the paintings include both China and Japan, and all sorts of fascinating incidents, too, makes them incomparable.”18 The work was on white paper with a green cover and a yellow jade roller. It fairly sparkled with stylishness, since the paintings were by Tsunenori and the calligraphy by Michikaze.19 The Left had no reply.
Next, Tales of Ise was matched against Jōsanmi,20 and again the decision was hard to reach. This time, too, the Right's work was bright and amusing, and its scenes of a world familiar to them all, starting with pictures of the palace itself, made it the more pleasingly attractive.
“In rank ignorance of the great Sea of Ise's magnificent depths
must the waves now wash away words thought merely old and dull?”21
Hei objected lamely. “Is Narihira's name to be demeaned by tales of common licentiousness tricked out in pretty colors?”
Daini replied,
“To the noble heart that aspires to soar aloft, high above the clouds,
depths of a thousand fathoms appear very far below.”22
“Whatever splendid ambitions the Guardsman's Daughter23 may have entertained,” Her Cloistered Eminence declared, “the name of Narihira is not to be despised.
At first glance, indeed, all that may seem very old, but despite the years
are we to heap scorn upon the fisherman of Ise?”24
The ladies' passionate arguments sustained an interminable debate over every scroll. Meanwhile the younger ones, who really had no idea what it was all about, were dying just for a look at them, but none of them, either Her Cloistered Eminence's or Her Highness's,25 saw anything at all, because Her Cloistered Eminence kept them well hidden.
Genji joined them. “We may as well decide victory and defeat before His Majesty himself,” he said, pleased by the spirit with which each speaker put her case. That had in fact been his idea all along, which is why he had kept some exceptional works in reserve; and among these, for reasons of his own, he had placed his two scrolls of Suma and Akashi.
The Acting Counselor was no less keen. It was all the rage in those days to make up amusing paintings on paper,26 and despite Genji's warning that it would not be in the spirit of things to do new ones now, and that they should keep to the ones they already had, the Acting Counselor went to great lengths to prepare a secret room where he put his painters to work.
Gift knots on an incense box
When His Eminence heard of this, he gave paintings to the Ise Consort. To scrolls by several old masters, showing delightful scenes from the round of annual festivals, on which His Engi Majesty had left comments in his own hand, and to others that he himself had had done of signal events of his own reign, he added one painted under his own close supervision by Kinmochi,27 depicting the rite in the Great Hall of State that had so captivated him on the day when she went down to Ise as Priestess. They were dazzling works. Their lovely openwork aloeswood box, with its equally pretty gift knots, was in the height of fashion. The message with it was delivered orally by the Captain of the Left Palace Guards,28 who was in service at His Eminence's palace. On the awesomely solemn scene that showed the High Priestess's palanquin beside the Great Hall of State, he had written simply,
“Yes, as I am now, the sacred rope keeps me out, but that does n
ot mean
I could one instant forget all I felt then in my heart. ”29
It would have been unforgivable of her not to reply, and so she overcame her reluctance to do so. She broke off a bit of the comb she had had from him then, wrapped it in light blue Chinese paper, and sent with it:
“It now seems to me here within the sacred rope that all things have changed,
and I think back longingly to the presence of the gods.”30
She rewarded the messenger very handsomely.
His Eminence was greatly moved to receive this, and he wished that he really could bring back the old days. He surely held a grudge against Genji in the matter—one he no doubt owed to what he himself had done. His paintings had come to him from his mother, and the Kokiden Consort must have received many of hers in the same way.31 The Mistress of Staff32 was extremely fond of pictures, too, and she had had a great many made for her own collection.
The day was set, and with the arrangements prettily but still lightly made, impromptu as they were, the paintings of Left and Right were presented to His Majesty. His seat was prepared in the gentlewomen's sitting room, with the two sides before him to the north and the south. The privy gentlemen sat on the Kōrōden33 veranda, each one across from the gentlewoman he favored. On the Left, the scrolls' rosewood boxes, covered by grape-colored Chinese silk, rested on sappanwood stands placed on purple Chinese brocade. Six page girls wore cherry blossom dress gowns over red, and wisteria layerings over scarlet. They looked marvelous and seemed beautifully trained. The Right's scrolls, in aloeswood boxes, rested on stands of fragrant wood set out on green Koma brocade; the design of the stands as well as the cords with which the brocade was secured to their legs was wonderfully stylish. The page girls were in dress gowns of willow and of kerria rose over green. They all went to place their stands and boxes before His Majesty. His Majesty's gentlewomen were divided into two sets, front and rear, each dressed accordingly.34