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SEMINAR III CHAPTERS 22-33 |
TAMAKAZURA
The 'narabi no maki' or 'minor chapters.': Hahakigi, Utsusemi(Sekiya), Yugao, Suetsumuhana (Yomogiu), and the ten Tamakazura chapters (22-31) "If they are minor, they are also subversive." F.87
"Tamakazura herself is a boundary character, being of age but uninitiated, pure but erotic (nadeshiko and tokonatsu), rustic yet refined."F. 324 Note 16, Chapter 2.
"What is the female equivalent of the transgression motivating masculine exile? There is onlyone possibility: the condition of becoming sexually available. Sexual ripening constitutes the young heroine's transgression." F.99
"Genji, of course, is interested in her {Tamakazura} as his dead lover's daughter. In addition to being a fictional father and potential lover, he is also a sibling through the bond of exile and its surrounding circumstances."F.100
"We should recall that Genji has played a slightly androgynous, pseudo-parental role in the past, first with Murasaki, and then with Akikonomu, entrusted to him by her dying mother, also a former lover. Genji urgesTamakazura to think of him as her mother, for whose death he is responsible." F.101
"Tamakazura as stepdaughter...implicates all the other stepdaughters, or motherless daughters, of whom a casual listing would include Fujitsubo, Murasaki, Akikonomu, Suetsumuhana, Princess Asagao, the Third Princess, Oigimi, and Nakanokimi." F.102 Potential theme for seminar.
See Field, p. 113, for a chart of the passage of a full year of seasons at the newly constructed Rokujoin. In chapters 22,23,24 Genji's passion for Tamakazura grows, 25 and 26 are perhaps the sexiest,27,28,29 deal with the decline of Genji's passion in which he realizes that he can not, must not, have Tamakazura.
"The issue of reproduction figures in a parodic fashion in the Rokujoin in the person of Tamakazura,who enters as a false child to compensate for the children Genji has not fathered. She reinforces the sense of fictional sterility that fertile nature imposes in its circularity."F.116-17.
HATSUNE
Suetsumuhana appears as a stark contrast to what Genji expects of Tamakazura; she, on the one hand has lost her luxurious hair, while Tamakazura is poised to take centerstage. Genji becomes an educator of women, not a seducer.
KOCHO
This is definitely Murasaki's chapter. It is Spring in the Spring Garden sector. A party ensues in which the yamabuki (kerria rose) flower is symbolized in poetry and in the garments of children dressed as butterflies who are sent to Akikonomu's Autumn Garden sector. Field calls this 'an assault of secular splendor."p.125
Genji says to Tamakazura--"think of me as that lady now gone, treat me as your own mother."F.126, S. 426.
"If it is unpleasant for Tamakazura to be courted by her own brother (and conversely, to have to permit Yugiri a greater intimacy than warranted), it is even more painful to be faced with the attentions of her guardian, since there is no escaping them." F.126
HOTARU
"Genji is subject to a passion that must be kept secret from the world. And once again, he seeks compensatory relief, this time by fanning the ardor of the other suitors." F. 126
Genji stages a viewing by using fireflies in this chapter, proving that he is still in control, has power over, this world of his own making, even if it is quaintly voyeuristic. Later on, other people see his charges and lovers, but Genji has not orchestrated their seeing as he has in this chapter. {Yugiri sees Murasaki during the typhoon (see the Nowaki chapter), Yugiri sees Murasaki on her death at the Nijoin (see the Minori chapter),Yugiri sees Genji with Tamakazura during the Typhoon, and Kashiwagi sees the Third Princess during the court football match.}
In the famous discussion of the uses of fiction (monogatari) which are contained in this chapter, Tamakazura seems the most intent on finding meaning in them. She has the most to gain, because, at the moment, she is being led in the grand deception Genji is practicing on her and from which she finds no escape. "Is it not that she finds the events recounted in her stories more plausible, in light of her knowledge of life, than the parodic and even grotesque fiction Genji has imposed on her, to be daughter and lover at once? Trapped in Genji's fiction-in-life, she is inspired to champion lives-in-fiction." F. 132., S. 437 on.
"The presence of excess, the admission of evil as well as good, the use of language that does not simply transmit "things as they are"--these are the hallmarks of the land of fiction, where truth is the absorbing consequence of a complicated fit between subject, object, and language." F. 133.
TOKONATSU
"The question hovering behind this chapter is, "What purpose do daughters serve?" and its corollary, "How can they be made fit for this purpose?" F. 136.
"The incidents in the "Wild Carnations" chapter read like textbook illustrations of things that can go wrong with daughters." F. 137.
"The Lady of Omi is everything a heroine cannot be. Not only is her speech clamorous, her poetry scandalous, and her makeup vulgar, but she initiates a campaign on her own behalf to enter court service and horrifies her brothers by making an overture to Yugiri." F. 138
NOWAKI
"The unseating that takes place in this chapter is different in kind, however, from the removal of a crown prince {Akikonomu's father, for example}. It is Yugiri's usurping the power of vision from his father." F. 141
"It has taken the rapture of sober Yugiri to breathe life into Murasaki's abstract idealization. His hungry gaze invests radiant purity with a carnal dimension without impairing the purity." F.179-80. This refers to the second of two ruptures in the otherwise idealized life of Murasaki with Genji. The first rupture occurs when Genji's attentions focus on Princess Asagao when she resigns her position as the Priestess of the Kamo shrine after the death of her father, Prince Shikibu. He had been the brother of the Kiritsubo Emperor, hence Genji's uncle. Perhaps we are back to the Asagao chapter here.
"Yugiri is bold: he lifts an obstructing curtain to catch his father in shockingly intimate pose with Tamakazura." F. 143. And he had thought she was his half-sister!
"Transgressing on his father's domain, appraising it and ravishing it, Yugiri comes of age...He can see for himself....Murasaki is the birch cherry in spring, Tamakazura the yamabuki at twilight, and the Akashi Princess, wisteria." F. 143
In Wakana Ge ( S. 602-the music fest), Genji reverses the selection process begun by himself and acquieses to Yugiri's judgement of "his" women. "It is one indication of reversed authority that Genji adopts what might be called his son's world view." F. 143.
"In the end, it is but metaphoric violation that takes place in the Tamakazura chapters. This is a reflection of the diminution in scale of external action in the Rokujoin world, an effect buttressed by the deliberately confining use of poetic order."F. 143.
"The institution and the individual at stake here are of course the Rokujoin and Murasaki. The winds physically impair some of the Rokujoin structures. Murasaki's death is portended in a number of ways: she is losing to Akikonomu seasonally, as she will be at the time of her death; she is seen by Yugiri, as she will be upon her death; and Genji's courtship of Tamakazura foreshadows his marriage to the Third Princess." F. 144
Yugiri, when he usurps the vision of his father, becomes an adult, 'implies the revelation of the deception at the heart of the poetic structure of the Rokujoin." F.144.
MIYUKI
An outdoor chapter at last. Most unusual. Genji isn't there. Tamakazura sees the Emperor Reizei and falls in love?
MAKIBASHIRA
"Higekuro's theft of Tamakazura echoes Genji's theft of Murasaki. Higekuro's wife's suffering (she is Murasaki's stepsister) foreshadows Murasaki's agony in the "New Herbs"(Wakana Jo and Ge) chapters." F. 146.
Hiegkuro is a married man when he manages to sleep with Tamakazura. That he visits Tamakazura at the Rokujoin is typical of the Heian pattern. Genji, of course, is acting as the parent.
Compare the rage that culminates with the charcoal brazier being dumped over Higekuro's head in this chapter (F. 147-48, S. 497-98)to the restraint of a similar scene between Genji and Murasaki when he is about to leave to do his duty with the Third Princess (Wakana Jo, F. 149-50,S.554-55.)
Tamakazura ends up in the same position at palace that Oborozukiyo held, the lady Genji had stolen from Suzaku before her introduction at court, and which occasioned Kokiden to blow her whistle and force Genji to go into voluntary exile. Because Tamakazura's court position does not involve personal services (sex), she can remain married to Higekuro.
UMEGAE
An incense contest recalls the first Spring of the Rokujoin here, and is recalled again in the Maboroshi chapter, Genji's last. See F. 200