Notes to pertinent chapters from

Field, Norma. The Splendor of Longing in the Tale of Genji

by K. L. Richard.

'Uji'and 'ushi':the word means 'wearisome,''distasteful,''unsympathetic.'p. 218

Uji: other meanings: 'separation from the capital', 'tragic site of kinship', 'crossroads for travelers,' 'transient unions.' p. 219-20.

Uji: higan or'the other side' of Buddhism, the shore of enlightenment. This shore implies 'worldly entrapment.' p. 221

Kaoru: "This several-faceted conflation of the sacred and the secular, as well as the solipsistic quality to Kaoru's formulation of the question of paternal identity, prognosticates his behavior in the course of the Uji chapters." p. 226 Kaoru as 'worldly saint'(俗聖）zoku hijiri.

"Excess, in a sense, characterizes all of Uji." p. 295. In Uji, Kaoru was unable to sleep at night because "with the rough river winds, the sound of falling leaves and the echoing of the water all exceeded the bounds of aware, making the place seem both frightful and deserted."

p. 295. Look at the storm in the Nowaki chapter, and at the end of the Suma chapter. Is the excess matched by a calming, aesthetic resolution?

AGEMAKI

Kaoru's encounter with Oigimi parallels Genji's with Tamakazura when he strokes her hair. Compare these two encounters and the success rates of both. p. 238-39.

On Kaoru's dysfunctionality with Oigimi: "Vision, having humiliatingly exposed the presence of death in this erotic confrontation, must yield to verbal exchange. Vision, as directed by one such as Kaoru upon one such as Oigimi, cannot lead to union even in fantasy; rather, it implacably produces separation in a psychic field where sense and sensibility are distinct."p.240.

Compare the situation of the Akashi lady when she yields her daughter for the sake of the 'glory of the line' to Oigimi's substitution of Nakanokimi for herself for the sake of 'the privacy (the secret) of her aging flesh. p. 242

"We think again of Genji and Murasaki as a fictional version of the archaic diarchy. Kaoru and Oigimi are still another fictional version: condemned to an exclusively private realm, they attempt to constitute their erotic selves through the substitution of others--"others" who happen to be their doubles, a sister in Oigimi's case and a nephew/cousin in Kaoru's." p. 245.

AZUMAYA

There is a passionately practical view held about the possibilities of happiness as the Hitachi governor and his wife ponder Ukifune's future. "The Governor of Hitachi lays bare the commodification of women in a fashion never approached by a To no Chujo and certainly not a Genji, who had at their disposal the entire arsenal of aestheticized culture to mask their commerce in daughters."p. 267.