Man-Pai / Genji Ch.4

Man-Pai / Genji Ch.4 - Yugao

Yugao - Evening Faces

In the summer evening, Genji stopped to inquire after his old nurse, Koremitsu's mother, on his way from court to pay one of his calls at Rokujo mansion. His carriage was simple and unadorned and he had no servants. Beside the nurse's house was a new fence of plaited cypress. The four or five narrow shutters above had been raised, and new blinds, white and clean, hung in the aperture. The white flowers of Yugao, which meant "evening faces", were in bloom on the board wall. Genji sent his man to ask the name of the flower. That was the beginning of the encounter between Genji and Yugao.

Koremitsu passed the flower to Genji on a white fan. A little girl of the house handed it to him. As he finished his visit to the nurse, he asked for a torch, and shone its light on the fan on which the evening face had rested. It was permeated with a lady's perfume, elegant and alluring. On it was a poem, "I think I need not ask whose face it is, so bright, this evening face, in the shining dew." Genji ordered Koremitsu to make inquiries about the woman.

Kuniyoshi,1845/46

Autumn came. Genji visited the lady of Rokujo. He had cooled toward her, which made her sleepless. She feared the rumor of their difference in age. On a morning of heavy mist, she lifted her head from her pillow to see him off. He paused to admire the profusion of flowers below the veranda and sent a little girl to cut them. Chujo, the servant of the lady Rokujo, followed him down the gallery. She was a pretty and graceful woman. He asked her to sit her with him for a time at the corner of the railing.

The bright full moon of the Eight Month came. Genji stayed over at Yugao’s house. Towards dawn he was awakened by the plebeian voices coming from the shabby house down the street, the sound of millstone and singing of wild geese. There was a tasteful clump of black bamboo just outside and the dewdrops on the leaves in the front of the garden beamed reflecting the morning sunshine. Autumn insects sang busily. It was all clamorous, and also rather wonderful. She was so delicately beautiful, which struck him deeply. Viewing the outside together, they promised their never-ending love.

One day Genji took Yugao out by carriage and they spent some happy hours. Afterward, it was about midnight and he had been asleep for a while when an exceedingly beautiful woman appeared by his pillow. He awoke, feeling as if he were in the power of a malign being. The light had gone out. He ordered his men to bring the light. He reached for the girl. She was not breathing. Ukon, her servant lay face down at her side. A devil had seized Yugao and killed her.

Koremitsu wrapped the body and took it to a temple on mount Higashi. He happened to know the nun over there. Barely conscious, Genji made his way back to Nijo. In the evening, he went to the temple. The girl's face was unchanged and very pretty. The grand tone in which the worthy monk, the son of a nun, was reading a sutra brought on what Genji thought must be the full flood tide of his tears. Ukon, lying behind a screen, wept too.

Now genuinely ill, Genji took to his bed for one month after Yugao’s death. He had lost weight, but this only made him more handsome. He summoned Ukon one quiet evening. The autumn tints were coming over the maples. Looking out upon the garden, he asked about Yugao. Ukon told him that her father was a guard captain. After his death, To-no-Chujo was very attentive and bore a very pretty little girl. When To-no-Chujo's wife discovered her, she ran off and hid herself. (This story was told previously in the 9th graphic of chapter 2.)