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The Lady of the Paulownia-Courtyard Chambers

Kiritsubo

Kono kimi no onwarawa sugata, ito kaemoku obosedo, juni nite ongenpuku shitamau. Itachi oboshii to namite, kagiri aru koto ni koto o soesase tamau.

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The opening scene of the Genji Album captures the final moments of Genji's "boyish appearance," the loss of which is lamented in the accompanying textual excerpt. In keeping with pictorial conventions, gold clouds part and architectural barriers fall away to reveal Genji at his initiation ceremony where his long tresses will be shortened and tucked inside his courtier's cap, modeled by the six men in formal attire who attend to the ceremony. The picture focuses on young Genji and his adolescent hairstyle, showing his hair trailing down his shoulders from loops above his ears tied with white ribbons that frame his innocent-looking face. Genji's countenance demonstrates the artist Tosa Mitsunobu's mastery of the conventions for depicting nobility in courtly narrative painting: white pigment (gofun) from ground shells to paint the face, precisely drawn lines for the eyes and nose, with bushy eyebrows and red lips, amounting to an abstract but subtly expressive visage. The solemnity of the occasion is conveyed through details of comportment: the slight tilt of the head, the firmly grasped baton, and the overall compliant pose of the initiate. Furnishings in the picture include a brocade-covered two-tiered shelf with a vibrant floral pattern against a gold ground, and a black lacquered footed basin to receive to the boy's shorn locks, all perhaps alluding to the attention to the ceremony's details paid by the sovereign himself. The Emperor, whose face is hidden behind blinds, as was custom, is seated in the upper left corner. His importance is underscored by the selection of the textual excerpt, which describes the ceremony from his point of view. The courtier to Genji's left, directly in the Emperor's line of vision, is most likely the Minister of the Left, the man who is about to become Genji's father-in-law. Genji's coming of age coincides with his betrothal to the young woman known as Lady Aoi, who, at sixteen, is four years his senior. The scene of initiation, although tinged with sentimentality, pictorializes a consequential political transaction between the Emperor and the Minister of the Left, with Genji in the middle.

The textual passage for this scene opens with the reflections of the sovereign as he witnesses his son's passage into adulthood. Until this moment Genji had barely left his father's side and had served as a poignant reminder of the Emperor's deceased love known as the Kiritsubo Consort (Lady of the Paulownia-Courtyard Chambers). Much of the opening chapter of The Tale of Genji describes an all-consuming love affair between the Emperor and Genji's mother, a woman of lesser social standing than his senior Consort, Kokiden. Their relationship reflects the Emperor's attempt at an assertion of political control over the Kokiden Consort and her powerful Fujiwara family, whose manipulation of the throne curtails direct imperial rule. The birth of Genji to a woman without a controlling Fujiwara patriarch behind her means a potential rival to the throne who would not be subject to control by the Fujiwara Regents. At the same time, without powerful maternal male relatives to occupy influential bureaucratic positions at court to support and protect him, Genji's position is precarious, prompting the Emperor to make him a commoner, thereby removing him as a potential successor. The Tale of Genji is thus a tale of the disinherited — the surname "Genji" being designated for such princes removed from the line of succession — in which the reclamation of this birthright and the redemption of Genji's mother's lineage subtends the entire work.

Courtly narrative painting at its best employed architectural settings to convey social relationships, and the album painting for the Kiritsubo chapter is no exception. The Emperor's role as the spiritual and political center of society is expressed by his transcendent position in the upper left, where he observes the ceremony from behind the hanging blinds. Out of deference, his body is depicted only from the shoulders down. The three diagonal beams that traverse the picture demarcate separate hierarchical spaces within a building: the inner core (moya) in the upper left, the surrounding aisle (hisashi), where Genji sits, and the outer aisle, occupied by two courtiers in the lower right. Adjacent to the Emperor, and positioned directly behind Genji, is a curtained dais symbolically guarded by a pair of sculptural lion-dogs placed in front. The ensemble marks the site as the Seiryoden (Hall of Cool and Refreshing Breezes), the Emperor's residence within the palace. The setting is charged with political meaning: the initiation of Genji's half brother, the designated Crown Prince born to the Kokiden Consort, took place in the official Shinshinden (Hall for State Ceremonies). The Emperor's personal involvement in Genji's coming-of-age ceremony, held in his private quarters, implies that for him, Genji takes priority over the Crown Prince, foreshadowing a lifelong rivalry between the half brothers and a theme of public versus private kingship. Genji will never ascend the throne like his half brother, the future Emperor Suzaku, but he will achieve a symbolic form of sovereignty, ultimately rising to the exalted status of "honorary retired emperor" (jun daijo tenno). The tale legitimizes Genji's claim to this position in its first pages, using imagery of resplendence and otherworldliness to describe him, calling him the "radiant prince" (hikaru kimi). The album's first painting mobilizes the symbolism of architectural settings and the empty imperial dais appearing to float above Genji's head to establish themes of identity, rivalry, and shadow imperial rule that structure the entire tale.

  Now the breaking day
Finds me still sighing in the dark
  Of my misery,
For those unresting cries are torn
  Not just from the cockrel's throat.

CRANSTON, P. 698

With the sky growing lighter
by the moment, Genji brought her
back to the entrance of her room.

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Broom Cypress

Hahakigi

koto to akakunareba, shojiguchi made okuritamau.

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This second pair of leaves in the album, Hahakigi (Broom Cypress), takes us from the rarified atmosphere of the imperial court and aristocracy to the world of provincial governors and middle-ranking women. Genji, now seventeen, decides to spend the night at the city residence of the Governor of Kii Province. The painting is set amid the sweltering midsummer heat on the grounds of the governor's newly renovated villa, which is...