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.

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 Yugaos 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
Kuniyoshi,1845/46 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 Yugaos 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-Chujowas 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.)