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Summary
Chapter 2: The Broom-Like Tree
Some years have passed since the first chapter. It is the rainy season and a now-older Genji is with his brother-in-law and friend, Tō-no-Chūjō. When some love letters attract Tō-no-Chūjō’s attention, the friends’ conversation turns to the subject of women. Tō-no-Chūjō insists there are three different kinds of women, categorized by class status and personal traits. Genji is about to object to this rigid schema when their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of other friends, including Sama-no-Kama and Shikibu-no-Jō. The new arrivals take up the conversation eagerly, but Genji dozes off. His friends continue to detail different types of women, stressing traits like loyalty, fidelity, and submission as ideal. Their conversation is protracted.
When Genji eventually wakes, each of his three companions tells the story of particular relationships they have had. Sama-no-Kami goes first, sharing two tales. First, he narrates the story of a jealous woman who bit his finger. He then goes on to the tale of a gifted woman musician who had multiple lovers at the same time. Next up is Tō-no-Chūjō, who recounts the story of a woman who was too meek and forgiving and thus lost his interest, even though she bore him a child. (Readers will meet this woman, Yūgao, in a later chapter.) Finally, Shikibu-no-Jō shares his experiences with a woman he describes as too learned, and thus masculine. He finds her unwillingness to conceal her superior abilities out of deference to him upsetting. In the end, the men conclude that, to please them, women should be loyal, passive, sophisticated, and tactful, careful not to diminish men by displaying their superiority. Genji smiles to himself, thinking of someone unnamed.
The evening over, Genji visits his wife, Lady Aoi. She meets him with a stately reserve and the atmosphere of their encounter is oppressive, both in terms of the weather and the relations between husband and wife. Feeling somewhat aimless, Genji decides to visit the house of a friend, Ki-no-Kami, which is said to have a cooling effect. His friend’s father has recently married a younger woman and Genji overhears her conversation, which seems to be about him. Intrigued by what he hears, Genji enters her room after the house has fallen asleep and, profiting from the darkness to fool her attendant, manages to transport her to his apartment. There the couple shares a dreamy night. Genji accepts her brother, Kokimi, into his service, hoping in this way to establish a correspondence with this woman, but she is not encouraging. When he finds a way to visit again, Cicada, as she has come to be called, rejects him. Dejected, he spends the night in Kokimi’s room.
Analysis
This is a key conversation for The Tale of Genji; although he sleeps through it, Genji will proceed to meet living examples of some of these imagined women. Critics have sometimes observed that the conversation provides a map or plan of some of the action to come in the novel. Certainly, the conversation anticipates the structure of The Tale of Genji. Across the subsequent chapters, Genji will establish relationships with different women, encountering difficulties and frustrations, just as his friends’ conversation discusses men establishing relationships with women, then encountering difficulties and frustrations. But, where the episodes they narrate contribute to a general representation of courtship, presenting almost a contest of who had the worst experience, Genji’s adventures contribute to the development of his character. He becomes a better person over time, as he learns about himself and the ways his actions affect others.
Where the opening chapter subtly introduced norms of behavior for men in its focus on the Emperor and his son, the novel’s second chapter presents certain cultural expectations about the behavior expected of women. While the men do not agree entirely about what makes an “ideal” woman, they can generate a list of traits that are desirable, including loyalty, sophistication, tractability, and tact. But it is crucial to remember that the novel’s author is a woman, also immersed in this culture—and the episodes the men describe do not present them favorably. They are bitten, cheated on, and bested by the women they woo. Although these men have more cultural authority and freedom, the stories they narrate show the women finding ways to wield power of their own. Murasaki’s representation of this conversation can thus be read as a humorous send-up of male pretensions, as they define perfect women who will not reject their advances. As Genji sleeps through the conversation, too, he may thus be exempted from the gentle rebuke, yet another way in which he provides a standard of excellence in the novel.
“The Broom-like Tree” also introduces Genji as a suitor, and one who resorts to crafty ways of eavesdropping on his quarry. His first seduction begins when he overhears a conversation, the first of many such eavesdroppings in The Tale of Genji. Because women were regularly secluded—in private apartments, behind screens or shutters and in other kinds of enclosures—Genji is often in the position of peering, spying, or eavesdropping. In the place of confrontation or chance meetings, the action of the novel turns on glimpses and fragments of conversations, partial looks or whispers. Indirection is key to the world of seduction and pursuit that The Tale of Genji depicts, whether manifested in disguises, witty poems, partial glances or overheard sounds.
