| Text(Edward G. Seidensticker; The Tale of Genji） |
| <The Broom Tree> P030-28 When the colors of a robe do not match the seasons, the flowers of spring and the autumn tints, when they are somehow vague and muddy, then the whole effort is as futile as the dew. So it is with women. It is not easy in this world to find a perfect wife. We are all pursuing the ideal and failing to find it." <The Broom Tree> P031-12 The chrysanthemums were at their best, very slightly touched by the frost, and the red leaves were beautiful in the autumn wind. <Evening Faces> P079-35 The evening sky was serenely beautiful. The flowers below the veranda were withered, the songs of the insects were dying too, and autumn tints were coming over the maples. Looking out upon the scene, which might have been a paintings, Ukon thought what a lovely asylum she had found herself. She wanted to avert her eyes at the thought of the house of the "evening faces." <An Autumn Excursion> P133-08 When the rehearsals have been so fine one fears that the excursion itself will be a disappointment. But I would not for anything have wished you to miss it." <An Autumn Excursion> P133-38 The forty men in the flutists' circle played most marvelously. The sound of their flutes, mingled with the sighing of the pines, was like a wind coming down from deep mountains. "Waves of the Blue Ocean"among falling leaves of countless hues, had about it an almost frightening beauty. <An Autumn Excursion> P133-42 The maple branch in Genji's cap was somewhat bare and forlorn, most of the leaves having fallen, and seemed at odds with his handsome face. The General of the Left replaced it with several chrysanthemums which he brought from below the royal seat. <The Sacred Tree> P199-22 The fields, splashed with autumn color, were enough to make him forget the city. <The Sacred Tree> P199-24 Though he would pass the night in the thoughts of the evanescence of things to which the setting was so conductive, he would still, in the dawn moonlight, remember the lady who was being so cruel to him. There would be a clattering as the priests put new flowers before the images, and the chrysanthemums and the falling leaves of varied tints, though the scene was in no way dramatic, seemed to offer asylum in this life and hope for the life to come. And what a purposeless life was his! <The Sacred Tree> P202-01 He had brought back autumn leaves more deeply tinted by the dews than the leaves in his garden. Fearing that people might be remarking upon his singlet of Fujitsubo, he sent a few branches as a routine gift. <The Sacred Tree> P202-08 A sheaf of autumn leaves admired in solitude is like 'damask worn in the darkness of the night.' <The Gatehouse> P304-07 It being the end of the Ninth Month, the autumn leaves, some crimson and some but gently tinted, and the grasses and flowers touched lightly by the frost were very beautiful indeed; and Genji's men, pouring past the gatehouse in travel livery, damasks and dappled prints, added yet more color. <The Maiden> P366-11 She and Yugiri grew up like brother and sister in Princess Omiya's apartments. To no Chujo separated them when they reached the age of ten or so. He knew that they were fond of each other, he said, but the girl was now too old to have male playments. Yugiri continued to think of her, in his boyish way, and he was careful to notice her when the flowers and grasses of the passing seasons presented occasions, or when he came upon something for her dollhouses. She was not at all in his presence. <The Maiden> P384-20 In Akikonomu's garden the plantings, on hills left from the old garden, were chosen for rich autumn colors. Clear spring water went singing off into the distance, over rocks designed to enhance the music. There was a waterfall, and the whole expanse was like an autumn moor. Since it was now autumn, the garden was a wild profusion of autumn flowers and leaves, such as to shame the hills of Oi. <The Maiden> P386-06 The Ninth Month came and Akikonomu's garden was resplendent with autumn colors. On an evening when a gentle wind was blowing she arranged leaves and flowers on the lid of an ornamental box and sent them over to Murasaki. <The Maiden> P386-16 "Your garden quietly awaits the spring. Permit the winds to bring a touch of autumn." <The Maiden> P386-22 "Fleeting, your leaves that scatter in the wind. The pine at the cliffs is forever green with the spring." <The Maiden> P386-27 "I think you were unnecessarily tart." <Butterflies> P423-11 Akikonomu smiled, recognizing an answer to her poem about the autumn leaves. <Wisteria Leaves> P533-16 Yugiri had summoned various women who had lived in odd corners of the house since Princess Omiya's death. It was for them a very happy reunion. Said Yugiri: "Clearest of brooks, you guard these rocks, this house. Where has she gone whose image you once reflected?" And Kumoinokari: "We see the image no more. How is it that These pools among the rocks yet seem so happy?" Having heard that the garden was in its autumn glory, To no Chujo stopped by on his way from court. <Wisteria Leaves> P534-29 Since the colors were at their best and it promised to be a grand occasion, the Suzaku emperor accepted the invitation of his brother, the present emperor, to join him. It was a most extraordinary event, the talk of the whole court. <Wisteria Leaves> P535-02 The autumn leaves were splendid, especially in Akikonomu's southwest garden. Walls had been taken dawn and gates opened, and not so much as an autumn mist was permitted to obstruct the royal view. <Wisteria Leaves> P535-17 It was as always the excursion to the Suzaku Palace so many years before that people remembered. <Wisteria Leaves> P536-16 The evening breeze had scattered leaves of various tints to make the ground a brocade as rich and delicate as the brocades along the galleries. The dancers were young boys from the best families, prettily dressed in coronets and the usual gray-blues and roses, with crimsons and lavenders showing at their sleeves. They danced very briefly and withdrew under the autumn trees, and the guests regretted the approach of sunset. <Wisteria Leaves> P536-27 "This aged peasant has known many autumn showers And not before seen finer autumn colors." <New Herbs T> P565-42 The temple was a large one and the congregation was enormous and included most of the highest officials, in part, perhaps, because the fields and moors were at their autumn best. <New Herbs U> P566-31 There were dances which one is not often privileged to see, "Myriad Years" and "The Royal Deer" and, as sunset neared, the Korean dragon dance, to flute and drum. Yugiri and Kashiwagi went out to dance the closing steps. The image of the two of them under the autumn leaves seemed to linger on long afterwards. <New herbs U> P594-02 It was late in the Tenth Month. The vines on the shrine fence were red and there were red leaves beneath the pine trees as well, so that the services of the wind were not needed to tell of the advent of autumn. <The Lady at the Bridge> P776-43 The freshness of the cherry blossoms in spring, the tints of the autumn leaves, had been a consolation in loneliness while he had had his wife with him. Now the beauties of the passing seasons only made him lonelier. It became his compelling duty to see that the chapel properly appointed, and he spent his days and nights in religious observances. <Beneath the Oak> P806-09 Kaoru thought of his friend Niou and the rapidity with which he had been drawn to the princesses. Why must he himself be so different? Their father had as good as offered them to him; and why did he not rush forward to claim them? It was not as if he found the thought of having one of them for his wife quite out of the question. That they were ladies of discernment and sensibility they had shown well enough in tests such as this evening's, and in exchanges having to do with the flowers of spring and the leaves of autumn and other such matters. In a sense, indeed, he thought of them as already in his possession. It would be a cruel wrench if fate should give them to others. <Beneath the Oak> P806-22 Niou was hoping that the autumn leaves might be his excuse for another visit to Uji. He continued to write to the princesses. <Trefoil Knots> P836-13 As if he not know the season, he had attached a leafy branch only one sprig of which had turned crimson. Folded in an envelope, the note was quiet and laconic, and showed little trace of resentment. "My Mountain ladies have dyed it colors twain. And which of the twain, please tell me, is the deeper?" He apparently meant to pretend that nothing of moment had occurred. Uncertainly as her once more. <Trefoil Knots> P851-08 From early in the Tenth Month he began letting fall remarks about the fish weirs at Uji and how they would be at their most interesting, and how Niou owed himself a look at the autumn leaves. <Trefoil Knots> P851-20 They changed the blinds and dusted the rooms, and cleared away a few of the leaves that had collected among the rocks, and grasses from the brook. <Trefoil Knots> P851-38 Maple branches in their caps, some only tinged with autumn red andsome quite saturated, several of Niou's men played "The Wise Man of the Sea." Only one member of the party was less than satisfied: Niou himself. His heart like "the sea of Omi," he was in a frenzy of longing as he thought of his princess on the far bank and the disquiet that must be hers. <Trefoil Knots> P854-12 "With flowers that fade, with leaves that turn, they speak Most surely of a world where all is fleeting." <Trefoil Knots> P854-15 "Regretfully, we leave the autumn groves Whence autumn, unobserved, has slipped away." <The Ivy> P889-25 Never having disliked Rokunokimi, Niou did not want to answer in a way that seemed to slam all the doors; but the prospect of being imprisoned in that excessively decorous household, of forgoing the freedom that was now his, made the proposed match seem unbearably drab. He could not, all the same, deny that his mother's remarks were very sensible, most particularly those about the folly of alienating important people who wished to become one's in-laws. He was caught in a dilemma. And then too there was his tendency to spread his affections generously, and the fact that he still had not found it possible to forget Kobai's stepdaughter. As the seasons presented occasions, the flowers of spring and the autumn leaves, he still sent her letters, and he would have had to include both of them, Rokunokimi and Kobai's daughter, on list of those whom he found not uninteresting. <The Ivy> P919-36 She also talked at great length of Oigimi: of her nature and conduct over the years, of remarks she had made on this and that occasion, of the fugitive poems she had composed when the cherries were in bloom or the autumn leaves at their best. The old woman expressed herself well, though her voice wavered from time to time. Kaoru was deeply moved. There had been something mutely childlike about Oigimi, but she had been a lady of sensibility all the same. <The Eastern Cottage> P963-21 Many weeks had passed since his last visit. The autumn leaves were at their best. <The Eastern Cottage> P964-37 He broke off some flowers from under the trees and some autumn branches, which he took to his wife, the Second Princess. <The Eastern Cottage> P971-07 Sprigs of ivy and maple had been laid out tastefully on the box, and on the paper beneath (one may imagine that he was hungry) he caught a glimpse, in the bright moonlight. <The Drake Fly> P1036-40 The weather being somewhat cooler, the empress thought of removing to the palace. But her younger women objected. "This is the place for autumn colors. Do let us stay and see them." They were all of them gathered at Rokujo. <At Writing Practice> P1073-14 He had come with further complaints, now useless, of course, but the autumn leaves, just at a their best, more richly tinted here at Ono than elsewhere along the range, made him forget them for a time. <At Writing Practice> P1073-19 "I had a bit of spare time, and it seemed meant for your autumn colors." |