I’m done with a month of rereading but I’m not done with The Tale of Genji. Despite my best efforts, I’ve only finished 486 pages, which means I’m about one-third of the way through. Today, I managed to finish two chapters:

Otome – We start to see a shift away from Genji to his family. A large part of this chapter is concerned with Genji’s son (un-named in this chapter but later will be identified as Yugiri). Yugiri is in love with his cousin, but To no Chujo, Geni’s good friend and brother-in-law, does not approve. Genji is actually a pretty good father when he tries, because he decides not to promote his son too fast but make him work for it. He’s even okay with his son bearing a grudge about it because he believes Yugiri studying more would be beneficial for him. We also see some of Genji’s ladies moving into his new apartment, and it’s starting pretty well.

Tamakazura – This chapter shifts to focusing on Tamakazura, the daughter of Yugao. Yugao appeared in chapter four, and was To no Chujo’s lover until Genji stole her away and she dies during their tryst. Yugao’s daughter has been raised in the countryside of Kyushu and a chance meeting has Genji bringing her back to the capital as his daughter.

These two chapters seem to mark the start of a shift from Genji to his family members. The last part of the book is actually all about Genji’s son and nephews and it makes sense that the book starts to introduce the other characters now. Despite the myriad of supporting characters, we don’t actually get to know them in much detail. It’s all about how Genji perceives them, which is probably how we don’t know anything about To no Chujo’s wives and children until they interact with Genji’s families.

Since I’m already one-third done with this book, I plan to slowly continue reading it. At this pace, I should be done in another two months, and I plan to write a post on The Tale of Genji then. It won’t be so much of a summary as an introduction to the book with recommendations for further reading. If you have any questions, please let me know so I can answer them in that post!