2

Prince Hotaru came calling on the tenth of the Second Month. A gentle rain was falling and the rose plum near the veranda was in full and fragant bloom. The ceremonies were to be the next day. Very close since boyhood, the brothers were admiring the blossoms when a note came attached to a plum branch from which most of the blossoms had fallen. It was from Princess Asagao, said the messenger. Prince Hotaru was very curious, having heard rumors.

“I made certain highly personal requests of her,” said Genji, smiling and putting the letter away. “I am sure that as always she has complied with earnest efficiency.”

The princess had sent perfumes kneaded into rather large balls in two jars, indigo and white, the former decorated with a pine branch and the latter a branch of plum. Though the cords and knots were conventional, one immediately detected the hand of a lady of taste. Inspecting the gifts and finding them admirable, the prince came upon a poem in faint ink which he softly read over to himself.

“Its blossoms fallen, the plum is of no further use.

Let its fragrance sink into the sleeves of another.”

Yu~giri had wine brought for the messenger and gave him a set of lady's robes, among them a Chinese red lined with purple.

Genji's reply, tied to a spray of rose plum, was on red paper.

“And what have you said to her?” asked the prince. “Must you be so

“I would not dream of having secrets from you.”

This, it would seem, is the poem which he jotted down and handed to his brother:

“The perfume must be hidden lest people talk,

But I cannot take my eye from so lovely a blossom.”

“This grand to-do may strike you as frivolous,” said Genji, “but a man does go to very great troubles when he has only one daughter. She is a homely little thing whom I would not wish strangers to see, and so I am keeping it in the family by asking the empress to officiate. The empress is a lady of very exacting standards, and even though I think of her as one of the family I would not want the smallest detail to be wrong.”

“What better model could a child have than an empress?”

The time had come to review the perfumes.

“It should be on a rainy evening,” said Genji. “And you shall judge them. Who if not you?” *

He had censers brought in. A most marvelous display was ranged before the prince, for the ladies were determined that their manufactures be presented to the very best advantage.

“I am hardly the one who knows,” said the prince.

He went over them very carefully, finding this and that delicate flaw, for the finest perfumes are sometimes just a shade too insistent or too bland.

Genji sent for the two perfumes of his own compounding. It being in the old court tradition to bury perfumes beside the guardsmen's stream, he had buried them near the stream that flowed between the main hall and the west wing. He dispatched Koremitsu's son, now a councillor, to dig them up. Yu~giri brought them in.

“You have assigned me a most difficult task,” said the prince. “I fear that my judgment may be a bit smoky.”

The same tradition had in several fashions made its way down to the several contestants. Each had added ingeniously original touches. The prince was faced with many interesting and delicate problems.

Despite Asagao's self-deprecatory poem, her “dark” winter incense was judged the best, somehow gentler and yet deeper than the others. The prince decided that among the autumn scents, the “chamberlain's perfumes,” as they are called, Genji's had an intimacy which however did not insist upon itself. Of Murasaki's three, the plum or spring perfume was especially bright and original, with a tartness that was rather daring.

“Nothing goes better with a spring breeze than a plum blossom,” said the prince.

Observing the competition from her summer quarter, the lady of the orange blossoms was characteristically reticent, as inconspicuous as a wisp of smoke from a censer. She finally submitted a single perfume, a summer lotus-leaf blend with a pungency that was gentle but firm. In the winter quarter the Akashi lady had as little confidence that she could hold her own in such competition. She finally submitted a “hundred pace” * sachet from an adaptation of Minamoto Kintada's+ formula by the earlier Suzaku emperor,# of very great delicacy and refinement.

The prince announced that each of the perfumes was obviously the result of careful thought and that each had much to recommend it.

“A harmless sort of conclusion,” said Genji.