Note 155 — Chapter VII · THE GLOW-WORM
Arthur Waley translation
Tamakatsura.
156 Tayū.
157 It is unlucky to marry in the fifth month.
158 The rare perfume which Genji wore.
159 Sochi had been addressing her through her curtains-of-state. She crept away in the darkness as an animal at the Zoo might slink into its back cage. Genji was, of course, all the time with her behind her curtains.
160 Oboye-naki ‘fame-less.’ I retain this idiom as it corresponds curiously with ours.
161 Irises were plucked on the fifth day of the fifth month.
162 Balls made of coloured stuffs, with scent-bags in the middle. Supposed to ward off disease.
163 The Lady from the Village of Falling Flowers.
164 1 p.m.
165 ‘Hitting the Ball Tune.’
166 A Korean dance.
167 The story of a misused step-child. It is no longer extant, the text which bears this name being merely a 15th-century adaptation of the Room Below Stairs.
168 A disagreeable old man to whom her step-mother tried to marry her.
169 The Mahāyāna, the later development of Buddhism which prevailed in Tibet, China and Japan.
170 Now lost.
171 See vol. ii, p. 15. Lady Até refuses suitor after suitor. Finally she marries the Crown Prince and lives happily ever after. The book seemed as old-fashioned to Murasaki as Hannah More’s novels do to us.
172 The mark of the sixth rank. Genji, it will be remembered, had refused to promote him.
173 His failure to win Tō no Chūjō’s daughter, Lady Kumoi.
174 He had hoped to get Lady Chūjō made Empress.