The Tale of Genji: 2

The pressure from the Minister of the Right's faction grows ever harsher, and Hikaru Genji feels his place at court slipping away. When he resolves of his own accord to step down from office and withdraw to the distant shore of Suma, his heart is divided between regret for those he leaves behind and the dread of an exile whose end he cannot foresee. On a desolate beach where only the sea and the wind through the pines speak, Genji passes his days as if soothing the wounds of a man unjustly punished. Yet even in that solitude, letters from the unforgettable women of the capital arrive without ceasing.

Not long after he settles at Suma, storms tear across the ocean and thunder rolls for days on end. In a strange dream the figure of his late father appears to him, and as if guided by that vision Genji is led by the lay priest of Akashi to a new shore. There he meets the lord of that coast's only daughter - proud yet bashful, the lady of Akashi. The story carries him at last back to the capital, and onward to the magnificent stage of the Rokujo estate. The new Princess Consort enters the imperial palace, the Picture Contest unfolds in splendor, Fujitsubo bears her own quiet anguish, the young Yugiri comes of age, and from far-off Tsukushi a beautiful girl named Tamakazura makes her way at last back to the city - a new generation begins to gather around the Shining Prince.

Yet shadows always trail behind such radiance. The shifting tides of politics under Emperor Suzaku, the fate that binds Genji to Fujitsubo, and the heavy secret of his own birth all weigh upon him. As he rises from the depths of exile to the heights of glory, Genji is granted strange and quiet reunions with the women he once loved - Utsusemi, Suetsumuhana, the Lady of the Bellflowers. Each of these meetings impresses upon his heart, with unmistakable weight, all the years that have passed.

Written at the dawn of the eleventh century by a lady-in-waiting known to posterity as Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji has been read for a thousand years as the world's oldest full-length psychological novel. This volume contains chapters 12 through 22 - from "Suma" to "The Jeweled Chaplet."