strongly individualistic character typical of most writers, and that rather than putting a premium on her own style, she was by nature a researcher who attached greatest importance to the accuracy of her descriptions.
And then, too, in one respect A Tale of Flowering Fortunes is also a genealogy—a eulogistic hymn, as it were—of the Fujiwara family, written with the purpose of giving greater glory to the life of the regent Michinaga. It therefore shows a strong tendency to look with indifference on those who opposed Michi-12 c A Tale of False Fortunes naga and, of course, to omit descriptions that otherwise ought to have been recorded. Just by comparing it with a historical romance like The Great Mirror, whose author is thought to have been a man, the extent to which Akazome views things from the position of Michinaga becomes evident. In her writing, the closer the narrative comes to Michinaga’s age, the more it loses its comprehensive historical view.
Perhaps the author of A Tale of False Fortunes had these same impressions upon reading A Tale of Flowering Fortunes. Aided perhaps by a knowledge of the history of the Monarchical Age and by something of a chivalrous spirit in siding with those who suffered defeats and setbacks, the author of False Fortunes must have intended to show the other side of things, borrowing passages here and there from the earlier work.
That my inference is not merely arbitrary is born out by the fact that the content of A Tale of False Fortunes is quite different in tone from the eulogistic hymn to the regent’s family. False Fortunes attempts instead to portray by contrast the victor’s tyranny hidden behind his prosperity and the sudden misfortunes and ruin of those who attempted to resist that tyranny.
The story was written either in the Kamakura period—not long after the Monarchical Age—or in the Tokugawa period by a writer of the pseudoclassicist school. I am certain that the manuscript I saw was not so very old, but I am unable to determine for sure whether or not it was the original copy. The date of this story’s composition thus remains vague. If, based on this description, the original copy of A Tale of False Fortunes should turn up somewhere, there could be nothing more gratifying. But barring that possibility—and considering that my life is half over and that my memory is rapidly deteriorating—there may be some value in my recording for posterity the contents of A Tale of False Fortunes, a work no one but myself seems to have read and that I have committed to fairly accurate memory. I shall fill in gaps by referring to A Tale of Flowering Fortunes and other documents.
Of course, if by chance the real Tale of False Fortunes should show up somewhere, a close comparison will no doubt reveal many errors in what I write here. After the passage of nearly Prologue c 13
forty years, the things I read in books as a child or saw in plays blend with the gamut of emotions experienced in real life and are woven together into a single entity within me that is difficult to separate from reality, and that takes on an elusive life of its own.
However, my decision to call up this story from memory and to reconstruct it with the aid of early histories owes to a fortu-itous meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, on a recent trip abroad.
I learned that Dr. Chamberlain had spent his later years in seclusion there.
The source of this information was a young man, proficient in English, who worked in a watch shop on a main road near Lake Leman. Because of the kimono I was wearing at the time, he perceived immediately that I was Japanese and made some amiable conversation after the sale. He mentioned the name of Dr. Chamberlain, who had been laid to rest there over twenty years ago. Of course, the shop clerk had not known the professor personally, but said that his mother had gone to assist with housekeeping at the professor’s residence and had received such things as a Japanese cloth