The Wooing of Wistaria

“Will you deign to inform me whether you condescended so far as to answer the love-letters of this young man, for I have no doubt he favored you with many?”

“All night long,” said Wistaria, “I have kept a vigil. I have thought and thought and thought, until my brain has seemed ready to burst. I, too, my lady, have yielded myself to...

“As I have said,” repeated Genji, “it was neither for love of thy lord nor his cause that I entered his service, but because I desired to be near to, and to serve with my life,...

At this time of the year, alas! there was neither snow nor moon nor flowers to serve a pretext. A series of heavy rainfalls, most distressing and persistent, was the only fugiti...

“The history,” continued the young man, with vehement bitterness, “was purged repeatedly by the Yedo censor of the Shogun. It dared to speak the truth to the people. I do assure...

But the lotus with the dew in its cups smiled but to weep. She threw herself down by the water’s edge, and swept with her hand the lotus back from the surface of the water. The...

Wistaria sat very still now. Ever since Genji had come upon her that first day with the wounded Prince in her arms Wistaria had been a prey to the utmost despair and anguish. Th...

They had reached a beautiful and tranquil hill. At the top, above the pines and cedars enclosing it in nature’s own sacred wall, the amber peaks of a celestial temple, with its...

“My lord,” said Keiki, stopping suddenly in his walk, “your suggestion gives me much pain, because I am unable to grant your request. It is quite impossible. This is not the pla...

“My lord,” wrote Jiro, “your honorable family, together with the two cadet families of Nagate and Suwo, has been stripped of all its titles. An order has been issued for every l...

From this house the movements and plans, the thoughts even, of the shogunate government in its own Yedo capital were observed and reported to those seeking the return of rightfu...

Consequently the two neighboring clans, while displaying extravagant courtesy towards each other in public, were in reality unfriendly. Only during that portion of the year when...

The buildings within, set in their gardens and pleasure grounds, had in their roof lines the appearance of the gates. They were of two or three stories, over each of which a gab...

The guard indicated the house in which the Lord Catzu had temporarily taken up his residence. Without further challenge, the two reached the door of Catzu’s private apartment. T...

Again there was a sound of running feet. Suddenly a boyish figure leaped into the group of men and sprang upon the belfry platform. A quick hand drew back the swinging hammer to...

ALL through the night, while Mori and other Imperialists looked interrogatively to the forces within and without the country, and while the dreaded foreigners kept careful watch...

Every eye in the assembly, foreign and Japanese, turned upon the slight, quivering figure there by the breeze-swept opening. The Lord of Catzu, still upon his feet, stood like a...

E-text prepared by Mary Glenn Krause, amsibert, Barry Abrahamsen, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available b...

“Toro, my comrade and friend,” he said, gravely, “I do assure you that you will not need that order. The heart of the lady is yours. Only her coquetry holds out, and finding in...