Scholars have traced the phenomenon of spirit possession from sources as varied as the Old and New Testaments of the Bible to modern Haitian voodoo rituals to the Sunuwar Shamans of Sabra in Eastern Nepal.

Mathew V. Spano for Dr. Janet Walker: Rutgers University Comparative Literature

Scholars have traced the phenomenon of spirit possession from sources as varied as the Old and New Testaments of the Bible to modern Haitian voodoo rituals to the Sunuwar Shamans of Sabra in Eastern Nepal. Shamanism may in fact be responsible for the long history of spirit possession in cultures throughout the world; however, contrary to the shaman's "call" and eventual reliance on contact with the spirit world to work his magic, spirit possession typically involves unwilling participants who have difficulty assimilating the experience into their everyday lives. Moreover, the "possession" may have a number of sources. While various deities and demons comprise the most popular sources, the spirits of the dead, deceased or dying ancestors, animals, and even living individuals have been described entering and displacing the subject's identity; hence, T.K. Oesterreich's definition seems the most accurate: "[the] most striking characteristic is that the patient's organism appears to be invaded by a new personality" (emphasis added 17). This definition also seems to encompass the beliefs in spirit possession in Heian Japan which "grew into a morbid fear of evil and vindictive spirits" (Nakamura 82) and which were used to various ends. Tales of spirit possession from this period and culture may be found in the earliest collection of Buddhist Tales in Japan, The Nihon ryoiki of the Monk Kyokai from the late eighth century. Kyokai seems to have integrated these tales of spirit possession into a religious framework by using them didactically to support Buddhist morals and doctrine. For example, in one tale a rebellious Prince Nagaya commits suicide before Emperor Shomu's assassins can reach him, but the emperor has his bones buried in a distant province where plague breaks out as a result of the dead man's angry spirit. To satisfy the spirit, the emperor has the bones exhumed and buried again nearer the capital (Nakamura 159). Here, spirit possession is used in a moral sense, to support Buddhist beliefs in proper burial and karmic retribution. Murasaki Shikibu, writing her Tale of Genji nearly two hundred years after Kyokai, used the spirit possession motif to more sophisticated and literary ends, as a device to develop the complex psychological relationships between her characters. But while numerous scholars have identified lady Rokujo's jealous rage as the motivating force behind the spirit possessions in Genji (Bargen "Spirit" 99), few if any have considered Genji's undeveloped eros, which results in the projection of unconscious guilt, as an equally viable and possibly related source of these possessions, a source which may shed light on the psychological nexus of four of Genji's principle ladies: Yugao, Rokujo, Aoi, and Murasaki.

The psychology of the Heian court seems to have been best observed and captured by the court's female authors who captured the subtle, emotional consequences of court policy. Murasaki Shikibu illustrates this point in Genji. Rather than overtly explore the political and legal issues and debates of the court, she "gives us the emotional temperature of the milieu of the times, concentrating on the ties between men and women as they span the generations" (Rimer 37). As a member of the Heian court and as a sister in this distinctly feminine literary community, Murasaki Shikibu used her skills to articulate the shadow-side of the Heian patriarchy in an accepted feminine discourse:

The hiragana syllabic system functioned as a "private," or supplementary, mode of social communication and artistic expression in contrast to kambun, which signified the hegemonic discourse of "public" (i.e., governmental, legal, ritual, historical, and other) constructs. As hiragana became legitimized as a feminine mode, it maintained a contingent and potentially subversive aspect...The Genji text, accordingly, is marked by a stance that attends to the "underside" (ura) of life...(Okada 160)

Although Lady Murasaki questions several aspects of the Heian court, she seems to have captured the turbulent emotional "underside" of one legal and culturally accepted practice in particular, namely polygyny. Genji, the ideal courtier, carries on numerous affairs throughout the tale, and because of his sentimental character and "introspective sensibilities" he does manage to remain friendly with almost all of his ladies and provide them with "some degree of constancy" (Rimer 38).

Nevertheless, despite the fact that the Heian court culture recognized polygyny legally, even a casual perusal of the tales and diaries of Heian female authors reveals a strong undercurrent of dissatisfaction. In Genji, one finds evidence not only of dissatisfaction, but of a competing monogamous ideal, implied in romance tales like those read by Tamakazura and Murasaki. Murasaki, having survived years of Genji's philandering only to face a new threat in the Third Princess, reads romance tales to soothe her heartache, tales where "it seemed to be the rule that in the end the man settled down with one woman" (609). The cumulative emotional toll at having been continually disappointed in this ideal must certainly have led some Heian women to become overwhelmed by violent emotions or suffer nervous breakdowns, like women in other polygynous cultures: "Thus...the mainly female authors of Heian tales and diaries voice complaints that are universal to polygynous societies, namely, that competing wives, concubines, and mistresses become the agents or victims of jealousy" (Bargen "Yugao" 17). Adopting this anthropological critical perspective, Doris Bargen argues that women in such societies and in Genji in particular find expression for this jealous rage in spirit possession through what I.M. Lewis has termed the "oblique aggressive strategy" (Bargen "Yugao" 17). Particularly in Heian society, she adds, which "prided itself on its refined esthetics and an exquisite code of manners in harmony with the society's hierarchical structure," women could not easily vent violent emotions, such as the jealousy, anger, or frustration that arose at being unable to procure the husband's undivided devotion; hence, such emotions "must be repressed or find their own culturally accepted idiom" and women had little recourse than to rely on spirit possession as "[their] most dramatic strategy" (Bargen 17).

In the case of Genji's first spirit possession, that of Yugao, however, this anthropological explanation seems to fall short. First, though I.M. Lewis emphasizes the parallel development of the "oblique aggressive strategy" in many polygynous cultures, cites the appearance of this strategy in ancient Japan, and even includes a passing reference to Genji, his theory is, for the most part, based on the study of Somali and Ethiopian cultures. The Somali sar possession, to which Lewis specifically devotes much of his study, typically results in the husband capitulating to his wife's demands, an argument, or divorce (77). In fact, in a recent compilation of culture bound syndromes, the American Psychological Association has concluded that sar or zar is "not considered pathological" (Goleman C3). Yet Yugao's possession ends in death. Furthermore, in Yugao's case jealousy cannot be the source of the possession, as Doris Bargen astutely points out: "...for Genji's other women to have been jealous of the new mistress required their knowledge of her existence. Since the affair had been kept a secret, none of them knew of the new affair and each of them had reason to attribute Genji's neglect to attentions paid to one of the others rather than to the unknown Yugao" (Bargen 20). Bargen's alternative interpretation of Yugao's spirit possession as a "self-destructive protest" at finding herself "the object of an implicit rivalry between Genji and To no Chujo" and of Genji's dream woman as a function of Genji's repressed guilt at having coveted his best friend's love (19) also leaves one with unanswered questions. In Yugao's case, To no Chujo is no longer an interested suitor; after years of his neglecting her, she finally leaves him. When Genji happens upon her, he does stop to contemplate her history, to speculate if she is in fact To no Chujo's lost lover:

He thought again of To no Chujo's "wild carnation," of the equable nature his friend had described that rainy night. Fearing that it would be useless, he did not try very hard to question her. She did not seem likely to indulge in dramatics and suddenly run off and hide herself, and so the fault must have been To no Chujo's. Genji himself would not be guilty of such negligence—though it did occur to him that a bit of infidelity might make her more interesting. (67)

Rather than worry about betraying his friend by carrying out an affair with his lover, however, Genji seems to relish the notion of her possible infidelity. Here, he concerns himself chiefly with the girl's qualities as a lover and whether she will live up to To no Chujo's account. Instead of worrying about his friend's feelings, he criticizes that friend's foolishness at letting her slip away. Genji seems to understand his friendship with To no Chujo well enough to dismiss any notions of betrayal. Even when he and To no Chujo have focused on the same woman, as in the case of Naishi, the resulting competition is taken lightly, filled with good natured pranks. Only much later in the tale does their rivalry become more intense, and then the competition is political, not romantic, with each man jockeying his offspring into positions of greatest political influence. Hence, the intense psychological conflict between To no Chujo and Genji, given by Bargen as the primary source of Genji's dream woman and Yugao's subsequent spirit possession, is suspect.

Genji's dream woman in the Yugao episode, then, would not necessarily be a distraction away from his repressed guilt at having coveted his best friend's love. Indeed, if this were the case, Genji would probably have given the dream woman a specific identity, perhaps the Rokujo lady who is on his mind immediately prior to the possession. Blaming Rokujo would give him a neatly wrapped explanation for Yugao's spirit possession. But, as Bargen astutely notes, though critics have identified the dream lady as Rokujo, Genji never makes that specific identification and sees the woman as more of a "collective image" (Bargen 22). It is perhaps significant that Genji's dream woman has no specific identity, that she is simply described as "an exceedingly beautiful woman," and that she voices a complaint which could just as easily come from the mouths of several of Genji's women, past, present, and future: "'You do not even think of visiting me, when you are so much on my mind. Instead you go running off with someone who has nothing to recommend her, and raise a great stir over her. It is cruel, intolerable'" (71). The dream woman criticizes not only Genji's lack of fidelity, but his lack of sensitivity to those women he has forgotten in the frenzy of new passion; specifically, she criticizes his lack of understanding and relatedness, his inability to connect to and sympathize with the sufferings of his women—the cruelty which results from undeveloped eros. Consequently, her actions, revolting as they are, may also be meant to force Genji to develop this eros, to suffer along with his women by experiencing the loss of a lover—something Genji's women experience every time he leaves them or finds a new prize; in effect, she gives Genji a dose of his own medicine by taking the life of his most recent fixation: Yugao.

Also adding to the psychological drama is Murasaki Shikibu's imagery and setting. The episode occurs in an abandoned cottage far removed from the city and civilization, a place in the unconscious far from rational thought, abandoned and untended to for too long: "Added to grief at the loss of the girl was horror, quite beyond describing, at this desolate place" (72). Out of this hinterland of the unconscious comes Genji's beautiful but deadly dream woman who first possesses Genji before seizing Yugao: "He awoke, feeling as if he were in the power of some malign being. The light had gone out. In great alarm, he pulled his sword to his pillow..." (71). The imagery again is noteworthy here; the light of rational, conscious thought has failed and gone out, and Genji draws his sword, possibly signifying his desperate clinging to the rational mind to discriminate reality from illusion in this jumbled experience. He doesn't realize, of course, that the danger to be dealt with and sorted out lies within, not without. As Richard Bowring suggests, Genji seems to "trigger" the spirits reaction: "In a sense he unwittingly calls her up" (Bowring 29).

At best, though, Genji can only catch brief glimpses of an apparition that appears external, but which is actually an internal projection:

In the torchlight he had a fleeting glimpse of a figure by the girl's pillow. It was the woman in his dream. It faded away like an apparition in an old romance. In all the fright and horror, his confused thoughts centered upon the girl. There was no room for thoughts of himself. (72)

Genji's association of the apparition with romance again suggests an undeveloped side of his character, for Heian romance was a typically feminine genre which dealt more with the psychological and emotional side of the culture as opposed to the male genres which dealt with political and historical issues, a point Genji will himself make in his later literary argument with Tamakazura, Yugao's daughter, in which he criticizes romance. In his own mind, Genji is acting heroically here, focusing all his concerns on the girl and away from himself; ironically, however, it is this lack of self reflection in his relation to women that may be responsible for the whole episode in the first place. Taken as a whole, the scene seems to suggest that this collective dream woman who first possesses Genji, then seizes and murders Yugao arises from his own unconscious—perhaps an inner figure which, after being denied, now demands recognition not only for itself, but for Genji's greater development.

To further explain the origins of such a dream figure, it might be useful at this point to turn to C.G. Jung's theory of the anima, the personification of female psychological drives within the male:

For Jung, the anima also contains eros, "the function of relationship," but an undeveloped, unrealistic, and strangely unrelated kind of eros: "a certain inferior kind of relatedness to the surroundings and particularly to women, which is kept carefully concealed from others as well as from oneself." It is this unintegrated eros of the anima that accounts for the unrelated quality of the romantic intensity of men who are—or think they are—in love, or the unrealistic sentimentality that possesses them when they believe their lives are fatally and inextricably intertwined with those of others...For a man who is unaware of his feminine side, the anima can easily play the negative role of archetypal temptress and deceiver—a Lorelai, a Belle Dame Sans Merci, a Calypso—subtly luring him into confusion and despair. (Walker 47)

Furthermore, the negative anima often manifests in the form of "a beautiful creature who has weapons hidden in her body or a secret poison with which she kills her lovers during their first night together" (von Franz 190). While the mysterious dream woman, leveling accusations and causing the death of Genji's lover, would certainly qualify as a kind of femme fatale or incarnation of the negative anima, Genji also seems to project the anima in her romantic aspect in his obsession with Yugao and his inability to sort out his thoughts and emotions:

In affairs of this sort, which can muddle the senses of the most serious and honest of men, he had always kept himself under tight control and avoided any occasion for censure. Now, to a most astonishing degree, he would be asking himself as he returned in the morning from a visit how he could wait through the day for the next. And then he would rebuke himself. It was madness, it was not an affair he should let disturb him. She was of an extraordinarily gentle and quiet nature. Though there was a certain vagueness about her, and indeed an almost childlike quality, it was clear she knew something about men. She did not appear to be of very good family. What was there about her, he asked himself over and over again, that so drew him to her? (65)

Genji's sudden obsessive and fatalistic vision of Yugao and his dramatic actions toward her (i.e. wearing a disguise and whisking her off to a remote and deserted cottage) indicate his lack of self control and submission to impulse, signs of the constellated anima. It also becomes clear that Genji is detached from the real woman behind the projected illusion. By insisting on keeping his true identity from Yugao, he is unaware that, as Ukon later reveals to him (78), he has insulted her and rejected any true degree of relationship. While revealing his identity might have made him more susceptible to public scrutiny and scorn, it may have also enabled him to reveal some degree of vulnerability, thereby allowing for truer intimacy with Yugao. His unrealistic and fatalistic vision of Yugao continues in his reflections upon her death: "What legacy from a former life could have brought him to this mortal peril? He was being punished for a guilty love, his fault and no one else's, and his story would be remembered in infamy through all the ages to come" (73). Completely blinded by the fantastic visions and events that have occurred, Genji even overlooks Yugao, the woman, in preparing the funeral arrangements. Korimetsu must order the carriage, wrap the body, and lift it into the carriage, and Genji never even completes the last rights. As a kind of final denial of Yugao's humanity, an anonymous and "strange, bedraggled sort of funeral procession" is hastily thrown together (74).

But how does one explain the death itself? From To no Chujo's first mention of her, Yugao has been noted for her passivity: "She did not seem to feel the resentment a man expects from a woman he visits so seldom. She waited quietly, morning and night" (33). Interestingly, To no Chujo also finds her dependence and lack of family connections and support attractive: "There was something very appealing about her (she was an orphan), letting me know that I was all she had" (33). Genji also finds Yugao's docile nature and malleability her most attractive quality: "She seemed such a pliant little creature, likely to submit absolutely to the most outrageous demands...She was a placid sort, however, and she seemed to take nothing, painful or unpleasant, to seriously..." (67). Yugao, then, would seem to be the perfect receptacle for the Heian male's anima projection—someone to bear his unconscious guilt which arises not from his coveting a friend's beloved, but from his undeveloped relationship function or eros: the underside to his legal polygyny. If Genji harbors repressed feelings of betrayal for To no Chujo, how much deeper must his unconscious feelings of betrayal run for Yugao and the Heian women he has taken for granted? Yugao must bear these destructive emotions for Genji and this coupled with her refusal or inability to articulate any objection may ultimately be too much to bear.

Not all of Genji's ladies bear these emotions so passively. Most notably, Rokujo demonstrates a rebellious response to Genji's lack of devotion. Angry, aggressive, passionate, jealous, and most significantly outspoken and articulate, Rokujo will not be the silent vehicle for Genji's unconscious guilt. Though it is never stated explicitly, the text seems to imply that "this lady, eight years his senior, was his first woman" (Bargen "Spirit" 104) which may account for the influence she exerts over his subsequent relationships. According to Jung, the "image of the anima is formed out of impressions of significant members of the female sex in man's life..." (Walker 51); hence, it is possible the young Genji's affair with Rokujo constellates his first anima experience. Jung further theorized that "Only as a man grows more mature psychologically does his image of the anima become represented as a single figure" (Walker 48). Genji seems to illustrate this development. In the Yugao episode, his thoughts of Rokujo seem to lead into the appearance of the dream woman, and he loosely associates the two figures, two images of the negative anima: "...he thought of the turmoil the Rokujo lady was certain to be in...It was that sad lady to whom his thoughts first turned...so impossibly forceful in her demands. How he wished he might in some measure have his freedom. It was past midnight. He had been asleep for a time when an exceedingly beautiful woman appeared by his pillow" (71). In the tale's remaining cases of spirit possession, Genji matures and consolidates the identities of the malign dream lady and Lady Rokujo, consistently recognizing the malignant possessing spirit as Rokujo's. Similarly, Jung observed that the negative anima, "like a jealous mistress...may pull [the subject] away from all relationships with the opposite sex ..." (Walker 50). As a result, every lover becomes a sacrifice to "the embodiment of this omnipresent and ageless image" (Jung 150). In effect, Rokujo receives the full projection of Genji's negative anima.

But why should Rokujo, of all Genji's ladies, receive such a projection? What is it about her that troubles Genji so deeply that she becomes the personification of his undeveloped eros? The answer could lie in her aggressive response to his inability to empathize with her suffering. She corresponds outwardly to the kind of internal critical figure Genji has encountered in the dream lady, a representation of his undeveloped eros which demands to be recognized and attended to. Nowhere does Rokujo make Genji more aware of his inferior and cruel relationship to women than in the carriage conflict. As the royal procession passes the throng of carriages at the Kamo festival, Genji is heedless of his ladies' emotions and is insensitive to the significance of his gestures (or lack thereof):

...he passed without stopping his horse or looking her way; and the unhappiness was greater than if she had stayed at home. Genji seemed indifferent to all the grandly decorated carriages and all the gay sleeves, such a flood of them that it was as if ladies were stacked in layers behind the carriage curtains. Now and again, however, he would have a smile and a glance for a carriage he recognized. His face was solemn and respectful as he passed his wife's carriage. His men bowed deeply, and the Rokujo lady was in misery. She had been utterly defeated. (161)

Rokujo seems to continually hope against hope that Genji's feelings for her will rekindle, but here again Genji does not act from the heart. Instead, he seems only interested in keeping up appearances at this official gathering by recognizing Aoi, his legal wife and now soon-to-be mother of his child; in short, he meets his official responsibilities by making "a public demonstration of his loyalty and respect" (Bargen "Spirit" 100). Genji again displays his infantile eros by "missing his chance," for the procession provides him with an opportunity to reach out to Rokujo, if not to signify his love, then certainly to show her his compassion. The point is not only that Genji chooses to recognize Aoi over Rokujo, for truly he may not have even seen Rokujo jostled behind the crowd as she was, but that it does not occur to him to look for and acknowledge her in the first place.

Tending her wounds while also trying once again to draw his affections, she moves away from her daughter to practice Buddhist rites. The move makes Genji aware that he has been neglecting her: "...Genji bestirred himself to call on her...He explained his negligence in terms likely to make it seem involuntary and to bring her forgiveness, and he told her of Aoi's illness and the worry it was causing him" (166). Typically, because of his personal charm and influence, Genji can rely on half truths and excuses to get what he wants, whether it be a lady's forgiveness or her submissionl, and with his other ladies this typically goes unchallenged: "Such misdemeanors [are] easy to forgive when the culprit [is] so uniquely handsome" (120). Yugao, for example, is hurt by Genji's excuses for concealing his identity: "I hid my name from you because I thought it altogether unkind of you to be keeping your name from me" (70). Nevertheless, she does not confront him with her pain nor venture beyond guessing games, content to keep her own identity and past anonymous. Aoi also keeps her pain from Genji by retaining a cold aloofness to his affairs to maintain her pride and dignity, so much so that "he [seems] determined to anger her with his other affairs" (138). Curiously, Genji seems to almost want a confrontation, an outcry from one of his ladies, to feel their sorrow and know that he is responsible, to deepen his relatedness with them. Rokujo is the first to oblige him. Even if he interprets his visit and excuse as pity for her, she knows better and ignores the pleadings of his guilty conscience: "'It would relieve me enormously if I thought you might take a generous view of it all'...They passed a tense night" (166). When he tries again in a letter, she again rejects "the usual excuses" (167) and articulates her pain and anger in a scathing poem which aptly characterizes Genji's flaw, the shallowness of his eros:

I go down the way of love and dampen my sleeves,
And go yet further, into the muddy fields.
A pity the well is so shallow. (167)

Like a well aimed arrow, the poem finds its mark, stirring Genji to momentarily reflect on his relations to women: "It was a difficult world, which refused to give satisfaction. Among his ladies there was none who could be dismissed as completely beneath his consideration and none to whom he could give his whole love" (my emphasis, 167). Agitated by her poem, he sends an angry reply: "You only wet your sleeves—what can this mean? That your feelings are not of the deepest, I should think" (167). Ironically, he projects his own shortcoming onto her, but in doing so and betraying his anger, he reveals genuine passion.

In vocalizing her anguish directly to Genji, Rokujo is the exception among Genji's ladies. Like Yugao, Aoi also passively bears Genji's silent truth, his inability to empathize with her suffering on any deep level, and she has had to bear it for years. Their marriage arranged for and carried out before Genji was really old enough to fully understand what was happening, Genji and Aoi begin a loveless and tense marriage, remaining distant and cold to one another over the years. The marriage is marred by Genji's numerous infidelities which, as we've already seen, Aoi absorbs and represses to preserve her dignity. Doris Bargen aptly characterizes Aoi's suffering:

...it might be helpful to begin by looking closely at Genji's, Aoi's, and Rokujo's frame of mind. How do their psychological states illuminate the resultant outbreak of animosities? In the four chapters preceding the crucial "Heartvine" chapter, Aoi feels mounting resentment occasioned by rumors of her young husband's growing number of mistresses...she is convinced after more than a decade of marriage, that her status as principle wife has not been strengthened by the powers of romance. (my emphasis, Bargen "Spirit" 102)

By "winning" the carriage quarrel, she has only secured the position of Genji's principle consort in the public eye, but the supporting romantic attachment never grows, a consequence for which Aoi must bear the most responsibility (Bargen 102). Not even her pregnancy can kindle a love relationship with her husband; in fact, pregnancy strips away her only defense of proud indifference and patronizing air by making her more dependent on Genji (112). Ironically, before the carriage quarrel ever occurs, Murasaki has already won the competition for Genji's affection, so that the carriage quarrel comes to define how each of the rivals will respond to Genji's rejection. Aoi seems to passively accept that Genji will be husband in name only, and uses his acknowledgment of her official status to mask her true pain. Conversely, Rokujo resists and in doing so helps to make Genji more aware of his undeveloped eros, but at what cost? She must suffer alienation, loneliness, illness, and disgrace. This is the price of anima projection, of Genji's inability to look inside at the inner feminine figure. It is far easier for him to project blame for his shallow relationships and his ladies' suffering outward onto Rokujo. Consequently, when Aoi grows ill from her pregnancy and possibly also from the burden of their loveless marriage, Genji ascribes the cause of her spirit possession to the malign spirit of the Rokujo lady.

Critics have traditionally viewed Rokujo's jealousy as the cause of Aoi's spirit possession, and some have even suggested that this spirit possession acts as a vehicle for women to carry out revenge on Genji for his negligence. In the "revenge theory," both women "vent their repressed anger at a third party—Genji—and at the polygynous society that allows men to neglect their women with near impunity" and successfully rekindle Genji's affections while "spellbinding the entire court" (Bargen "Spirit" 101). But Aoi only temporarily captures Genji's interest, for she dies when Genji leaves her, in the midst of her illness, in a manner oddly reminiscent of Yugao, of a "strangling shortness of breath" (170). Shortly thereafter, Rokujo says her farewells and leaves for Ise with her daughter. Neither woman gains much from the spirit possession episode. If anything, it only punctuates their futility in gaining Genji's affections. Rokujo's jealousy, while a more plausible explanation for Aoi's possession, is not as cut and dry as one might suppose. While the Sanjo people do consider Rokujo's jealousy as the possible source, the exorcists, upon being presented with the theory, "gave no very informative answers" (165). Furthermore, they go so far as to speculate that "Of the spirits that did announce themselves, none seemed to feel any deep enmity toward the lady" (165). The exorcists, then, seem critical of this hypothesis, but are unable to positively identify the malign spirit. Their difficulty, perhaps, reflects the society's inability to name the silent truth—the Heian court's unconscious guilt over its polygynous system and the suffering of its women. Could this be the source of the malign spirit? Rokujo herself, when presented with the theory that her jealous spirit is making Aoi ill, seems somewhat incredulous: "Though she had felt sorry enough for herself, she had not wished ill to anyone; and might it be that the soul of one so lost in sad thoughts went wandering off by itself" (167)? Rokujo's question is a curious one, for she perceives that she too suffers, that she too is a victim, and she seems to imply that another source is responsible for her suffering and Aoi's. Throughout Aoi's spirit possession, Rokujo is also ill: "For the Rokujo lady the pain was unrelieved. She knew she could expect no lessening of his coldness...Her very soul seemed to jump wildly about, and at last she fell physically ill" (165). Overwhelmed by feelings of frustration, anger, loneliness, and severe depression, Rokujo also experiences a spirit possession of sorts. Perhaps her suffering stems from the fact that she is being used as a vehicle for Genji's guilt, that in being seen as the cause of the possession, she is being forced to carry the projection of Genji's projected anima—a scapegoat for the unconscious guilt of a polygynous society. She is plagued repeatedly by the same nightmare where "in the beautifully appointed apartments of a lady who seemed to be a rival she would push and shake the lady, and flail at her blindly and savagely" (167). In her characterization of the dream, Rokujo again appears to sense an alternative source for both her and Aoi's suffering. The dream woman "seems" to be a rival, but that rivalry is questionable; furthermore, it is not even certain that the dream woman is Aoi. Like Genji's dream woman, Rokujo's is also a faceless, vague figure—not, as one might expect, a specific characterization of Aoi. Hence, while jealousy remains a viable explanation for Aoi's spirit possession, Murasaki Shikibu seems to suggest that it is not the only explanation. Perhaps the jealous rivalry of Aoi and Rokujo for Genji's affections is symptomatic of a deeper triangle in which any woman with whom Genji becomes involved, i.e. Yugao, Rokujo, Aoi, or Murasaki, struggles externally to make Genji aware of his undeveloped anima which demands recognition from within, for it is the secret aim of the anima-triangle entanglement to develop a man's eros (von Franz 191).

Throughout much of Aoi's spirit possession, Genji does feel pity for her, for though their "marriage had not been happy...his wife was important to him and now she was carrying his child" (165). Nevertheless, he struggles to truly feel her suffering, and he fails to recognize its cause: "He took her hand. "How awful. How awful for you." He could say no more...This violent weeping, he thought, would be for her parents, soon to be left behind, and perhaps, at this last leave-taking, for him too" (168). Thinking she's weeping because she's dying, Genji never considers the possibility that their loveless marriage, his treatment of her over the years and now, in her pregnancy, her dependency on him may lie behind her illness. Again, he sidesteps his guilt and responsibility. It is at this very point in his self deception that the spirit speaks to him in Rokujo's voice:

"No, no. I was hurting so, I asked them to stop for a while. I had not dreamed that I would come to you like this. It is true: a troubled soul will sometimes go wandering off." The voice was gentle and affectionate. "Bind the hem of my robe, to keep it within,/ The grieving soul that has wandered through the skies" (168).

It is important to note here that Genji is alone when he hears Rokujo's voice; it is he who interprets the voice as that of Rokujo, a voice which links the suffering of the two women, forcing Genji to confront his guilt over his treatment of both. He is "aghast," horrified, repulsed, deeply shaken, but perhaps he has broken through to the pain his ladies have been suffering and to his own role in that suffering all along. After Aoi's crisis passes and she deliver her baby, Genji decides to cease his "nocturnal wanderings" (169) and takes an almost confessional tone while speaking to the still weakened Aoi: "There are many things I would like to say to you, but you still seem very tired" (170). Furthermore, he shows signs of increased devotion and regret, doting over his wife, preparing her medicine to the surprise and admiration of the women, and "thinking it odd that he should have felt so dissatisfied with her over the years" (170). In a touching scene, Aoi responds to his new sensitivity and looks after him as he leaves, for the first and last time in the tale (170). "Shaken as never before," he seems further initiated by her death, reflecting even more on his relationships and his ladies' sufferings: "...[he] thought he knew as well as anyone ever would what unhappiness love can bring" (171). Most significantly, Genji shows a heightened awareness of his responsibility and guilt in his self-questioning:

Back at Sanjo, he was unable to sleep. He thought over their years together. Why had he so carelessly told himself that she would one day understand? Why had he allowed himself silly flirtations, the smallest of them sure to anger her? He had let her carry her hostility to the grave. The regrets were strong, but useless. (171)

The change in Genji becomes evident to those around him. To no Chujo, having observed Genji's behavior and relationships throughout the tale, notes a new depth to Genji's feeling: "Genji's grief was clearly unfeigned. Very odd, thought To no Chujo. Genji had so often been reproved by his father for not being a better husband..." (175).

Through Aoi's spirit possession, Rokujo, who serves to give voice to Genji's anima, has once again awakened him to his responsibility and to provide him this glimpse into himself. Despite trying to again transfer blame onto her, Genji also seems to sense her import and their psychological connection when reading her condolences:

The hand was more beautiful than ever. He wanted to fling the note away from him, but could not. It seemed to him altogether too disingenuous. Yet he could not bring himself to sever relations. Poor woman, she seemed marked for notoriety. No doubt Aoi had been fated to die. But anger rose again. Why had he seen and heard it all so clearly, why had it been paraded before him? Try though he might, he could not put his feelings toward the woman in order. (173)

Here, he struggles to understand the meaning of the spirit possession and implies that the experience with Rokujo's voice had been "paraded before him," that it had occurred for his benefit; perhaps he senses that she has initiated him in some way. The scent of poppy seeds in Rokujo's garments suggests it is she who is the real exorcist, receiving Genji's guilt and translating it back for him. She has been the unwilling, lonely medium for his projected anima, something she possibly intuits much later when speaking her dying words to Genji: "'I must look like a witch. There is a very strong bond between us—it must be so—that you should have come to me now. I have been able to tell you a little of what has been on my mind, and I am no longer afraid to die" (286).

This figure of the initiating female has found expressions in other tales and other cultures; most notably, one cannot help but think of another "witch" who reintroduces her male initiate to his neglected eros. According to the late Jane Harrison, a feminist scholar, historian, and mythologist, Circe was that figure for Odysseus who, returning from the Trojan War, had been in a distinctly masculine psychology throughout the campaign. In The Illiad, this male psychology viewed the female as little more than object for a sacrifice, Iphigeneia, or object among the spoils of war, Briseis. In The Odyssey, however, Circe confronts Odysseus as an equal, as intelligent, wise, and dangerous! She guides him to his underworld journey where he meets Tiresius who, as Ovid told, once separated with his staff two mating serpents and was turned into a woman for seven years whereafter, encountering two mating serpents again, repeated the actions and was turned back into a male. Hence, Odysseus is introduced to the seer who has related to the female power within. Throughout his journey home to his wife, in fact, Odysseus is further reintroduced to the various ways to relate to the female, with Calypso, the wife, Circe, the lover, and Nausicaa, the daughter respectively (cited in Campbell Masks 160). To continue this line of reasoning, one might add that Circe also makes Odysseus and his men aware of just how much they have neglected eros, their capacity for relationship, while fighting all those years in Troy, sacking villages, raping women. She turns them into swine. After completing Circe's initiation, Homer adds that Odysseus and his men are better and healthier than before they landed on her island. Without suggesting, as some have, that Murasaki Shikibu is writing a kind of Bildungsroman, one might at least acknowledge a kind of maturation on Genji's part, even if the process is never fully completed and even if it takes place within a work that is not structured in a single, unified plot. If, as Richard Bowring suggests, "at the heart of Murasaki Shikibu's narrative technique lies the interplay of repetition and substitution [and] like actions are repeated in a somewhat different guise with different actors and somewhat different results" (24), perhaps Genji spirals forward through similar relationships, each time constellating the undeveloped anima which demands recognition by projecting out onto his jealous lady, making its needs known in Rokujo's voice, articulating his undeveloped eros.

After the second spirit possession, then, Genji, through Rokujo, has at least begun to question himself and to acknowledge some of his blame in causing his ladies to suffer from neglect and in failing to properly relate to that suffering. Nevertheless, he fails to significantly alter his behavior when it comes to the one lady who means most to him, Murasaki, and he fails to appreciate just how much his behavior has hurt her. She has patiently endured his philandering and her jealousy for over twenty years, but when he pursues and marries the Third Princess, it is more than she can bear; it is possibly her death blow. None of Murasaki's other competitors possessed the rank or backing of the Third Princess. She is a significant threat, Richard Bowring explains, and Murasaki fears her: "The mere fact of the new lady's exalted rank is enough to convince Murasaki that she will be finally replaced in Genji's affections; she succumbs to jealousy, the one emotion that up till now she has managed to control successfully" (Bowring 43). Instead of objecting to Genji's behavior outright, however, she grows weak from having to withhold her jealousy and fear and carry Genji's unconscious guilt as well. Upon her thirty-seventh birthday, she is enjoying her role as "grandmother" to the royal children. Lacking strong political and family backing, she has had to accept her background role as one of Genji's ladies, albeit the one who has captured his love; hence, since she has had no children with Genji she has no way to further legitimize her relationship to him, to strengthen her social claim upon him. Her birthday starts Genji reflecting on their years together. In his view she has been very fortunate in having been spared the strains of being one of the emperor's ladies, of being "engaged in a competition that makes a terrible demand on the nerves" (607). He reminds her of how lucky she has been to have lived "the life of a cloistered maiden," a life of comfort and security (607). By misreading her situation in this way, Genji reveals just how blind he has been to the extent of Murasaki's suffering; surely his own ladies don't suffer this kind of competitiveness and stress.

Moreover, he places an added burden of guilt on her for having felt unrest and jealousy over the years instead of appreciating her good fortune: "Have you been aware, my dear, that you have been luckier than most" (607)? Of course, he does recognize the strain his ties to the Third Princess have put on her, but he does so in a superficial and manipulative way: "'I know that it has not been easy for you to have the princess move in on us all of a sudden. We sometimes do not notice the things that are nearest to us, and you may not have noticed that her presence has made me fonder of you. But you are quick to see these things, and perhaps I do you an injustice'" (607). Here, Genji reveals his unconscious guilt in his sophistry while transferring this guilt and the responsibility for these emotions completely onto Murasaki. Rather than fully confront his role in causing her suffering over their many years together, a tough pill to swallow, he projects everything onto her. Her jealousy is now her own fault for failing to notice how his polygyny has increased his love for her. But Murasaki does not accept this burden without protest. She replies with scathing irony: "'You are right, of course. I do not much matter, and it must seem to most people that I have been more fortunate than I deserve. And that my unhappiness should sometimes have seemed almost too much for me—perhaps that is the prayer that has sustained me'" (607). Ingeniously, she turns his accusations back upon him by first granting his point that people must certainly have noticed she has been given perhaps more than a girl of her backing and station deserves, but then she reminds him that people have also noticed how she has suffered and suffered more than she deserves as well. Genji either chooses not to notice her insinuation of his guilt, or he belittles it by patronizing her: "He thought her splendid" (607). Murasaki again attempts to throw off his projected, unconscious guilt by pleading with him to recognize the state she has been reduced to and grant her wish to take holy vows, but again she is forced to carry his burden: "Quite out of the question. Do you think I could go on without you?...You must see to the end how very much I have loved you"(608). Genji's comments reflect, perhaps, his wishes more than reality: though he can't go on without her, he hasn't successfully gone on with her by developing a deeply felt, exclusive love for her. In denying her request in order to force her to "recognize" his love, he is perhaps redirecting a personal wish, namely that he recognize how he has or has not loved her. Murasaki is nearly reduced to tears, for she recognizes he remains incapable of recognizing these feelings: "It was the usual thing, all over again" (608).

Nevertheless, her protest has perhaps made a more significant impact than she at first suspects. Genji, moved by her tears, attempts to redirect the conversation, yet in a near confessional tone he ends up reflecting on his treatment of his other ladies, acknowledging his role in Rokujo's suffering, but not before revealing some rather personal aspects of their relationship to Murasaki, who more than Aoi has been Rokujo's true rival for Genji's love. Genji assesses each of their respective faults in the relationship, but he speaks ill of Rokujo after she has died, shifting much of the blame onto her without fear, or so it would seem, of Rokujo's typical rebuttals: "...but she was a difficult lady too, indeed almost impossible to be with. Even when her anger seemed justified it lasted too long, and her jealousy was more than a man could be asked to endure...I thought that if I gave in she would gloat and exult" (608). It is this continued transference of blame and guilt and this failure to accept his full role in her suffering that motivates the next spirit possession. In a sense, Genji has progressed in his initiation, but not far enough.

Soon after, Genji again leaves her again to visit the Third Princess, and as is her custom, Murasaki has her women read romance stories to her to fill the emptiness she feels inside (609). As we have already mentioned, these romances seem to reflect the underside of the polygynous Heian society by portraying in their conclusions the man settling down into a monogamous relationship. Reading these stories as she does just after struggling to escape the burden of Genji's unconscious guilt and replying angrily to his insistence she shoulder the blame for her jealous feelings, Murasaki begins to compare herself to the heroines of the romances only to recognize the futility of her situation. The resulting anger and frustration begin to consume her: "Why should [she] herself live in such uncertainty? No doubt, as Genji had said, she had been unusually fortunate. But were the ache and the scarcely endurable sense of deprivation to be with her to the end" (609)? Like Yugao, she suffers an attack late at night; in Murasaki's case the malign force seems to attack her heart, to break her heart. Genji returns and tries to make sense of her illness, but instead of calling to mind their conversation before he left and her frustration he quickly blames it on fate, for he had warned her it would be a dangerous year ahead for her. As with Aoi's possession, the exorcists and soothsayers are at a loss to name her ailment which is of a "vague and generalized sort." Again, there seems to be no way for this society to articulate the suffering that is the underside of polygyny. Another similarity to Aoi's possession is Genji's response. Unconsciously, he seems to admit his guilt by now giving Murasaki "the whole of his attention" (610), acting out the monogamous relationship to compensate for his negligence and addressing the guilt underlying his philandering. Unlike Aoi, Murasaki does not respond to his devoted care; instead, she struggles even more to escape the burden he has given her by again asking his permission to take holy vows. Genji again refuses, for he must make her see "to the end" just how much he has loved her. In reality, he is again avoiding the confrontation with his guilt, for to allow her to take vows would mean admitting, on some level, that he had driven her to it, that he has been responsible for not sensing, all along, her ongoing despair and uncertainty.

When it "[does] indeed seem as if the end might be near," Genji stops seeing the Third Princess and begins to realize "just how much of the old life had depended on a single lady" (610). Now, perhaps, he begins to realize how much he has truly and deeply loved her and how much he as abused that love. Struggling again to avoid acknowledging her deep pain, Genji tries to distance himself from the inevitable: "Everything will be all right if only we manage to think so. When we take the broad, easy view, we are happy" (610). Again, this seems to be more of a wish for himself than advice to her, for he feels himself slipping into her suffering and again having to confront his guilt. He pleads to the gods, describing her virtuous nature, suggesting she has done nothing to warrant possession by the malign force, implying his own guilt for her condition. At this point the narrative shifts to Kashiwagi, possibly Murasaki Shikibu showing another manifestation of Genji's undeveloped eros, for he is unable to empathize with Kashiwagi's predicament even though Genji himself has suffered through a similar situation not only in his affair with Fujitsubo, but in his illicit affair with Oborozukiyo.

Again, as with Aoi's possession, Genji's unconscious guilt at never fully getting in touch with his ladies' suffering prompts him to leave the ill beloved he is with (here, Murasaki) to visit her rival (Third Princess) who, not surprisingly, has also become suddenly ill. In both cases, then, each lady seems to sense Genji's undeveloped eros and responds jealously by attempting to draw his empathy for her own suffering. Moreover, upon Genji's departure in each case, the first lady consequently reacts to his abandonment by dying, apparently unable to withstand this last, greatest sign of his negligence. His relationship with Murasaki, however, is also unique, for their relationship was not arranged; she has been his chosen beloved, the one he has returned to time and again throughout his various other affairs. He has raised her, taught her the arts, and continues to fall in love with her to the day she dies. Unlike Aoi's possession, Murasaki's has a false ending: she dies and miraculously comes back to life. This deviation seems to be significant to Genji's initiation since he has shown little eros development since his breakthrough to Aoi's suffering and has responded to Murasaki's illness by again running away. Perhaps Murasaki's death would not have sufficiently transformed Genji, so she must come back. Genji, at any rate, seems to imply that the malign spirit has engineered the whole mystery: "'Some evil spirit has made it seem that she is dead'"(617). Upon Murasaki's revival, the malign spirit is transferred to a medium, perhaps to ascribe meaning to the whole experience by again exposing Genji to the suffering he has caused. As with Aoi's case, Genji again confronts the medium alone, revealing the subjectivity of the experience, and again hears the voice of the Rokujo Lady:

All these prayers and chants all these months have been an unrelieved torment. I have wanted you to suffer as I have suffered...I am horribly changed, and you pretend not to know me. You are the same. Oh dreadful, dreadful...I have gone on thinking you the cruelest of men. I heard you tell your dear lady what a difficult and unpleasant person you once found me, and the resentment was worse than when you insulted me to my face and finally abandoned me...I do not hate her; but the powers have shielded you and only let me hear your voice in the distance. Now this has happened...Tell my child of my torments. Tell her that she is never to fall into rivalries with other ladies, never to be a victim of jealousy. (619)

Even more directly and clearly than in Aoi's case, the Rokujo voice assesses Genji's sin and articulates for him his own lack of relatedness. The Rokujo spirit has wanted Genji to suffer as she and several of his ladies have suffered. Again she reminds him his beloved is not the object of her anger. Not Aoi nor Murasaki, but Genji himself is her target because he has defamed her without fully appreciating his own role in her genesis and constellation and because he has denied her existence and her horrible change; in effect, he has refused to confront her. Though at times he has broken through, for the most part he has remained the same, allowing the powers of his persona as the polygynous Heian courtier to shield him from the neglected side of his personality, eros, and deeper self awareness and capacity for relationship. Finally, she reminds Genji that she, not he, has been the real victim all along and pleads with him not to allow her daughter to fall victim to the same dark, unspoken truth, male undeveloped eros resulting in the female's self-consuming jealousy. By entrusting her daughter's safety to him, she seems to want to move him from a passive to a more active awareness of women's suffering at the hands of Heian polygyny and his responsibility for that suffering. She illustrates the danger—a once refined court lady reduced to a cringing, embarrassed, tormented soul. Throughout, however, she seems to also perceive that Genji is not wholly to blame, influenced as he has been by Heian polygyny. She apologizes for what she has put him through and begs him to have pity on the creature she has become.

Genji's jarring confrontation with the spirit, as in Aoi's case, again moves him to reflect on his relationship with the dying beloved. This time, though, Murasaki lives on a while longer, giving him a chance to put these meditations into action. At first, he reacts to having to confront these sins by recoiling in disgust at the whole affair, running from the world: "The conclusion as inescapable: women were the creatures of sin. He wanted to be done with them" (620). Gradually, though, he struggles to acknowledge and assimilate his experience confronting the spirit: "There are crises that can unsettle the most superior of men. He wanted only to save her, to have her beside him, whatever the difficulties and sacrifices" (620). Genji does indeed sacrifice his possessiveness over Murasaki by allowing her to take tentative vows, signified by a token tonsure and the administering of the five injunctions (620). While far from complete, his initiation does seem to have taken him to the next level—empathy over a sort of sentimental sympathy. Murasaki appears to reflect Genji's inner transformation in her convalescence; as she recovers, her skin becomes almost "iridescent, as if a light were shining through" (621). They both sit and reflect on the passing crisis while viewing the grounds of the renovated Nijo mansion, emblematic, perhaps, of Genji getting his house in order, and the lake there carpeted with lotuses. Contemplating her illness, she is moved to compose a poem on the transience of life: "' It is a life in which we cannot be sure/ Of lasting as long as the dew upon the lotus.'" which he then turns in a poem on the beauty of that transience: "To be as close as the drops of dew on the lotus/ Must be our promise in this world and the next" (621). Genji's poem seems to reflect his new awareness of and commitment to developing his capacity for eros, "to be as close" as one can to the experiences and suffering of others. This commitment carries over to his sympathetic thoughts about Kashiwagi's illicit affair with the Third Princess: "He wondered if his own father had long ago known what was happening and said nothing. He could remember his own terror very well, and the memory told him that he was hardly the one to reprove others who strayed from the narrow path" (625).

For all this, however, Genji's initiation into eros is incomplete, for he fails to act properly on these insights. Through his "determined silence" concerning Kashiwagi's affair and his silent treatment of "terrorizing the couple with hints" (637), he drives the younger man to despair and ultimately death. Still, the progress he has made throughout cannot be denied. When Murasaki does in fact die, Genji abandons his old ways and reflects on how he treated her:

He would remember, now that romantic affairs meant so little to him, how hurt Murasaki had been by involvements of no importance at all. Why had he permitted himself even the trivial sort of dalliance for which he had felt no need to apologize? Murasaki had been too astute not to guess his real intentions; and yet, though she had been quick to recover from fits of jealousy which were never violent in any even, the fact was that she had suffered. (724)

These final realizations along with similar laments regarding his other ladies throughout the chapter entitled The Wizard, are, in a sense, Genji's triumph, for despite feeling like "a weakling," he seems to have finally gotten in touch with all the unconscious guilt and sorrow that has accrued through his relationships. Moreover, after Murasaki's death he learns to empathize with the pain his ladies have endured all along; in the words of Richard Bowring, "now circumstances essentially beyond his control bring him a deeper, more reflective, and, in the context of the tale, a more female kind of knowledge" (46).

Murasaki Shikibu, then, not only used spirit possession to deepen the characterization of her "ideal courtier," she used it as a structural device to link Genji with the nexus of four of his principle ladies in a way that reveals the underside of their complex relationships. Most importantly, perhaps, she used the idea of spirit possession to peer into the soul of her society, for through this emotionally subtle tale, she did nothing less than provide the Heian court, struggling as it was with the shadows of polygyny, with an insight which C.G. Jung would one day formulate concisely, if less poetically, namely that "Spirits are complexes of the collective unconscious which appear when the individual loses his adaptation to reality, or which seek to replace the inadequate attitude of a whole people by a new one" (qtd. in Singer 46).

Works Cited

Bargen, Doris. "Spirit Possession in the Context of Dramatic Expressions of Gender Conflict: the Aoi Episode of the Genji monogatari." Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 48.1 (1988): 95 -130.

Bargen, Doris. "Yugao: A Case of Spirit Possession in The Tale of Genji." Mosaic 19.3 (1986): 15-24.

Bowring, Richard. Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji. Cambridge, Cambridge UP.

Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology. New York: Penguin, 1964.

Campbell, Joseph, ed. The Portable Jung. New York: Penguin, 1976.

Franz, Marie-Louise von. "The Process of Individuation." Man and His Symbols. Ed. C.G. Jung. New York: Dell, 1964. 157-255.

Goleman, Daniel. "Making Room on the Couch for Culture." New York Times 5 Dec. 1995, natl. ed.: C3.

Lewis, I.M. Ecstatic Religion: An Anthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism. Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1971.

Murasaki Shikibu. The Tale of Genji. Trans. Edward G. Seidensticker. New York: Knopf, 1976.

Nakamura, Kyoko Motomochi, ed. and trans. Miraculous Stories from the Japanese Buddhist Tradition: The Nihon ryoiki of the Monk Kyokai. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1973.

Oesterreich, T.K. Possession, Demoniacal and Other. New York: University Books, 1966.

Okada, H. Richard. Figures of Resistance. Durham: Duke UP, 1991.

Rimer, J. Thomas. A Reader's Guide to Japanese Literature. Tokyo and New York: Kodansha International, 1988.

Singer, June. Boundaries of the Soul. New York: Doubleday, 1972.

Walker, Steven F. Jung and The Jungians on Myth. New York: Garland Publishing, 1995.

Copyright 1997 Mathew V. Spano. All rights reserved.

Send e-mail to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

{/viewonly}