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Polygamy in Japan as elsewhere was confined to the upper classes, who alone were able to support the expense of so costly an institution. The actual wife (kita no kata, 'north side') of a man in Genji's position had to be of the same social class as the husband, a condition fulfilled by Aoi, but not by Murasaki, who was never strictly speaking a kita no kata, but merely a tai no uye ('lady of the wing'). It will be remembered that Murasaki's mother was not of noble birth. Falling Flowers, Akashi and the rest were theoretically on the same footing as Murasaki. The number of ladies in an establishment was limited not by law or religion, but by expense and above all (in a case such as that of Genji) by the difficulty of dealing with the emotional situation that arose from large households. Did polygamy create different emotional situations from those to which we are accustomed—if, for example, it were so much taken for granted that jealousy ceased to exist—a novel dealing with a polygamous society would make very little appeal to us. It is because in Genji the re-actions of the characters are precisely the same as ours would be under similar circumstances, that the book holds our attention.

Another point concerning Genji's household that perhaps requires comment is the apparent ability of persons to live years in the same house without ever having met. But such a thing happens frequently at English University Colleges, and we must envisage Genji's palace as more like a college than a house,—consisting, in fact, of separate courtyards and cloisters, joined by covered galleries. Hence