Kumogakure Rokujo (雲隠六帖)
Kumogakure Rokujo (Genji's demise: six chapters) is a supplementary work to the Tale of Genji. It is obvious that Murasaki Shikibu herself did not write it and it is often included with other works believed to be forgeries. It is included in a genre called medieval courtly fiction. For various reasons, including the fact that it is not mentioned in the "Kakai-sho," a commentary from the beginning of the Muromachi period by Yoshinari YOTSUTSUJI, it is believed to have been written later. However, the author is unknown.
Details
Kumogakure rokujo consists of the following six chapters.
Kumogakure
Sumori
Sakura hito
Nori no shi
Hibariko (young skylarks)
Yatsuhashi
Within the time scale of the story of the Tale of Genji, the above six chapters are roughly divided into two as follows. The chapter 'Kumogakure' describes Hikaru Genji's becoming a Buddhist monk and other events, and supplements the missing 'Kumogakure' that is thought to have existed between the ''Maboroshi' (The Wizard) and 'Niou Miya' (His Perfumed Highness) chapters. The other five chapters, from 'Sumori' to 'Yatsuhashi,' are sequels to the final chapter 'Yume no Ukihashi' (The Floating Bridge of Dreams), and deal with events such as Niou Miya's accession to the throne, Kaoru and Ukifune's marriage and their becoming a Buddhist monk and nun.
Additionally, the chapters of the Kumogakure Rokujo are on the whole exceedingly short compared with the original chapters of the Tale of Genji, and they describe the story so concisely that the contents look like summaries of the story.
For that reason, the Kumogakure Rokujo is sometimes considered a sequel, not of the original text of the Tale of Genji, but rather of one imitating the style of the digests that were popular in the medieval period.