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This chapter demonstrates four different stages in Genji's use of the Heian courtship practice of kaimami, a secretive maneuver to disguise and thereby deflect attention from unnarrated tabooed affairs, such as Genji's with Fujitsubo; transgressive affairs, such as his attempted adultery with Utsusemi, his incognito adultery with Yūgao, and his affair with his half-brother Suzaku's intended, Oborozukiyo, that mirrors Genji's taboo violation with Fujitsubo; inappropriate or imaginary affairs that are playful versions of the above, such as the one with Suetsumuhana and Tamakazura. It also continues the exploration of Genji's semiarranged courtship, without kaimami, of Akashi no kimi. Finally, Genji becomes the unintended target of his rival, Kashiwagi, who catches a glimpse of Genji's wife by accident, at a game of kemari that Genji organized in the courtyard of Murasaki's southeast quarters of the Rokujō Estate and witnessed as a spectator.

This chapter analyzes selected courtship scenes in mid-Heian poem tales (uta monogatari), fabricated tales (tsukuri monogatari), random notes (zuihitsu), and diaries (nikki). It also briefly discusses the sole instance of a visual taboo in the fairytale world of Taketori monogatari (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter). Although Genji is indisputably the classic example of courtship in the Heian period, the chapter contends that it is useful to explore courtship in earlier as well as contemporary literary expressions. Hence, the chapter's main focus here is on the early tenth-century Ise monogatari (Tales of Ise), the most inspiring literary precursor of the Genji, and on Sei Shōnagon's Makura no sōshi (The Pillow Book), the fullest contemporary account of courtship at the height of the Heian period.

This introductory chapter emphasizes the interconnectedness between the place of courtship and the literal and figurative movements of its participants by exploring anthropological and political approaches to The Tale of Genji. It looks closely at a scene from Chapter 13 (“Akashi”) that features hybrid courtship combining parental arrangement with an individual courtship initiative without kaimami (lit., “looking through a gap in the fence;” a uniquely Japanese form of erotic hide-and-seek that is the central trope of courtship in the Genji). Taken together, the courtships described in this chapter drive the narrative in ways that critics of the Genji have sometimes touched upon but never fully explored. They form the vital core of this book's attempt to map the phenomenon of courtship in the Genji and in a number of other tenth-and early eleventh-century texts that shed light upon the courtship scenes in Murasaki Shikibu's immensely complex masterpiece.

This concluding chapter compares pre-Genji stories of courtship with Murasaki Shikibu's masterpiece, in order to illustrate what could go wrong with courtship, and in particular, how the complications of mid-Heian courtship and kinship is given new dimensions by the complex genealogies in the Genji. In extant pre-Genji literature, works that include the theme of courtship and kinship map it differently from The Tale of Genji, keeping the joys and travails of courtship limited to one generation of characters. Hence, the conflict and motivation generated through multiple generations in Genji's case is worth considering in contrast. To illustrate its multigenerational quest for power, the chapter narrates in brief The Tale of Genji and the implications it holds in terms of Heian-era courtship and kinship.