Eightfold Clouds (Genjimonogatari series)

Eightfold Clouds, 2018
八宮 Hachi no Miya ("Eighth Prince" / "His Eighth Highness")

Hachi no Miya (“Eighth Prince”) is Genji’s younger half-brother, son of the Kiritsubo Emperor and… no clue whom his mom is. I like him because he reflects the story’s well-rounded approach - to its cast, to going back and fleshing things out instead of forgetting the past happened, to casting very few characters as actually “good” or “bad”. Just humans, with human flaws.

Prince Hachi doesn’t actually appear until well after Genji’s death. But in his youth he was a key unseen player in the earlier parts of the story. When the child Reizei’s position as Heir Apparent was still insecure, the Eighth Prince was the opposing potential heir, supported by Genji’s nemesis the former Kokiden Consort/Empress Mother. He was probably, like Reizei at the time, little more than a puppet.

When we meet Prince Hachi in the Uji chapters, his life has been full of tragedy since being banished for being on the losing side. He would’ve become a monk if not for the fact that he didn’t want to abandon his daughters Oigimi and Nakanokimi. He still manages to gain a reputation as a sainted layman for his devoted spiritual practice, and Kaoru becomes very interested in meeting and studying with him.

They end up becoming very close - so close that the Prince entrusts his daughters to Kaoru. But DOESN’T GET AROUND TO TELLING THEM BEFORE HE DIES OOPS (sounds silly but this problem is still common in real life today, so DOCUMENT YOUR WISHES PEOPLE). So everybody’s doing what they think the Prince wanted, which is unfortunately not the same thing, among other things, and disaster ensues like a slow mo train wreck.

I read an interesting paper proposing Kaoru’s actually in love with Prince Hachi, because he has zero romantic interest in the sisters until they become his only remaining tie to the prince.

The title of this piece is based on a poem Reizei writes to him. I thought about changing “clouds” to something else because the word will appear in another major character’s illustration, but then I was like NO it’s disrespectful to Prince Hachi to change it!!

(originally posted May  20, 2018 on tumblr)


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