16
This touch is reminiscent of early chronicles such as the Nihongi, which delight in alternative explanations. In the subsequent chapters such archaisms entirely disappear.
17
This chapter should be read with indulgence. In it Murasaki, still under the influence of her somewhat childish predecessors, writes in a manner which is a blend of the Court chronicle with the conventional fairy-tale.
18
The hero of a lost popular romance. It is also referred to by Murasaki’s contemporary Sei Shōnagon in Chapter 145 of her Makura no Sōshi.