ABSTRACT
IFOR nearly three hundred years the city of Heian, Capital of Peace and Tranquillity, justified its name, but the gay, brilliant, andefIeminate court depicted by Murasaki was its climax. Quarrels for land and
power were beginning in distant provinces, even in her day, and the idyllic period was approaching its end. The sounds of this strife were scarcely heard in the gay city, and no echo of it reaches Murasaki's pages. Yet, in the next century armed conflict entered the capital itself, and a child emperor perished in a great battle on the Inland Sea.
