Aoi no Ue

Aoi no Ue appears in the "Aoi" chapter of Lady Murasaki's The Tale of Genji as the daughter of the Senior Minister of State who was married to Hikaru Genji at around age sixteen while Genji was twelve. During her marriage she becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son, Yūgiri. In the narrative she falls seriously ill after becoming the target of mono no ke — the baleful spirit-force primarily identified as the jealous spirit of Genji's former lover Lady Rokujō, along with other aimless and loose phantoms. The possession episode, treated as an instance of spirit-caused illness in Heian-era cosmology and later dramatized in Noh theatre, culminates in the family's employing ritual specialists to identify and trap the invading phantom.

Primary sources and summaries present Aoi no Ue in social terms rather than with a detailed physical portrait: she is a high-ranking Heian court lady (daughter of the Senior Minister of State), married into Genji's household in adolescence, pregnant and later mother to Yūgiri during the possession episode. The supplied materials do not provide a distinctive supernatural or altered physical form for Aoi herself; she is represented as a mortal woman whose body and health are compromised by an invading spirit.

Aoi no Ue is not described as possessing supernatural powers in the provided accounts; she is the passive sufferer of mono no ke. The manifestations associated with her condition are serious illness and spells of spirit possession. The harmful agency in the episode is attributed to the jealous spirit of Lady Rokujō and to other wandering phantoms that seek "undefended" bodies. Ritual specialists in the story use techniques (notably the azusa-yumi) to call forth and trap these phantoms, thereby curing or relieving the afflicted person.