Tametoki's second wife, Murasaki's stepmother, appears in the genealogies merely as "a certain woman," nameless and without particular pedigree. She bore Tametoki two sons and a daughter, who were young children at the time of the family's posting to Echizen. She was undoubtedly of a lower family background than Tametoki, which is why she came to live at his residence rather than the more upper class custom by which the groom commuted to the bride's natal home.

   I made up her personality and nickname, "Kuchinashi," from a common pun used in Heian poetry on the name for the gardenia flower, which, referring to the closed seed pod, literally translates as "mouthless," and by extention, "does not speak." I imagined it would be rather intimidating for a young woman to marry a scholar like Tametoki who had grown children, including an intellectual daughter almost her own age. How could she have been anything but kuchinashi?