Abstract
There is one passage in the chapter titled Hahakigi in The Tale of Genji which describes how a maid identifies Hikaru Genji by his scent as he tries to sneak into Utsusemi's room at night.
It refers to Iko, the scent emanating from clothes smoked with burning compound incense, which was quite a common practice for Heian aristocrats. There are six types of compound incense, of which Jiju and Kayo contain a unique fragrance called juku-ukon. It is made by blending four fragrances into o-ukon, the rhizome of Curcuma aromatica called kyo-o in Chinese materia medica. Juku-ukon is essentially a compound incense based on o-ukon, and is blended into ordinary compound incense as if it were a single fragrance. Thus it becomes clear that juku-ukon is quite different from the commonly known turmeric despite the similar names. There is another confusing name called ukonko, which originated from saffron. However, the main text and annotations of ukon in the Chinese materia medica textbook were transcribed into kojisho and koyosho as is, indicating that the Japanese major textbooks on fragrance did not correctly distinguish between ukon and ukonko. Since there is no evidence that saffron was introduced into Japan during the Heian period, juku-ukon may have been a substitute for ukonko. During the investigation into the origin of ukonko, it becomes clear why Li Shi-zhen, the author of Bencao Gangmu, did not assign saffron to ukonko, through extensively exploring the literature other than materia medica. In addition, it was also clarified why the Chinese names for turmeric and saffron, the origin of which are botanically unrelated, share the common name ukon, by elucidating the etymology of the corresponding names in Arabic and Sanskrit, etc.
