The Tale of Genji: What Is It?

A woodblock print from 1852 featuring a scene from The Tale of Genji

The Tale of Genji—what is it? It is a super-long, super-detailed proto-novel, written in Japan in the early years of the eleventh century. It was written by a woman whose personal name is lost but who acquired the nickname “Murasaki” on account of its being the name of the most important female character in the book.

Murasaki means lavender. There’s a Japanese ink, purple of course, named after Nippon’s #1 purple girl —$20 a bottle on Amazon, if you’re into purple ink. (Probably a lot of purple things in Japan are named after Lady Murasaki.)

Now, what do I mean by “super-long.” I mean 1,135 pages in the handy one-volume version of the Arthur Waley translation (originally published in volumes, 1925–1933), 1,090 pages in Edward Seidensticker’s translation (two volumes, 1976), and I don’t know how many pages in Royall Tyler (2001)