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Secondary sourcePhotograph1930

Photograph of the Kaneko Kiritsubo Chapter

Kaneko Motoomi · 1930

A 1930 photograph of a manuscript page of the Kiritsubo chapter of Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji, from a scholarly edition.

A 1930 scholarly photograph of a manuscript chapter of her novel, showing its textual transmission after her death.

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Grayscale photograph of a page of handwritten Japanese manuscript in cursive kana, written in vertical columns on aged paper, with small interlinear annotations in smaller script between some lines.
Kaneko Motoomi (ed.), photograph of the Kiritsubo chapter manuscript, from Teihon Genji Monogatari Shinkai, 1930.

About this source

What it is

This is a 1930 photograph of a manuscript page from the Kiritsubo chapter of The Tale of Genji, taken from a scholarly book published that year. It shows a page of handwritten cursive Japanese kana with small interlinear annotations.

Why it matters

The Tale of Genji was written around the year 1000 by Murasaki Shikibu, but no original manuscript in her own hand survives; what remains comes through copies made over centuries. This photograph documents one such manuscript tradition as studied by scholars in the early 20th century, showing how researchers worked to preserve and understand the text.

Look closer

  • Why is it significant that this is a photograph of a manuscript rather than the manuscript itself?
  • What do the small annotations between the lines suggest about how scholars studied the text?
  • Why don't any manuscripts written directly by Murasaki Shikibu survive today?

This photograph is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Murasaki Shikibu on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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