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Secondary sourceBook1654

The Tale of Genji: Genealogy

1654

A genealogy volume from a 1654 printed edition of Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji, mapping the novel's many characters.

This genealogy volume helps trace the characters in Murasaki Shikibu's novel, showing its complexity.

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Front cover of a Japanese woodblock-printed book with dark blue-grey paper cover, worn at edges, with a pale rectangular label bearing vertical black brush-written characters reading Genji keizu zu, and stitched binding on the right side.
The Tale of Genji: Genealogy, 1654 printed edition. Library of Congress.

About this source

What it is

This genealogy volume is part of a complete 1654 woodblock-printed edition of The Tale of Genji, produced in Kyoto and now held by the Library of Congress. It charts the family relationships of characters in the novel written by Murasaki Shikibu in the early 11th century.

Why it matters

The novel's cast of characters across generations is large and complex, so a genealogy helped readers follow the story. This shows how printers and scholars worked to make Murasaki Shikibu's centuries-old novel accessible to Edo-period readers.

Look closer

  • Why might a novel's readers need a family chart to follow the plot?
  • What does this tell you about the scale and ambition of the original story?
  • Who would have had access to such a carefully produced printed edition?

This book 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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