ABSTRACT
The Tale of Gerji, or Genji monogatari, was written early in the eleventh century by a lady of the Fujiwara clan known as Murasaki Shikibu. (This is not her real name, which is unknown, but a traditional epithet or sobriquet.) Among the scant known facts about her life, which extended from the late tenth century into the early eleventh, is that she saw court service, beginning in the first decade of the eleventh century and ending we do not know when. The Genji was probably begun during that same decade. We do not know when it was finished, and indeed we cannot be sure that it is in fact finished.
