A thousand years before the modern publishing industry, a woman at Japan’s imperial court wrote a story that readers still know today. Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji, composed in the early 11th century, is often called one of the world’s earliest novels. Its characters’ complicated feelings help explain why it still feels recognizable as fiction.
Murasaki was a lady-in-waiting during Japan’s Heian period. Her story follows Genji, an emperor’s son removed from the line of succession, through court politics, love affairs, losses, and the lives of people around him. Rather than simply celebrating its handsome protagonist, the tale gives sustained attention to relationships and emotional consequences. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s introduction to The Tale of Genji calls it the world’s first psychological novel.
It was an ambitious work: the tale spans 54 chapters and continues beyond Genji’s own story. Murasaki wrote in Japanese using kana, a script closely associated with women’s writing at the time. That choice placed a sweeping account of aristocratic life in the language of the court’s everyday conversations, rather than the classical Chinese used for much formal writing. Poetry, too, is woven into the narrative.
Was it the first novel? That depends on how “novel” is defined; long works of fiction existed earlier. The more remarkable point needs no absolute ranking. An 11th-century woman created a sustained, psychologically attentive story that became a Japanese literary classic. For a closer look at the author and her world, Europeana’s account of Murasaki Shikibu explores the court culture behind the book.