Missing Chapter of World’s Oldest Novel Found
A missing chapter of the oldest version of The Tale of Genji, considered to be the world’s first novel, has been found in a home in Tokyo.
The Tale of Genji is thought to have been written in around 1010 by a woman from the Heian court of Japan. She is known as Murasaki Shikibu, though her exact name is not known.
The novel’s original manuscript is gone except for a few pieces of text. However, the poet Fujiwara no Teika transcribed the story in the 13th century, and his manuscripts are thought to contain the oldest version of it.
Up until now, only four chapters of the novel – which is 54 chapters long in total – had been found and confirmed to have been transcribed by Teika.
The newly found chapter is named Wakamurasaki. In it, the hero of the novel, Genji, meets the girl who becomes his wife, who is also named Murasaki.
Junko Yunamoto, a professor at the Kyoto University of Advanced Science, told The Asahi Shimbun that existing research on the Wakamurasaki chapter has relied on manuscripts from about 250 years after Teika’s work.
“It is very significant that this discovery of the manuscript edited by Teika will be available for researchers,” she said.
The chapter was found in the home of 72-year-old Motofuyu Okochi, a descendant of the lord of the Mikawa-Yoshida domain in Aichi prefecture. It had been kept in a large chest in a storage room, and records show that the family has owned the manuscript since 1743.
Experts decided that the manuscript was a genuine Teika for a number of reasons. Its front cover was blue like Teika’s other chapters, and the handwriting used in it was identical to other manuscripts written by him.
The other four chapters transcribed by Teika were found in the 1930s, and were officially named as important cultural properties by the Japanese government.
