Lost transcription of Tale of Genji chapter found in Japanese storeroom

For those not familiar with the context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujiwara_no_Teika was a minor aristocrat of a clan specialized in court poetry. He was one of the greatest Japanese poets of all time, a striking accomplishment given his rather ornery personality and the strife-torn times he lived in. Late in life, however, he also became something of an antiquarian, and began spending a great deal of time studying old classics and attempting to restore them: _Genji_, obviously, was one of them, but he also helped study or preserve many others, like the _Man'yoshu_ (already then almost completely unreadable). If you read the textual history sections of translations, it'll be not unsurprising if you happen to see Teika's name come up as involved in the chain of transmission. We are indebted to him for being able to read as much of early Japanese literature as we can.

The original text from around 1010 is lost. From the copy written before 1240, only 4 chapters, now 5, have been preserved. And all of the 54 chapters are known through later copies from around 1500.

> Using a very lose definition of a novel as a long prose narrative describing fictional characters and events, it’s hard to understand why some older works don’t qualify. The Golden Ass, which involves the journey of a man whose insatiable curiosity gets him turned into an ass and who ends up joining a cult of the goddes Isis, arguably meets these criteria. Still, the distinctive writing style, often including verse, interwoven tales (including, in the case of The Golden Ass, the myth of “Cupid and Psyche”), and distinctive mix of seriousness with satire, humor, and downright vulgarity does support differentiating early works of extended prose from the “modern novel”—although the boundaries of this differentiation vary from one scholar to the next and are being broken regularly by today’s fiction writers.

Indeed, some of my favorite novels feature some or all of those "non-novel" features. But whatever ...

0) https://latelastnightbooks.com/2016/02/04/first-novel-and-th...

Anyway, if you want a taste of the "Tale of Genji" - try here:

https://www.learner.org/courses/worldlit/the-tale-of-genji/r...