Digital art print of the original artwork. 
Media: Giclée print on archival paper.
Size: 8 X  12" + 1.5" margin 
 
A 30-minute train ride from Kyoto, the Murasaki Shikibu Museum is a tribute to the world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji—penned by Murasaki Shikibu, a poet and literary rebel of the Heian period (794–1185).
 
This was an era when poetry, art, and literature thrived, but women? Not allowed an education. That didn’t stop Shikibu, born in 978 AD, from reading and writing alongside her brother—thanks to her unusually progressive father.
 
By the time she was widowed young, she was already well-versed in Chinese (a men-only domain back then). She later became a lady-in-waiting for Empress Akiko, writing Genji between 1000 and 1012 AD—at a time when writing anything scandalous about the Imperial family was taboo. Her workaround? Setting the novel a few centuries earlier.
 
And if you’re wondering—Murasaki Shikibu wasn’t even her real name. No records exist. Women were that invisible. The name we know today is a mix of "Murasaki" (a nod to Genji’s heroine) and Shikibu, her father’s official rank.
 
Tale of Genji is a fictional epic spanning four generations, following the life of Prince Genji. The novel was so influential that even the Emperor read it—because, apparently, it revealed more about palace life than actual court records.
 
The Murasaki Shikibu Museum highlights the novel’s final 10 chapters, set in Uji. Among the displays? Dioramas—like the one showing two women playing Go, a reminder of a time when women had no voice—but Shikibu found hers anyway.