1029), a scholar of Chinese who also served as governor in the province of Harima, Echizen, Japan. Their family was a distant lateral branch of the ruling Fujiwara clan that came to dominate Japanese court life during the Heian period. Although not politically powerful, the family was respected for its scholarly learning and connections. The writer’s grandfather had known Ki no Tsurayuki (c. 872-945), a poet, diarist and critic, who was the creative force behind the compilation of the Kokinshè, the great tenth-century collection of Japanese waka poetry. Tutored by her scholarly father, Murasaki Shikibu acquired some Chinese learning, unusual for a woman at the time. She married Fujiwara no Nobutaka (950-1001) and gave birth to a daughter in 999. Nobutaka died in the epidemic of 1001, and his widow, Murasaki, began writing The Tale of Genji around 1002. Three years later Fujiwara no Michinaga, the most powerful man at court, hired Murasaki Shikibu as a companion and tutor for his daughter, Sh-oshi. From Murasaki Shikibu’s diary we learn that she had few specific duties and so had time to observe court activities of the kind described in The Tale of Genji.
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