The Tale of Genji for a 15-year-old Girl

Eleven years ago, in September 2014, on my daughter's fourth birthday, I had the idea: "I'll spend the next ten years translating The Tale of Genji into modern Japanese and give it to my 14-year-old daughter as a birthday present." Since then, I've continued translating it little by little in between my work at the prep school, and in 2024, I published a modern Japanese translation of the chapters from "Kiritsubo" to "Hanaen" under the title "The Tale of Genji for 14-Year-Old Girls," which I gave to my daughter on her birthday, now in her second year of junior high school. This book is the second in the "The Tale of Genji for Daughters" series, and contains a modern Japanese translation of the chapters from "Aoi" to "Sekiya."

Like last year's "14-Year-Old," this is intended for my daughter, who is in junior high school, so I tried to make it easy to understand and read. I've added subjects and other details as much as possible, made extensive use of quotation marks and ellipsis, avoided cumbersome headnotes, and woven necessary explanations into the text without disrupting the flow of the text. I wanted the writing style to be like that of a lady-in-waiting speaking to her daughter, so the whole book is written in a gentle, polite "desu/masu" style. At the end of each volume I've also included a "Papa Column" explaining the highlights of each volume. Furthermore, the translator has been teaching at a major university entrance exam prep school for over thirty years, so the translation is grammatically accurate. This is likely the first grammatically accurate translation of The Tale of Genji in history. As a result, several new ideas have been woven into the translation that have not been done before. Furthermore, the utmost care has been taken to translate the author, Murasaki Shikibu's writing style. This is likely the first modern translation of The Tale of Genji that attempts to capture Murasaki Shikibu's unique style. In that sense, I believe it will be enjoyed by a wide range of people, from beginners to Genji aficionados. I hope that as many people as possible will enjoy this masterpiece of a classic that Japan is proud of around the world.