Book cover titled 'Uncovering Genji: A Reader's Guide to Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji' by Erick Dupree, featuring an illustration of a woman in traditional Japanese clothing and a background of cherry blossom trees.

Uncovering Genji

A Reader’s Guide to The Tale of Genji

By Erick DuPree

Uncovering Genji is a comprehensive guide to the world’s first novel, designed to make The Tale of Genji accessible to modern readers without sacrificing its emotional depth or cultural complexity.

Part of the Notes on a Classic™ series, this volume situates Prince Genji’s world within its full social, political, and religious context. Drawing on his background as an anthropologist, Erick DuPree unpacks the courtly systems of power, intimacy, and obligation that shaped both the novel and the lives of its characters.

This reader’s guide includes detailed chapter summaries and thematic commentary on the most widely taught sections of the text, along with cross-referenced notes on Genji’s extensive cast of characters. It also explores central themes such as women and sexual politics, nature, power, and ritual life at court—providing essential tools for students, scholars, and general readers alike.

Uncovering Genji offers timelines, historical background on Murasaki Shikibu and the Heian court, and interpretive frameworks that illuminate not only what happens in the novel, but why it mattered.

Uncovering Heike

A Reader’s Guide to The Tale of Heike

By Erick DuPree

Uncovering Heike is a comprehensive reader’s guide to one of Japan’s foundational war epics, designed to make The Tale of Heike accessible to modern readers without flattening its historical weight, emotional force, or moral complexity.

Part of the Notes on a Classic™ series, this volume situates the rise and fall of the Taira clan within the social, political, and religious world of late Heian and early medieval Japan. Drawing on his background as an anthropologist, Erick DuPree unpacks the systems of power, loyalty, honor, and impermanence that shape the epic’s battles—and the lives undone by them.

This guide includes detailed chapter summaries and thematic commentary on the most widely taught sections of the text, along with cross-referenced notes on Heike’s extensive cast of warriors, monks, courtiers, and women. Central themes such as ambition, brutality, self-sacrifice, and Buddhist impermanence are explored in depth, offering essential tools for students, scholars, and general readers alike.

Uncovering Heike provides timelines, historical background on the warrior classes of feudal Japan, and interpretive frameworks that illuminate not only what happens in the epic, but why it mattered—revealing why The Tale of Heike has long been considered the Iliad of Japan.