Study The Tale of Genji
A Guided Course in Slow, Attentive Reading
The Tale of Genji is often called the world’s first novel. It is also one of the most demanding, not because it is obscure or difficult, but because it refuses speed, resolution, and emotional payoff.
This course is designed for readers who want to stay with Genji rather than get through it.
Study The Tale of Genji is a structured, long-form course that guides you through the entire novel at a deliberate pace. Lessons are organized around attention, pattern, and return, not mastery or completion. You read slowly, pause often, and re-enter without penalty.
This is not a survey. It is a sustained encounter.
This course approaches The Tale of Genji as a living literary system rather than a puzzle to be solved.
Designed by anthropologist and translator Dr. Erick DuPree, it offers an accessible, welcoming path through the novel’s full arc—from Genji’s rise, through consolidation and loss, into the unresolved inwardness of the Uji chapters. Each section provides just enough grounding to help you orient, notice patterns, and return without pressure. Understanding is allowed to accumulate gradually, through repetition, comparison, and sustained attention.
How the Course Is Structured
The course is divided into 25 lessons over four major movements, reflecting the novel’s shifting emotional logic:
Part I (Chapters 1–24): Entering the World
Genji’s rise, early desire, rivalry, secrecy, and exile. These chapters teach you how the court functions and how consequence is displaced rather than resolved.
Part II (Chapters 25–41): Power, Cultivation, and Consequence
Genji at the height of authority. Beauty becomes currency, control becomes aesthetic, and emotional costs surface beneath apparent stability.
Part III (Chapters 42–44): The Transition
A brief but decisive hinge. The temperature changes. Attention shifts away from Genji toward inheritance and aftermath.
Part IV (Chapters 45–54): The Uji Chapters
A darker, inward final movement. Desire no longer resolves into action. The novel ends in ambiguity, withdrawal, and spiritual retreat.
Each part opens with an orientation page and concludes with a narrative recap to help you recalibrate before reading.
Who This Is For
Readers who’ve tried Genji before and want a structure that makes it possible
Writers and scholars interested in craft, psychology, and social systems
Readers drawn to beauty and the rules that discipline beauty
Anyone who wants to read slowly, attentively, and in company
No prior knowledge is required—only curiosity and patience.
If you’ve been looking for a way into The Tale of Genji, this is an invitation to take it slowly, together, over the course of a year.
How You’ll Read
This course is built around a few core principles:
Slow reading matters more than momentum.
Rereading is encouraged. Falling behind is expected.Confusion is not failure.
The Tale of Genji often withholds clarity by design.Summaries support, they do not replace.
Narrative overviews are included to help you orient, not skip.There are no deadlines.
Read on your own schedule. Leave and return.
Progress here is measured in recognition, not completion.
Access
Full access to all 25 lessons
Read anytime, on your own schedule
Content refined and expanded over time