The Tale of Genji is one of the best-known works of classical Japanese literature, and the number of manuscript copies of it is very large. It was originally written by Murasaki Shikibu, a lady-in-waiting at the Heian court, at the beginning of the eleventh century, but the earliest extant manuscript was copied by Fujiwara no Teika roughly two centuries later.

The Tale of Genji was copied extensively in the pre-modern era.^[1] The scholar Kikan Ikeda [ja] once performed an extensive study of 300 manuscript copies of the work,^[1] and even counting only manuscripts copied before the end of the Muromachi period in the mid-16th century the number comes to roughly 100.^[1]

The earliest of these surviving copies, dating from the early Kamakura period,^[1] are the Aobyōshi-bon [ja] produced by Fujiwara no Teika^[1] and the Kawachi-bon [ja] produced by Minamoto no Mitsuyuki and his son Chikayuki (ja).^[1]

Murasaki's diary records that by the winter of 1008 Genji was already in circulation,^[1] and so must have already begun to be copied and distributed at this time.^[1] Because of the circumstances of copying of monogatari literature, which were treated as light entertainments for court ladies,^[1] numerous errors crept into these early copies,^[1] and as those copies were copied the errors multiplied exponentially.^[1] Entire chapters began to be added to the work, coming to around 60 chapters rather than the 54 that became the standard.^[1]