Shikibu Murasaki

Raised by a respected scholar of poetry and Chinese classics, Murasaki Shikibu had an extremely unconventional upbringing. Though women at the time were forbidden from learning Chinese, Murasaki did—and proved an adept student. What’s more, rather than remain with her mother and marry as a teen, Murasaki accompanied her father when he went to Echizen Province as a governor and didn't marry until 998 at age 25. She had one daughter before her husband's death two years later. Murasaki began writing The Tale of Genji around the time of her husband's death and continued to write chapters after she was sent to serve as a lady in waiting at the Empress Shōshi's court. There, she served until at least 1014 and possibly until 1025; the exact year of her death is unknown. During her time at court, she covertly taught the Empress Chinese writing, which, according to her diary entries and those of several female contemporaries, was considered extremely scandalous. Edward Seidensticker embarked upon translating Murasaki's work in the 1970s with the goal of condensing Arthur Waley's six-volume translation of Genji. An American, Seidensticker had learned Japanese during World War II and spent several decades after the war living in Japan. He's known for translating a number of seminal Japanese novels and his translations of modern Japanese works helped him earn the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968. He died in 2007.