The
complete Tale of Genji scroll originally consisted of about twenty
individual scrolls like this one. Each was a sheet of paper about nine
inches high and as much as twenty feet in length, rolled around a wooden
core. A single scroll served to illustrate two or three chapters of the
novel, with perhaps three pictures per chapter. Over the centuries, all
of the scrolls have been cut up, scattered throughout Japan, and many of
them lost. Today we have about one-fifth of the original, a total of nineteen
paintings with accompanying text. The pictures have of course been damaged
and their colors badly faded, but considering that they are over eight
hundred years old, there are remarkably well preserved.