“The Tale of Genji” (“Genji-monogatari”), the greatest monument of Japanese and world literature, was created at the turn of the 10th-11th centuries, during the era of the formation and rapid flowering of Japanese culture. Its author is a court lady known as Murasaki Shikibu. The monument is being published in Russian translation for the first time, in five books. The first four books include 54 chapters of the Tale. In the fifth, reference book - “Appendix” - in addition to an extensive research article and a set of five lines from old poetic anthologies quoted in the “Tale”, there are diagrams, tables, drawings that will help readers navigate the complex world of this work.