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Reception and legacy

The Tale of Genji is an important work of world literature. Jorge Luis Borges is among the modern authors who have cited it as inspiration. He said of it, " The Tale of Genji, as translated by Arthur Waley, is written with an almost miraculous naturalness, and what interests us is not the exoticism—the horrible word—but rather the human passions of the novel. Such interest is just: Murasaki's work is what one would quite precisely call a psychological novel... I dare to recommend this book to those who read me. " It is noted for its internal consistency, psychological depiction, and characterization. The novelist Yasunari Kawabata said in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: " The Tale of Genji in particular is the highest pinnacle of Japanese literature. Even down to our day there has not been a piece of fiction to compare with it."

The Genji is also often referred to as "the first novel", though there is considerable debate over this; other texts that predate Genji, such as the 7th-century Sanskrit Kādambari, or the Greek and Roman novels from classical antiquity, such as Daphnis and Chloe and the Satyricon, are considered to be novels, and there is debate around whether Genji can even be considered a "novel". Ivan Morris considers the psychological insight, complexity and unity of the work to qualify it for "novel" status while simultaneously disqualifying earlier works of prose fiction. Others see these arguments as subjective and unconvincing.

Related claims, perhaps in an attempt to sidestep these debates, are that Genji is the "first psychological novel" or " historical novel ", "the first novel still considered to be a classic" or other more qualified terms. However, critics have almost consistently described The Tale of Genji as the oldest, first, and/or greatest novel in Japanese literature, though enthusiastic proponents may have later neglected the qualifying category of 'in Japanese literature', leading to the debates over the book's place in world literature. Even in Japan, the Tale of Genji is not universally embraced; the lesser-known Ochikubo Monogatari has been proposed as the "world's first full-length novel", even though its author is unknown. Despite these debates, The Tale of Genji enjoys solid respect, and its influence on Japanese literature has been compared to that of Philip Sidney 's Arcadia on English literature.

The novel and other works by Lady Murasaki are staple reading material in the curricula of Japanese schools. The Bank of Japan issued the 2000 yen banknote in her honor, featuring a scene from the novel based on the 12th-century illustrated handscroll. Since a 1 November 1008 entry in The Diary of Lady Murasaki is the oldest date on which a reference to The Tale of Genji has appeared, November 1 was designated as the official day to celebrate Japanese classics. According to Act on Classics Day, the "classics" that are honored not only include literature, but encompass a wide range of arts such as music, art, traditional performing arts, entertainment, lifestyle art including tea ceremony and flower arrangement and other cultural products.

The names of the chapters became a central element in a incense-based game called Genjikō, part of the larger practice of Monkō popular among the nobility. In Genjikō, players must match the scents of a series of five incense samples without being told the names of said samples. Each possible combination was matched to a symbol, called a genji-mon, that represented a chapter from the story.