The Tale of Genji Museum in Uji City, Kyoto will premiere a short film that fuses history with fantasy as part of the museum"s new program. The plot centers on Hana, a contemporary high‑school student who turns into a cat and is whisked back through time. She finds herself in the Heian period, exactly as depicted in Murasaki Shikibu"s famed novel The Tale of Genji. Guided by the eponymous hero Hikaru Genji, Hana feels the same emotions that Shikibu portrayed in her work. The film incorporates scenes drawn from Lady Murasaki"s diary and other archival sources, including the real‑life noble Fujiwara no Michinaga who eagerly stole early drafts of the novel because he could not wait to read Murasaki"s chapters as they were written.
