『源氏一時話』（架蔵・天保十二年奥書） : 解題と翻刻

An archived book titled Genji-hitotoki-banashi (“A Digest of The Tale of Genji”) was created in a unique way. Originally, the book was published in 1837 with the title Genji-monogatari-ezukushi-taiisho (“Illustrated Tale of Genji”). The book was bound with one handwritten manuscript page inserted between each of the pages of the book. That is, when turning the pages of this book, there is one single printed page, followed by one handwritten page, and so on. Originally, this book had one chapter of The Tale of Genji assigned to one page, in the form of an illustration of one scene in that chapter, together with only one of the waka poems found in that chapter. The handwritten text inserted here presents a summary of the chapter found on the previous page on its front side, and a summary of the chapter found on the next page on its reverse (back) side. With this format, with the book open to two pages, one sees simultaneously an illustration of each respective chapter of the Tale and one representative waka poem, plus a summary of that chapter. The summary for each chapter is written at around 250 Japanese-text characters, with the storyline of the long Tale aptly summarized in compact form. One learns from a postscript at the end of the book that this was written by a person in 1841 named Umezono no Aruji. It is surmised that the additions to this book served to make the contents more suitable as an introductory text for The Tale of Genji, and was perhaps given to a young girl familiar to said person.