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years 889–1028 and probably compiled by a court lady called Akazome Emon, would seem to be a patchwork quilt of such records. Murasaki seems not to have had an official court post, but was privately employed by Michinaga to serve his daughter. As we have already mentioned, her real name is unknown.
    The best information we have about Murasaki’s life at court is, of course, the diary, although there are considerable gaps in what she is prepared to reveal. Sonpi bunmyaku states flatly that she was Michinaga’s concubine, but there is no evidence whatsoever to support this. By her own admission she seems to have been somewhat retiring and even severe. Any joie de vivre is carefully balanced by a pervasive melancholy. Perhaps this is one of the reasons her contemporaries never ranked her poetry very highly. Poetry was a social activity, and the reason why she does not appear in a number of important poetry competitions where one might expect to see her name may simply be that she did not wish to participate. There is also a remarkable lack of any record of correspondence or exchange of poems between her and any of her major female contemporaries. Sei Shōnagon had already dropped out of court circles with the death of Teishi in 1000, and we have no way of knowing whether she was alive at this point or not, but Akazome Emon certainly was around; she had been in the service of Rinshi, Michinaga’s main wife, for some considerable time. Izumi Shikibu, too, joined Shōshi’s entourage in the spring of 1009, but Murasaki’s reference to her in the diary suggests a very distant relationship indeed.
    As in most cases of women writers and poets of this time, her later years are clouded in uncertainty. Emperor Ichijō died on Kankō 8 (1011).6.22. On the sixteenth of the tenth month of that same year Shoōshi moved into the Biwa mansion, and Murasaki presumably went with her. The main clues as to when she might have died are as follows:
    (i) As mentioned above, Tametoki suddenly returned to the capital in 1014 and retired in 1016. Might this have been because of Murasaki’s death? Possibly, but he was in any case in his early seventies.
    (ii) In Murasaki’s collection of poetry there is an exchange with a woman called Ise no Tayū at the Kiyomizu temple that can be dated with fair certainty to Chōwa 3 (1014).1.20.
    (iii) A passage in the Eiga monogatari dated 1025 refers to her in connection with her daughter, but it is not clear from this whether she is alive or not.
    (iv) She is not listed among the ladies-in-waiting who accompanied Shōshi on a pilgrimage to the Sumiyoshi Shrine in Chōgen 4 (1031).
    (v) This evidence concerns her relationship with Fujiwara no Sanesuke, author of the diary Shōyūki and a constant critic of Michinaga. An entry in the Shōyūki for Chōwa 2 (1013).5.25 reads:
    Yesterday evening when I left Sukehira I sent him in person to the Dowager Empress, telling him to inform her that I would be unable to attend for the time being while the Crown Prince was ill. This morning he returned to say that he had met the lady-in-waiting – the daughter of Tametoki, Governor of Echigo, whom I have often used as an intermediary for various matters in the past – who said that the Crown Prince’s illness was not serious, but that he could not attend normal palace business as he still had a fever. Michinaga also felt under the weather, she added.
    There are a series of entries of a similar nature in the Shōyūki during 1013 and, although they do not mention Murasaki by name, the phrase ‘met the lady-in-waiting’ appears in many of them. The same is true of a later entry dated Kannin 3 (1019).1.5.
    The end result of all this is inconclusive. Murasaki may have died early in 1014 or she may possibly have continued serving Shōshi untilas late as 1025. The maturity of vision in the latter part of the Genji monogatari suggests the later date, but in the absence of any more information this must remain mere