Introduction
In consideration to earlier Chinese writings and the times of Murasaki Shikibu, the extent to which Buddhist influenced fictional writing is undeterminable. It is claimed that, Buddhism had a philosophical provision for the Tale of Genji. The tale has thus been translated by various schools of thoughts from a Buddhist perspective. Shirane, for instance, makes a notification that there existed various interpretations of Genji during the Heian period. “Institutional Buddhism, which had opened the age with a great religious reform, by the middle of the Heian period had assumed as its primary function the task of supplying the aristocracy with the magical and ...
