"Genji monogatari" and "Heike monogatari," two great works of literature that were once fully accessible to their audiences, have over the centuries become the subjects of a small mountain of reference works: commentaries, genealogies, chronologies, synopses and, most recently, the literary dictionary, which contains glossaries, descriptions of characters, explications of manuscript lines, maps and illustrations, together with the earlier aids.
As the worlds described in "Genji" and "Heike" have grown more remote and the language in which they were written more forbidding, scholarship has evolved incrementally to bridge the widening gap between reader and text. Reference works on "Genji" and "Heike" in CD-ROM format would therefore seem to represent the next step in the long history of scholarship on these two classics.
Equipped with audiovisual capabilities, CD-ROMs can communicate knowledge beyond the reach of printed reference works. That both sets are "bilingual," accessible in English as well as Japanese, further enhances their value for nonspecialists.