"The Tale of Genji" after the Kamakura period was treated as an important intellectual source of classic knowledge, and in those days it was a general practice that manuscripts would be copied carefully from a reliable manuscript that could be the shohon (premised book) and completed after collation; however, in the Heian period stories like "The Tale of Genji" were diffused widely and many manuscripts were made, and among them was a manuscript made by upper-class people such as MINAMOTO no Reishi.
しかしながら鎌倉時代以降の『源氏物語』が古典として重要な教養の源泉であるとされた以後の時代に作成された写本は、証本となしうる信頼できる写本を元に注意深く写しとって、きちんと校合などもした上で完成させることが一般的であったが、それ以前、平安時代には『源氏物語』等の物語は広く普及し多くの写本が作られており、その中には源麗子本等の身分の高い人物が自ら作ったと見られる写本もあった。