Viewpoints Comparative Questions

  1. What role do emotions play in each tale? What emotions seem to have been associated with women? What about with men?
  2. Taken together, what do these two documents tell you about family life and familial relationships in feudal Japan?
  3. Based on these two documents, how would you characterize the values and beliefs of Japanese elites in the Heian and Kamakura periods?

Donald Keene, ed., Anthology of Japanese Literature from the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century (New York: Grove Press, 1955), 179–184.