There has been much argument whether the five journey poems in the first half of the Collected Works of Murasaki Shikibu were all composed on her Journey down to Echizen or whether some of them were written on her return journey. Based on the result of the recent research regarding where each poem was composed, I will argue in this eaasy Murasaki Shikibu wrote all these five poems on her way to Echizen. I'll also propose five poems were not in chronological order, but were arranged according to her psychological axis of which poles were 'the court' and 'the country'. In my opinion, this psychological axis gives special meaning to the journey to Echizen as well as to the development of the poems before and after this journey.
War narratives emerged in the 1230s' when Japanese society, which had been torn by incessant wars for more than half of a century, began to stabilize. Quite a few people shared in the benefits of the peace under the new regime. Optimism prevailed. The peace and the satability made it possible for people to look back on the war-tormented past and reflect. The war narratives surely reflect a society that began to enjoy the prosperity of peace time.
In the January '95 issue of Japanese Literature Tetsuo Go argued in his "Friendship of Manyo-Otomo-no-Yakamochi and Homosexuality" that the friendship between Yakamochi and Ikenushi was one of homosexual love. I argued against Go's view in the November '95 issue of the same journal. My interpretation was that Yakamochi and Ikenushi intentionally followed the pattern of "exchange" between the cousins of Reiun and Keiun shown in Bunsen. Go once again maintained the existence of homosexual love between Yakamochi and Ikenushi in a recent issue of Interpretation of Japanese Literature and Research on Class Matericals. In this essay, I will counter Go's view from the perspective of "the sentimental novels" of the Chinese Six Dynasties Era.