[In the following excerpt, Konishi explains that much of the reputation of the Izayoi Nikki stems from its external circumstances, not the intrinsic merit of the text.]

… Isayoi Nikki is a record of Abutsu's journey to the shogunal seat in Kamakura to respond to a series of lawsuits challenging her son Tamesuke's inheritance (see ch. 8). The author does not, however, write of legal matters or of her anxieties over Tamesuke's prospects. If one were to read the text of the nikki without knowing the identity of the author, one would probably conclude only that the work is a travel record made up of waka and prose.

The Nijō-Reizei lawsuits, however, had become a cause célèbre by the time Abutsu wrote the Isayoi Nikki. Fourteenth-century and later readers thus tended to project onto this work the sentimental image of an elderly mother risking a journey to Kamakura out of love for her son. Consequently, this ordinary travel account is generally recognized as an outstanding example of Japanese literature written by women. This opinion was established around the eighteenth century and remains undisputed to this day. The Isayoi Nikki lacks a stirring setting—something equivalent to the sad scenes of lovers parting during the Gempei War found in Ukyō no Daibu Shū—and so demands considerable knowledge of the author and her situation if a reader is to be moved by the work. One useful source is Utatane no Ki, written by Abutsu in her youth and focusing on her romantic concerns. Other useful data are provided by Masaari in his Saga no Kayoi (31-32):

The seventeenth. I go there during the day. A lector is about to begin the Genji; the mistress is summoned. The lector recites from behind the blinds. Her performance is outstanding. She does not recite as people ordinarily do—she must have received special instruction. She reads as far as “Wakamurasaki” [“Lavender,” the fifth chapter]. That evening we drink sake. The master has two women serve it. The mistress of the house calls to me from near the blinds.

“The master of this house is the grandson of a compiler of the Senzaishū, the son of a compiler of the Shinkokinshū and the Shinchokusenshū, and himself a compiler of the Shokugosenshū,” she tells me. “He inherited a famous villa on Mount Ogura from a poet who carried on the ancient family waka traditions. …”

I am moved that she solaces herself by speaking of such elegant matters. She continues, and so adds charm to the occasion.

“People today are not the same. At the villa, one has the feeling of being at one with the great poets of the past.”

The master of the house, an elderly gentleman of sentiment, has drunk enough to shed tears of joy.

The “master of the house” is Tameie, and the talented and learned mistress will later be known as the nun Abutsu. She was about thirty years old at the time this passage was written. The lady gives Masaari a detailed account of something he would already have known well, the family waka lineage dating back to Shunzei and Teika. Her staunch loyalty to the family traditions later precipitated the great lawsuit.

Enough related material survives to make conjectures about Abutsu's personality. Such material supplements the Isayoi Nikki to create an interest not present in the text itself. Masaari's is rather a different case: his career was relatively calm, and little material on his life survives. As a result, the several nikki written by Masaari over his lifetime are not likely to be so highly appreciated as the Isayoi Nikki, a work of equal or lesser quality. Is it perhaps improper to look for the principal element of reception in external, related events rather than in the work itself?

The Isayoi Nikki emerges as third-rate literature at best if it is evaluated solely on its own merits as an object of reception and evaluation, free from external circumstances. There is nothing wrong, on the other hand, with appreciating literature in various ways. If we agree that the Isayoi Nikki can be evaluated on the basis of more than one criterion, the esteem enjoyed by Abutsu's work from high medieval times onward becomes closed to question. Had Teika's best waka, composed during the Shinkokinshū period (in the strict sense), appeared as anonymous, untitled works, they would retain the same virtuoso qualities. Yet we approve of the process of determining the aged Teika's masterworks by linking a poem itself with its circumstances of composition (pp. 235-241). The Kenrei Mon'in Ukyō no Daibu Shū and Isayoi Nikki can be masterpieces or ordinary nikki, depending on the relationship each establishes with its audience. They may best be thought at once great and commonplace.