Literary works were mainly annotated by priests of the Five Zen Monasteries, and compared with the annotation of Chinese classics made in the late Edo period, they seem to have their own tendencies; for example, shomono annotated "Kobun Shinpo" instead of "A standard of Composition," "Santaishi" instead of "Selected Poems of the Tang Dynasty," and Northern Sung poetry instead of Southern Sung poetry.
子書においても、抄物の大きな担手は五山僧であり、江戸後期の漢文註釈と比較すると、『文章軌範』ではなく『古文真宝』、『唐詩選』ではなく『三体詩』、南宋詩よりも北宋詩など、その内容に独自の傾向が見られる。