During a couple of hundred years from the Insei period until the first half of the medieval period, collecting anecdotes from high-rank court nobles, government official in the middle and low rank, or priests, and compiling those anecdotes into a collection of anecdotes became popular.
院政期から中世の前半にかけての数百年間、上級貴族から中・下級の官人あるいは出家した人びとによって、説話を集めて、説話集を編むという文学行為が流行する。