Haruki MURAKAMI (local historian, and former high school teacher, not the famous fiction writer by the same name), has conducted research into the legends about Masakado, and has proposed the following schema for categorizing the legends.
将門伝説の研究者である村上春樹(研究者)(元高校教諭の郷土史家、同名の小説家とは別人)は将門伝説を以下のように分類している。