Kanginshu contains 311 ballads that depict lively feelings of people in the Muromachi Period, including a poem that presents a widespread attitude of the time to live only for the pleasure of the moment: 'What to do with you, so serious, so sane? This life is a dream, just play, go crazy!' and a tanka (thirty-one syllables' poem) with a view of life as something transient and empty 'The world goes by just in a flicker of time, in a twinkling.'
「なにせうぞ　くすんで　一期は夢よ　ただ狂へ」など、当時の刹那的な雰囲気がよく現れたもの、「世の中は　ちろりに過ぐる　ちろりちろり」などの無常観、室町びとが感情を託して歌った311首がおさめられている。