According to Meredith McKinney in the Kyoto Journal article, (who contributed to the translation of "The Pillow Book" from Japanese into English), "The Pillow Book" is a special case, and it is a genre-bending miscellany of short, largely unrelated pieces. Shōnagon’s writing is categorized into three parts; the first consists of narratives, which focus mainly on the events that she witnessed and experienced during her time in the court, the second consists of her own thoughts and opinions on various matters and topics, and the third were the famous lists, or headings, with one example from Shōnagon’s writing being “Things That Make the Heart Grow Fonder.” "The Pillow Book" consists of 164 of these lists total, where they range from aesthetically pleasing items to being less diplomatic than Shōnagon’s anecdotes. Three types of classification were proposed by Kikan Ikeda. However, there are sections that are rather ambiguous and are difficult to classify (e.g., in the first paragraph of her ramblings, "As for Spring, (it is) the dawn is lovely", there are objections to common opinions of what is actually meant here).