Tales of Heichū (Heichū monogatari) belongs to the genre of uta monogatari poem tales that emerged in Japanese literature from the mid-10th to the early 11th century. As early as the Collection of Ten-Thousand Leaves (Manyōshū), a poetry collection completed around 759, there appeared poems introduced by brief prose narrations. The imperial court began to come alive with poetry from around this time. People exchanged poetry with one another on topics as diverse as love and politics and religion. Towards the end of the 9th century, it was common for individual poets to keep compilations of their own verse, sometimes explaining in prose the circumstances behind a poem's composition. The highest honor was to have ones poem selected for inclusion in the Collection of Ancient and Modern Poetry (Kokinshū), the first imperial poetry collection, which was completed around 905. By the middle of the 10th century the idea of a poem paired with a prose narration seems to have taken hold, and Tales of Ise (Ise monogatari), Tales of Heichū, and Tales of Yamato (Yamato monogatari) seem to have emerged at about this same time. Also, the second imperial poetry collection, Collection of Later Poetry (Gosenshū), commissioned in 951 and compiled shortly thereafter, has many narrative qualities. The only extant manuscript of Tales of Heichū is a 61-page codex discovered in 1931 that seems to date from the Kamakura period (1185–1333), some three hundred years after the work's probable date of composition. Source: Wikipedia (en)