The three most frequently commented texts of the classical literary canon are Kokin wakashu or KKS, Ise monogatari or The Tales of Ise, and Genji monogatari or The Tale of Genji. Imperial waka anthologies for the three centuries after KKS were ignored by commentators until the eighteenth century; the same is true for The Tale of Sagoromo, a narrative fiction the waka of which were considered comparable to those of Genji in late Heian and Kamakura times. One factor must be that KKS and Tales of Ise themselves incorporate distinctive forms of commentary. KKS can be defined in fact as a corpus of cited poems framed by two kinds of editorial comments and two "prefaces". The earliest extant commentaries on The Tales of Ise inclined toward extravagant allegoresis incorporating strains of Esoteric and Tantric Buddhism and Shinto that flourished in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, often intertwined with heterodox KKS commentaries of a similar bent.

Mori Ogai was one of the foremost figures conversant in Western literary thought, and occupied the seat of leadership in the circles with which he associated. The journal Subaru offered Ogai an opportunity to come to the literary scene. Nagai Kafu made the first entry in his extended diary Danchotei nichijo, which he would continue until his death. Kafu, having spent five years in America and Europe and possessing an awareness of the interrelationship between Western civilization and its historical tradition, had worked toward a rediscovery of Edo. Tanizaki Junichiro's writing in the twentieth century, incorporating vestiges of a classical world, demonstrated similarity to Kafu's in its critical appraisal of contemporary civilization. Tanizaki's best project was a modern translation of the eleventh-century The Tale of Genji, though the massive undertaking would not be completed until the end of World War II, when the author restored passages that had been considered slanderous to the imperial house during wartime.

In modern parlance, the term monogatari refers to long prose narratives told in the equivalent of the third person, and produced among the nobility from the early tenth century until some time in the Kamakura period. This chapter traces the emergence of this genre up until the appearance of The Tale of Genji in the early eleventh century, which marks its pinnacle. It also discusses the Taketori monogatari or The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, Ise monogatari, and Tsukuri-monogatari. In addition to these tales Heian Japan was aware of the short fiction that circulated in Tang China. In the Tang dynasty, many stories and poems circulated about the meetings of the emperors Mu and Wu with the Queen Mother of the West. In these texts, the emperors approach the queen mother to be taught the secrets of Taoist alchemy and to obtain an elixir of immortality, though they ultimately fail or are refused.