Ben no Naishi's contribution to the medieval literary corpus is the poetic memoir Ben no Naishi nikki (1246-1252), a record of events that occurred during the thirteen years she served as a personal attendant to the child emperor Go-Fukakusa, who reigned from 1246 to 1259; it also includes more than three hundred poems she exchanged with her sister Shsh no Naishi and court acquaintances. With her memoir Ben no Naishi was perpetuating a tradition of women's writing that began during the Heian period and continued through the Kamakura period, while also adding luster to the literary accomplishments of her ancestors. Ben no Naishi was considered an accomplished practitioner of the tanka (a short poem of thirty-one syllables) and renga (linked verse) forms; forty-four of her tanka were included in several imperial poetry anthologies, and thirteen renga links are represented in Tsukubashu (The Tsukuba Collection, ca. 1376).

Ben no Naishi was descended...