Nikki bungaku is a traditional Japanese literary genre in the form of diaries. These diaries were traditionally written in Chinese characters because they were originally modeled after the diaries of Chinese government officials; It is also important to note that the diaries were written by men, until Ki no Tsurayuki in her Tosa Nikki, written in 935 and the first diary of literary value, took on the personality of a woman to escape the limitations that her position entailed. By using a woman's point of view, Ki no Tsurayuki was able to write the diary using kana instead of the kanji he would have otherwise used. As time passed, entering the medieval period, the way of writing also changed. Kiko, a form of travelogue, of which Tosa Nikki is an example, has become much more frequent. An example of kiko written during the medieval period is Oku no Hosochi by Matsuo Basho in 1694, which recounts his 156-day journey to the northern regions of Honshu. Both the Tosa Nikki and the Oku no Hosochi are very important examples of kiko literature. However, partly due to the long time period between the two, there are many differences between them. Oku no Hosochi depicts dirty and inelegant things, which are not found in Tosa Nikki; the reasons why the author writes Kiko are very different, and the paths the authors take are incredibly different; both Tosa Nikki and Oku no Hosomichi use poetry differently, and Oku no Hosomichi also uses sketches that cannot be seen in Tosa Nikki. In Matsuo Basho's Oku no Hosochi he describes many things that would be considered inelegant, dirty, and even funny. . Writing on these kind of topics was alm...... half of the paper...... Tosa Nikki has a more formal feeling as it was supposed to be from the perspective of a lady from the Tosa governor's party on their return to Kyoto. Both of these literary works are very important for what they represent. Although they are both Kiko, they are written in very different ways, which shows the difference in values ​​and opinions between literature written during the Heian period and literature written during the medieval period. Works Cited Basho, Matsuo. Oku no Hosomechi. Web.Keene Donald. "Tosa's diary." Anthology of Japanese literature. Ed. Donald Keene. New York, NY: Grove Press, 1955. 82-91. Print.Miller, Marilyn J. "Nikki Bungaku-Literary Diaries: Their Tradition and Influence on Modern Japanese Fiction." World Literature Today (1987): Web. March 18, 2011. http://www.jstor.org/pss/40142997