The stories are usually about homoerotic relationships between an adult male and an adolescent youth; the ethical constraints are very much like that of a man and a woman.
In the first four sections, the samurai senior lovers are the image of manliness, supporter to the younger one, and the dominant role in sex.
The young beloved boys are portrayed as beautiful, good students of the older samurai, and assume a submissive role in sex.
Schalow explained that there were two types of audiences for this collection: connoisseurs of boys (常人好き) and woman-haters (女嫌い).
Ihara structured the collection around the homosexual ethos of woman-hating, thus explaining the misogynist tone of the original work, which initially caused Schalow's translation to be offensive to women readers.