re. Where what she wrote did not coincide with their vision of her, they were able to downplay her authorship or even question whether she was the actual writer. The Komachi who emerges from this process has been constructed from a "remembered and re-created past," rather than from an actual true history (Strong, __, p. 412).
Faure proposes a slightly different argument. He contends that Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, another female poet from about the same time, were often confused in medieval legend, a tradition propagated by men and less concerned with historical accuracy than with coopting strong female figures to teach lessons to the general populace. As he ( ) writes, "Kimachi was perceived as a courtesan, a woman who liked sex (irogonomi). She was seen as a remorseless polygamous woman in a patriarchal societ
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