Rewriting Medieval Japanese Women is a book that explores the life of Nun Abutsu, a noblewoman who lived in thirteenth-century Japan. The book discusses how Abutsu crossed gender and genre barriers by writing the first career guide for Japanese noblewomen, the first female-authored poetry treatise, and the first poetic travelogue by a woman. The book also challenges the notion that literary salons in Japan were limited to the Heian period and that literary writing and scholarship were the domain of men during the Kamakura era. The analysis of literary works within the context of women's history makes clear the important role that medieval women and their cultural contributions continued to play in Japanese history.