The term 'entangling vines' 葛藤 in the title of the work alludes to a famous Confucian metaphor for entanglement and confusion. In the Chan tradition it usually refers to excessive verbosity, but in the context of Shūmon kattō shū the vines that entangle the practitioner are none other than the kōans themselves. The majority of the 272 cases contained in the collection are from Chinese collections popular in Japan, such as the Wumen guan 無門關, Biyan lu 碧巖錄, Linji lu 臨濟錄, Congrong lu 從容錄Xutang lu 虛堂錄, as well as bibliographical literature such as the Jingde chuandeng lu 景德傳燈錄 and the Wudeng Huiyuan 五燈會元. A notable exception, however, is the presence of eight kōans of Japanese origin. According to Ueda Shinzuteru, the collection has two distinguishing factors. First, it features a large number of cases in comparison to other collections. For the sake of comparison, the Wumen guan consists of only 48 cases and the Biyan lu of 100. Second, is the fact that the collection presents the “bare” cases with no introduction, commentaries, or verse (Ueda in Kirchner 2013). For an English translation see Kirchner, Thomas Yūhō. Entangling Vines: Zen Koans of the Shūmon kattōshū. Boston: Wisdom Publication. 2013.