The aim of Professor Jędrzej Greń’s presentation is to introduce the diary written between 1577 and 1594 by Matsudaira Ietada, a middle-ranked samurai of the Sengoku period, and a vassal of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Several methodological problems arise when we look at Ietada’s journal. Its language is laconic and the information the author provides is much scarcer than we would expect and wish for. Many dates lack any notes, and under many others we see a simple repetition of information about meetings with other warriors, service-related routine or weather. Yet, as the value of Sengoku sources is often measured by their ability to shed light on important figures and events of the era, the diary’s value is rarely contested as it does provide some information and chronology of several military campaigns. However, focusing on this kind of information may hinder the possibility of evaluating the historical source as such, and of obtaining meaningful information from its form, structure and general content, be it notes on weather, accompanying drawings or ‘empty days’, when nothing except the date was noted. In Professor Jędrzej Greń’s presentation he would like to evaluate Ietada Nikki as a historical source taking under consideration those intertextual and atextual layers of information as they – in his opinion – help to depict the true ‘way of life’ of a middle-ranked Sengoku samurai.