When Japanese poets first encountere Chinese poetry, it was at its peak in the Tang Dynasty and Japanese poets were completely fascinated. It took them several hundred years to digest the foreign impact, make it a part of their culture and merge it with their literary tradition in their mother tongue, and begin to develop the diversity of their native poetry. For example, in the Tale of Genji both kinds of poetry are frequently mentioned. (Since much poetry in Japan was written in the Chinese language, it is perhaps more accurate to speak of Japanese-language poetry.)