is a collection of nine supernatural tales first published in 1776. It is the best known work of Japanese author Ueda Akinari.
Largely adapted from traditional Japanese and Chinese ghost stories, the collection is among the most important works of Edo period (1603–1867) and literature, and is considered a predecessor of the genre. Kenji Mizoguchi's award-winning film (1953), credited with helping popularize Japanese cinema in the West, was adapted from two of the collection's stories.
Title The word is a compound word; means "rain", while translates to "moon".Zolbrod, pp. 19–20. It derives from a passage in the book's preface describing "a night with a misty moon after the rains", and references a Noh play, also called , which also employs the common contemporary symbols of rain and moon.Chambers, p. 13, 29. These images evoked the supernatural and mysterious in East Asian literature; Qu You's (; a story from , one of Ueda's major sources), indicates that a rainy night or a morning moon may presage the coming of supernatural beings.Chambers, p. 13.
Use of the term in the title, meaning "story" or "series", connects the book to other significant works of Japanese and Chinese literature by which it was strongly influenced, such as and . The use of this naming convention is particularly notable, because it had become less popular in Ueda's time with the rise of .
Tales of Moonlight and Rain is the most common English translation; other translations include Tales of a Clouded Moon and Tales of Rain and the Moon.
Publication was first published in a 1776 woodblock edition, although its preface is dated 1768. The nine stories were published in five volumes:
Volume 1: and Volume 2: and Volume 3: and Volume 4: Volume 5: and
In writing the book, Ueda played with the differences between colloquial and classical language, incorporating double meanings and word play into his text by pairing (Japanese phonetic readings) with classical Chinese words and phrases.
Ueda published under the pen name ; meaning "cut finger" or "pruning" and meaning "eccentric" or "cripple". While he used the name Senshi Kijin just once, this was not the only time Ueda used a pen name that referenced his disability, one finger on each of his hands having been permanently deformed by a severe case of smallpox he had as a child.
Despite being published under a pen name, Takizawa Bakin's later attribution of the work to Ueda is now undisputed.
is considered a predecessor of the genre of Edo-period literature. Its popularity has been enduring and it is still being adapted into new works in the 21st century.
Literary context and influences
Adapted novels is a . It was part of a new genre of books that had become popular in the 18th century: translations of Chinese stories adapted to fit into Japanese culture and historical settings. The stories in were pulled from various Chinese story collections, including Jiandeng Xinhua and Clear Words to Illuminate the World. Since others had already adapted these stories, Ueda was able to draw, not only from the original stories, but also from the existing adaptations. This was not viewed as plagiarism, as "the notion of the artist prevalent in [his] time defined [literary] practice as one involving an adaptation of the tradition." His writing was praised for its unique take on the existing stories.
In his reinterpretation of these stories, Ueda recast them as historical tales set in Japan, weaving together elements of the source stories with a rich array of references to historical events, personages, and literary works, as well as Japanese folklore and religion. Notably, Ueda, a devoted kokugaku scholar, went farther than his contemporaries in changing the source material to remove evidence of its Chinese origins.
scholarship Ueda's beliefs led him to adapt the stories in ways that were different from, and sometimes counter to, the ways his Confucian and Buddhist peers did. Like other members of the movement, he utilized fiction as a tool to reinvigorate Japan's past, by bringing to life the aesthetics of antiquity in the present. At the same time, he presents in some of the moral views of the school. Ueda's version of is a particularly strong example of this. Discarding Confucian and Buddhist readings of the story, Ueda uses the protagonist as a mouthpiece for his interpretation of the legend of Emperor Sutoku, ascribing the cause of the emperor's tragedy to the infiltration of foreign, and especially Confucian, ideologies.
Borrowed components draws heavily from other books, borrowing imagery, references, structures, stylistic choices, and more from famous works including , A Garland of Heroes, , , , and . Japanese literature researcher Noriko T. Reider observed that "more than sixty passages in are derived from Chinese literature, while over a hundred are taken from Japanese literature." In particular, Ueda borrowed so heavily from The Tale of Genji that certain sentences in seem to have been directly lifted from it.
Noh theater Influence from Noh theater can be found woven throughout . Within each story, the characters fit into the traditional and roles of Noh plays and the acts are arranged using the dramatic structure made famous in Noh. In addition, "by subject, [the stories] are arranged according to the order of a single-day's Noh program, in sequence: plays of gods, warriors, women, mad person (or miscellaneous present plays), and demons."
The stories and take their interpretations of the folktales they are based on from specific Noh plays that are adaptations of the same stories.
is one of the best-known and most highly regarded , collections of supernatural or ghost stories that became popular in Japan during the Edo period. It utilizes elements from all three primary types of : adaptations of Chinese stories, Buddhist ghost stories, and Japanese folk-tales. Despite the collection's popularity, these are the only Ueda ever published.
During the Edo period, Japan enjoyed a period of peace and stability after the end of the turbulent Sengoku period and, with the emergence of an increasingly interconnected economy that connected rural and urban areas, experienced a shift "in the direction of entertainment from the overtly religious or didactic". Many Chinese were translated and adapted into Japanese culture during this time and were secularized in the process, including tales from Suzuki Shōsan's (1661) and Asai Ryōi's (1666), which would go on to influence the writing of .
Ueda continued this trend of secularization in , removing certain religious elements from stories such as and . He references his non-didactic approach to fiction writing in the preface of the book, joking that, unlike other well-known authors such as Lo Kuan-chung and Murasaki Shikibu, whom some Confucian and Buddhist scholars of the time believed had received divine punishment for leading readers astray, he was safe from divine punishment because no one was expected to believe his writing to be truthful.
The secularization of was amplified by an interest among intellectuals of the time, especially among Neo-Confucianists, in using logic grounded in Confucian yin-yang theory to find mundane explanations for supernatural phenomena. Ueda, however, rejected mundane explanations for supernatural phenomena, believing that only Japanese folk belief could explain such events. Despite this, he did not remove all the religious elements from the stories; , in particular, follows the tradition of Buddhist storytelling.
Stories
In , a retelling of the legend of Emperor Sutoku through a lens, a monk meets the ghost of Emperor Sutoku at a shrine in Matsuyama. The emperor vents his anger at the imperial family members that deposed him but fails to sway the monk to his side. Instead, the monk criticizes him for having allowed himself to be swayed by foreign doctrine. Enraged, the emperor transforms into a giant bird and flies away. The end of the story summarizes the various historical events that were attributed to Sutoku's vengeful spirit after his death.
The story draws heavily from Noh theater. It was inspired by the play , and closely fits the structure of plays, which feature protagonists who have died but not yet been able to move on to the afterlife. It follows the act arrangement made famous in Noh theatre. The story also shows influence from and A Garland of Heroes.
Prominent Japanese literary scholar Donald Keene argued that the value of lies in its "overpowering beauty of style", which may be difficult to parse when read in translation or without the necessary historical context.
is the name of a mountain on Shikoku, the island where the city of Matsuyama is located.
In , a warrior falls ill while trying to return from a mission on behalf of his lord and becomes dear friends with the man who nurses him back to health. He recovers and leaves for home, promising his friend to return on the day of the Chrysanthemum Festival. Upon arriving home, he discovers that his lord has been killed and his throne overtaken by a rival, to whom everyone, including his own cousin, has now switched their allegiance. Not wanting to serve the new lord, the warrior tries to leave to return to his friend but his cousin holds him prisoner. Rather than break his promise, he kills himself and returns to his friend on the day of the Chrysanthemum Festival as a ghost. Afterward, his friend travels to the warrior's home and lectures the cousin on loyalty before abruptly killing him in revenge for the death of his friend.
The tale was adapted from the Chinese story (Fan Chu-ch'ing: A Meal of Chicken and Millet, A Friendship of Life and Death), from the anthology (Clear Words to Illuminate the World).
In adapting the story, Ueda changed the protagonist from a merchant to a warrior and changed the protagonist's reason for not keeping his promise from forgetting to being held prisoner.
, set in the year 1452, tells the tale of an irresponsible man who leaves his devoted wife behind to try to rebuild his fortune selling silk in the capital. That summer, a war breaks out and the residents of his home village flee. The wife stays at home to wait for her husband despite the danger and is devastated when he does not return in Autumn as he had promised. She stays alone in the abandoned village, desperately trying to fend off bandits, rapists, and starvation. Meanwhile, her husband is robbed on his way back to her and then falls seriously ill, preventing him from returning. He is treated well in the village where he is cared for during his illness and ends up staying there. Seven years later, the man decides to return to his home village to see what became of his wife. His village is mostly abandoned and unrecognizable, except for his home, which is in good repair and where he finds his wife, worn by the years but alive and waiting for him. After a joyful and tearful reunion, the two fall asleep together. When the man awakes the next morning, he discovers that the house is in ruins and all that is left of their marital bedroom is the grave of his long-dead wife, whose ghost he had seen the night before. He finds an old man, the sole resident who had been there since before the war, who tells him the story of his wife's death and compares it to the legend of .
The story is an adaptation of The Tale of Ai-Ching from the 14th century Chinese story collection (New Stories After Snuffing the Lamp), which had previously been adapted by Ueda's predecessor Asai Ryoi in . It was also inspired by a similar story from . It includes a reference to a poem from .
Ueda added more definitive personality traits to the protagonist, made him more personally responsible for the tragedy, and removed the reincarnation aspect, among other changes from the original story.
It is the first of the two stories on which the film is based.