Ugetsu Monogatari


Ugetsu Monogatari is a collection of nine supernatural tales by the Japanese author Ueda Akinari, first published in 1776.
Largely taken from traditional Japanese and Chinese ghost stories, the collection is among most important works of Japanese fiction of the 18th century, the middle of the Edo period. Edo literary achievements are normally associated with the fiction of Ihara Saikaku and drama of Chikamatsu Monzaemon in the Genroku period and the popular literature of Takizawa Bakin in the later Bunka Bunsei period. Ugetsu Monogatari, then, occupies an important yet often overlooked position between these two moments in Edo literary history. The collection is the author's best known work. He had previously written two ukiyo zoshi in 1766-7 and a second collection Harusame Monogatari was not printed until 1907.

Name

The term "monogatari" reflects a refined form of narrative fiction, for example the earlier "court romances" like Genji monogatari and Saigyō monogatari. Ugetsu is a compound; u means "rain", while getsu translates to "moon". 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 Ugetsu, which likewise employs the common contemporary symbols of rain and moon. These images evoked the supernatural and mysterious in East Asian literature; Qu You's "Mudan ting ji", one of Ueda's major sources, indicates that a rainy night or a morning moon may presage the coming of supernatural beings. 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.

Content and style

The nine stories are based on supernatural tales of the Ming dynasty, from the works Jiandeng Xinhua and Sanyan. In his reinterpretation of these stories, Ueda recast them as historical tales set in Japan, weaving together elements of the source tales with a rich array of references to historical events, personages, and literary works, both Japanese and Chinese. In his use of Chinese compounds glossed with Japanese phonetic readings, Ueda frequently incorporates double meanings and word play into his text. Ueda’s penchant for allusion is evident in the Chinese preface, which is also noteworthy for its presentation of the author’s view of fiction as means of expressing truth.
Although each story revolves around a supernatural event, Ueda does not stray too far from the affairs of this world. Like other members of the kokugaku movement Ueda relied on 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 Ugetsu Monogatari some of the moral views of the kokugaku school. To do so, he employs supernatural elements, such as ghosts who revisit the living to make known the effects they have suffered from the unethical behavior of others. For example, in the story “Asaji ga yado”, upon which Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1953 film Ugetsu is partially based, a husband who has abandoned his faithful wife returns home only to unknowingly meet her ghost, an experience which leads him to a heartbreaking realization of the effects of his infidelity. However, as Dennis Washburn argues, through his highly literate style and developed narrative technique, Ueda avoids overly emphasizing the moral aspect, and the tales are first and foremost a literary exploration of human emotion.

Publication and influence

Ugetsu Monogatari was first published in a 1776 woodblock edition, although some scholars maintain that the work was completed eight years earlier in 1768. Ueda published the work anonymously, but Takizawa Bakin's later attribution of the work to him is now undisputed. Ugetsu was one of the first works of “reading books” that were published for a smaller, more literate audience. Often centering on historical topics, “reading books” catered to the highly educated, both in Chinese and Japanese classics, and were also connoisseurs of Ming period vernacular fiction. Ugetsu grew in popularity following its publication, and many subsequent authors such as Santō Kyōden and Bakin modeled their works on its content and style. Although interest declined for a time in the Meiji period, many 20th-century writers, including Junichiro Tanizaki and Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, read and were influenced by his work.
The first English translation was published by Wilfrid Whitehouse in Monumenta Nipponica in 1938 and 1941, under the title "Ugetsu Monogatari: Tales of a Clouded Moon". Subsequent English translations have been published by Dale Saunders, Kenji Hamada, Leon Zolbrod and Anthony H. Chambers.

Stories

The nine stories appeared in four volumes in the following order.