Akinari, Ueda - Donald Keene (essay date 1976)
Donald Keene (essay date 1976)
SOURCE: Keene, Donald. “Fiction: Ueda Akinari (1734-1809).” In World Within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era, 1600-1867, pp. 371-95. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976.
[In the following excerpt, Keene praises Akinari's talent as a fiction writer and maintains that his stories are still widely read today, unlike the works of most of his contemporaries.]
During the hundred years after Saikaku's death only one writer of fiction appeared whose works are still widely read today, Ueda Akinari. He is a difficult writer to classify because his literary production extends into many genres and styles. For most people he is known only as the author of Ugetsu Monogatari (Tales of Rain and the Moon), a brilliant collection of stories, mainly dealing with ghosts and other supernatural phenomena. Akinari undoubtedly considered this work to be of small consequence; his commentaries...
[The entire page is 9973 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
