SOURCE: Zolbrod, Leon M. Introduction to Ugetsu Monogatari: Tales of Moonlight and Rain: A Complete English Version of the Eighteenth-Century Japanese Collection of Tales of the Supernatural by Ueda Akinari 1734-1809, translated and edited by Leon M. Zolbrod, pp. 19-94. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974.

[In the following excerpt, Zolbrod provides an overview of Akinari's Tales of Moonlight and Rain, discussing the work's style, influences, and historical background.]

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Much of the fascination with travel and the lyric beauty of place names in the tales comes from Akinari's sense of history and the passage of time. For over a thousand years the nation had endured, and as a student of its traditions, Akinari knew what changes had taken place in customs, manners, and institutions. Each of his tales was set in times past, mostly during the middle ages, between the twelfth and the late sixteenth century, as the following list shows:

• 1 ‘White Peak’: late twelfth century.
• 2 ‘Chrysanthemum Tryst’: late fifteenth century.
• 3 ‘The House Amid the Thickets’: mid-fifteenth century.
• 4 ‘The Carp That Came to My Dream’: early tenth century.
• 5 ‘Bird of Paradise’: seventeenth or eighteenth century.
• 6 ‘The Caldron of Kibitsu’: early sixteenth century.
• 7 ‘The Lust of the White Serpent’: unspecified, but apparently the Heian period.
• 8 ‘The Blue Hood’: late fifteenth century.
• 9 ‘Wealth and Poverty’: late sixteenth century.

Although the tales were written in an age of peace, a number of them involve warfare and the conflict between an early system of central government and the new feudal institutions that dominated national life after the middle of the twelfth century. The first story, for instance, is set in the days when rule by code of law was yielding to feudal privilege. The clash between old and new, the role of foreign ideas, and the question of sovereignty figures against a background of cataclysmic change. As a twelfth-century historian wrote, ‘When the Emperor Toba died, the Japanese nation was plunged into disorder, and subsequently the age of the warrior began.’¹ Court nobles had never before asked provincial warriors for help to settle by force of arms in the capital itself a dispute over succession to the imperial throne. ‘White Peak’ reflects the collapse of an entire society. It describes the end of an epoch in terms that suggest scattering cherry-blossoms, the waning moon, and nostalgia for bygone days.

Before becoming a Buddhist priest, Saigyō, the narrator, had served Toba. Only one year older than Sutoku, Saigyō knew how vexed the emperor felt at being a mere figurehead while his father remained the power behind the throne. He understood how Sutoku had been forced to abdicate in favour of his younger half-brother, Konoe, and how when the latter died, Sutoku wanted his own son, Prince Shigehito, to be emperor, so that in time he himself might hold power as a retired monarch. But Sutoku's wishes were thwarted. His brother, Go-Shirakawa, was placed on the throne, and after the father passed away, the son rebelled. His forces were defeated and he was banished, but according to popular belief he left a curse that led to a series of national calamities, all of which is described in the first tale from Saigyō's point of view.

Along with other early modern scholars and writers, Akinari wondered why disaster struck the imperial house and what form legitimate government should take. In ‘White Peak’ he presents this issue as a conflict between the Chinese Confucian point of view and native Japanese ways. Ironically, Sutoku, a descendant of the ‘eight hundred myriad gods’ supports a foreign institution, while Saigyō, a follower of an alien religion, defends Japanese customs. Political thought and historical fact are combined with fiction in such a manner that Akinari could claim for his tale the respectability long associated with orthodox scholarship. In Japan, as in China, history was thought of as a mirror of truth. The past reflects an image that might help in making decisions for the future. By contrast, fiction was normally scorned as a web of lies. But Akinari's work helped to establish prose fiction as a means of expressing historical criticism and cultural values.

While the background for ‘White Peak’ and much of Akinari's interpretation of events may be traced to an early military chronicle, the Hōgen monogatari (Tales of the Hōgen Era),² a similar record³ also figures in ‘Chrysanthemum Tryst,’ which is set three centuries later. At this time, during the confused period after the outbreak of the Ōnin Wars, contending forces brought renewed violence and civil discord to the nation, and the ideal of peace and order seemed doomed. Amako Tsunehisa's rise to leadership and his storming of Tomita Castle on the eve of the Japanese New Year typify an age when strong local leaders challenged the authority of distant lords. Just as Tsunehisa went on to become the ruler of many provinces, warriors elsewhere also tried to extend their influence.

Behind Akinari's fascination for this process of change and his nostalgia for what had been lost lies the belief that history has a moral significance and that the past forms a continuous pattern stretching back to antiquity. Men assumed that something had gone wrong, and they believed that by examining certain crucial turning points they might discover why this happened. Then by adjusting national policy one might restore society to normal. Accordingly, the middle ages were thought to be bad, because military authority had been glorified and the strong trampled the weak. Powerful houses had split into rival factions, and it seemed unlikely that a united nation could ever emerge from the chaos. Innocent people, such as Katsushirō and Miyagi, in ‘The House Amid the Thickets,’ all too often bore the brunt of the misery and suffering of war.

For this tale, as well as for the previous ones, Akinari turns to the military chronicles.⁴ When Uesugi Noritada drove Ashikaga Shigeuji from Kamakura, forcing him to take refuge in Shimōsa, life in eastern Japan was upset, much as described in the tale and in Akinari's historical sources. Similarly, the dispute over succession to the leadership of the Hatakeyama house was an actual occurrence.⁵ ‘The House Amid the Thickets’ reminds one how simple people were torn from their roots and forced to endure sorrow and bitterness, owing to the evils of a military system that they themselves had in no way created. Around villages that had once prospered weeds grew tall, and in the words of the Chinese poet, Tu Fu, ‘New ghosts are wailing there now with the old, / Loudest in the dark sky of a stormy day.’⁶

To some extent the historical significance of the setting for ‘The Carp That Came to My Dream,’ around Lake Biwa and the Mii Temple, has already been discussed, but several additional points deserve mention. A priest and painter by the name of Kōgi is said to have lived at the temple in the early ninth century. Also, Shinto places of worship existed here from very early times, associating the place with supernatural powers. The area calls to mind the tragic events of the late seventh century, when the Emperor Tenchi's son was deposed by his uncle, the Emperor Temmu. During the Heian period many court nobles and ladies would visit the famous temples around the southern part of the lake, and according to legend, here Lady Murasaki, inspired by the moon over Ishiyama Temple, wrote The Tale of Genji. Awareness of these details adds considerably to the reader's appreciation of Akinari's account of Kōgi's mysterious dream.

Toward the end of the middle ages great barons vied for control of the nation's economic resources, and fierce battles raged between competing leaders. The war cries of massive armies signalled the close of the period. Oda Nobunaga (1534-82) intelligently used new techniques and weapons to bring half of Japan under his rule. Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-98), a man of humble birth, skillfully completed the work of unification. After he died, however, his vassals fell to quarrelling, and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616) emerged as victor. Ieyasu's successors governed Japan peacefully and without serious challenge during the early modern period, and urban centres such as Osaka and Edo prospered and grew. Still, memory of the past lingered on, and the events of the late sixteenth century continued to evoke shock and horror.

These times figure in ‘Bird of Paradise,’ which is set when ‘the land of Peace and Calm had long been true to its name,’ in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Spending a night on Mt Kōya, Muzen and his son are reminded of earlier days. ‘The Mound of Beasts,’ in Kyoto, which is mentioned at the end of the tale, stands for the way in which the grotesque conflict between Hideyoshi and his nephew, Hidetsugu, still gripped people's imagination.

Hideyoshi, one of the most remarkable autocrats of the time, like Henry VIII, failed not on the battlefield but in the bedroom. He fathered only two children, both born late in life. The first died in infancy, and because there seemed little chance of his having another, he appointed his nephew, Hidetsugu, as heir. To Hideyoshi's chagrin, the young man led a wanton life and killed men for sport, earning a reputation as ‘the murdering regent.’ When a second son was born, however, Hideyoshi wished him to be his successor, and relations with his nephew quickly deteriorated. In 1595 Hideyoshi ordered his nephew, together with a small retinue of his followers, to retire to Mt Kōya, and he commanded that they die by ritual suicide. Hidetsugu and his young companions disembowelled themselves, with one of their number beheading the others, and Hideyoshi's emissary performed the same service for the last of the condemned men. The nephew's family was then cruelly slain. His wife, ladies-in-waiting, and small children were dressed in their best clothes and dragged through Kyoto to the common execution ground. Here, on a gibbet, Hidetsugu's head was exposed, and the children were killed in front of their mothers' eyes. All were buried at Sanjō in a common grave marked as ‘The Mound of Beasts.’⁷ Such were the events that Muzen mulled over following his confrontation on Mt Kōya with Hidetsugu's ghostly entourage. In handling this material, moreover, Akinari had to be very circumspect, because it could be regarded as treasonous to write frivolously about events in which the Tokugawa family or other prominent military houses of that time played a part.

Long before Hideyoshi's rise to power, during the period of the fifth Ashikaga shogun, the Akamatsu family of the province of Kibi became embroiled in one of the many succession disputes of the middle ages. This family was descended from a noble line of warriors who had fought with distinction and found great favour with Ashikaga leaders. When the fifth shogun decided in favour of one claimant, he was assassinated by the other—Akamatsu Mitsusuke—who then fled to his home castle. The deceased shogun's supporters besieged him, and seeing that his cause was hopeless, he committed suicide. Izawa Shōtarō, in ‘The Caldron of Kibitsu,’ though a fictional character, is said to have been descended from a samurai who had survived this siege and escaped to a village, where he lived as a peasant. The story itself has little to do with actual events, but significantly enough, Akinari places it against the background of one of the incidents that undermined the authority of the Ashikaga shogun and led to a century of internecine war, thus paving the way eventually for the rise of the Tokugawa family.

Many famous places figure in ‘The Lust of the White Serpent,’ making it one of the richest of all the tales in terms of historical geography. The cape of Sano is mentioned in the Man'yōshū, as are the mountains of Yoshino. The names of the emperors Jimmu and Nintoku are associated with the Kumano area, to the holy spots of which court nobles and members of the imperial family often made pilgrimage. The Tsuba Market and Hase Temple appear frequently in Heian literature. The Dōjōji Temple, of Komatsubara, is immortalised in the nō and on the kabuki stage.⁸ Although no date is given, internal evidence shows that the tale was set in the Heian period. In spite of the dearth of names of actual persons and events, ‘The Lust of the White Serpent’ thus reveals Akinari's sense of history and the passage of time.

Similarly, no specific date is mentioned in ‘The Blue Hood.’ But the Zen priest, Kaian, was an actual person who lived in the fifteenth century, and the Daichūji Temple is a real place. The Oyamas were descended from the Fujiwara line and had settled on a manor in the vicinity of Tonda, flourishing as one of the strong local families. Such use of historical detail heightens interest in the priest who is fatally attracted to a beautiful boy, his erotic lust for corpses, and the mysterious change that Kaian witnesses.

Oka Sanai, the principal character of ‘Wealth and Poverty,’ is also a historical personage. His master, Gamō Ujisato, served as one of Hideyoshi's comrades in arms. Both men fought with distinction for Nobunaga, and as a reward Ujisato received one of Nobunaga's daughters in marriage; furthermore, he was baptised as a Christian. Later, Hideyoshi assigned him to Aizu, in the east, and it is recorded that he feared Ujisato and eventually had him poisoned. Historical anecdotes tell how Ujisato's famous retainer, Sanai, loved to display his great wealth, how people criticised him for this, and how he rewarded his follower's frugality in a way that suggests Akinari's treatment in the tale.

But more generally speaking, gold is the main subject of the tale. This metal in ancient Japan was valued chiefly for its decorative qualities. During the middle ages it took on a religious meaning, symbolising the Western Paradise to believers of the Pure Land sect of Buddhism or Zen enlightenment to adherents of this school. Not until the Momoyama period and the introduction of new mining techniques from China did it acquire economic significance as a basis for financial transactions. Even then, gold coins such as those minted at the end of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, which Sanai gave to his follower, were not very practical as currency and were used primarily as rewards or prizes.⁹ In the final passage Akinari cautiously touches upon the political situation of the time and mentions the famous generals of the day. Hideyoshi's period of ascendancy, it is said, would be short, and an auspicious prophecy tells that the Tokugawa family would bring both peace and prosperity to the realm, in a passage perhaps designed to mollify would-be censors.

PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

Philosophy and religion deal basically with the three questions of where man comes from, where he goes, and how he should spend his life on earth. Traditionally, in Japan Shinto thought and beliefs suggested for the first that the gods gave man life. Buddhism taught regarding the second that when a person died he might attain salvation in paradise. Confucian doctrine, pertaining to the third, urged everyone in moral and ethical terms to live in harmony with his brothers and with the universe. As expressed in a phrase popular in Akinari's day, ‘The three teachings are one.’ Besides these three main systems of philosophy and religion, the role of Taoism and Shingaku deserves mention. Akinari's tales were written for a society in which people felt close to the world of nature and to the gods of the nation. Prayer, music, ritual, and the spiritual life were still valued more highly than the practice of business. Increasingly, however, emphasis on commerce and wealth tended to weaken old traditions, and in a large degree Akinari wished to counteract such developments and strengthen the spiritual quality in national life.

First of all, the vital and emotive side of the tales involved Shinto beliefs. Many able men wished to break away from the constraints of orthodox Confucian teachings. They put renewed faith in native gods, who were chiefly semi-divine and often benevolent local deities and existed in a hierarchy leading up to the imperial family's ancestral spirit. In an unbroken chain, each individual was linked to the rest of society, and time continued from the original creation as if ripples of water from a primordial splash. Life welled and surged without need or plan, in an abundance of forms held together by a throbbing, vital impulse.

The school of national learning served as the scholarly and philosophical arm of Shinto beliefs, and one of the momentous questions of the time involved the matter of sovereignty. Without the crown there would be no England, and without the emperor there would be no Japan. In ‘White Peak,’ where Akinari deals with the role of the emperor and state, he reaffirms the Japanese idea of ‘one line forever,’ and he emphasises the divine right of the imperial family. As noted earlier, Sutoku takes the Confucian point of view that government rests on public opinion, whereas Saigyō argues in favour of national customs and traditions that began in the dawn of history and carry magical significance. The unique character of Japan consists in having a sovereign who traces his lineage to divine origins. According to Akinari's belief, the imperial family must be venerated, Shinto ceremonies observed, and the sacred shrines supported. Indeed, after Akinari's time, partly owing to the influence of ‘White Peak,’ Sutoku's spirit was enshrined in Kyoto in an effort to atone for the suffering that he had endured.

Elsewhere, Akinari touches on Shinto shrines and rituals. In ‘The Caldron of Kibitsu,’ for instance, he mentions rites involving fire and water. Boiling water was stirred with a wand of dwarf bamboo leaves, and the drops of moisture that rose from the swirling mass were thought to contain the essence of divinity. The singing sound of the caldron was used to prophesy future events. Such caldrons are mentioned in early reports of trial by ordeal, and in shamanistic terms these rituals symbolise a sacred marriage between the god of fire and the goddess of water. Bands of mountain cenobites, known as yamabushi, associated the boiling caldron with the mother's womb. To enter it denoted purification by undergoing the pains of hell and achieving rebirth to a higher life. The shrine of the Yamato clan deities figures incidentally in ‘The Lust of the White Serpent.’

In contrast to the Shinto aspect of the tales, the Confucian side deals primarily with morality and ethics. Despite his association with the Shinto movement, which was gaining in power and influence, Akinari shunned the excesses of the school of national learning, thinking of himself as an independent scholar. He upheld the basic virtues of the Confucian classics—loyalty, honour, duty—much in the samurai tradition of his father. He stressed such values as stability and frugality. He respected life and felt deep concern for future generations. He criticised all forms of selfishness and personal indulgence. But his Confucian beliefs were tempered by the conviction that the gods and spirits still flourished and that a man who lacked faith and piety risked madness or death. To him the Confucian calling entailed not sterile didacticism but moral intensity, as exemplified by the ideals that Samon and Soemon share in ‘Chrysanthemum Tryst.’ Similarly, the desire to turn over a new leaf, which Katsushirō, Toyoo, and the aberrant monk of ‘The Blue Hood’ possess in common, suggest that a person who resists the forces of decline and restores his innate purity and goodness might contribute to the general welfare and help to arrest social decay. This Confucian quality helped bring about the Meiji Restoration and the modernisation of Japan. One might reshape an individual or a civilisation without annihilating it.

Traces of Taoist thought and attitudes also appear in the tales, serving to impart an element of mystery and romance. Oftentimes, however, it is virtually impossible to distinguish Taoist ideas from those of Shinto.¹⁰ Akinari extolled the spontaneous man's innate desire to follow nature and transcend the illusory and unreal distinctions on which all human systems of morality were based. Travelling as a free spirit, living simply, acting naturally, and taking things easy combined with a belief in the irony of life. All living creatures were assumed to be equal. For instance, part of the basic idea in ‘The Carp That Came to My Dream’ may be traced to an anecdote in the Chinese Taoist classic, Lieh tzu, involving a man who was fond of seagulls and every morning went into the ocean and swam about with them. Another anecdote from the same text, which tells of a man who carved a mulberry leaf out of jade and imitated nature so exquisitely that no one could distinguish his artifice from the real object, resembles Akinari's idea at the end of his carp tale.¹¹ The ‘innocent heart,’ a term used to describe Katsushirō, in the third tale, is related to the Taoist ideal of simplicity (as well as that of Shintoism), and conveys a sense of uprightness and scrupulous honesty combined with an easy-going nature. All manner of pretence is equally to be shunned. Akinari's disgust for Shōtarō, the deceitful wretch in the sixth tale, and his ambivalence toward Manago, the serpent spirit of the seventh tale, remind the reader that passion throws out a myriad tentacles. It destroys peace and reduces the mind to a state of turmoil. It has to be quelled in order to maintain one's self-control. Whereas Shōtarō fails to curb his natural appetites, Toyoo succeeds, though only at enormous cost.

Akinari's values and standards were also influenced by Shingaku, or ‘Heart-learning.’ This doctrine began among merchants in Osaka and later spread to other areas, gaining adherents among all classes of people.¹² Although basically Confucian in its emphasis on how man ought to live in the present, it embraced Shinto and Buddhist ideas, as well. Virtues such as hard work, thrift, and ambition were emphasised, though men were enjoined to avoid the extremes of greed and avarice. Warfare, however, held little romantic attraction. As Akinari writes in ‘Wealth and Poverty,’ ‘Brave men whose business is with bows and arrows have forgotten that wealth forms the cornerstone of the nation, and they have followed a disgusting policy.’ His spirit of gold shows startling resemblance to the God of Wealth, a curious and grotesque folk-deity who holds sheaves of rice, as if to indicate that worldly riches need not be evil. Obviously, then, Akinari's concept of morality, despite its basically Confucian orientation, has little connection with narrowly orthodox views but rather displayed a broad, eclectic spirit.

Buddhist philosophy imparts a universal quality to the tales and contributes much to their subtlety. Akinari's concept of reality shows features of the teachings of the Tendai sect, or T'ien-t'ai, as this distinctively Chinese school that may be related to Taoism was called in the country of its origin. Akinari accepts the Buddhist belief (though to be sure it is shared by the Taoists) that life is but a dream and a shadow. Because people are trapped in the wheel of life and death and endure manifold afflictions, men practice spiritual cultivation—as Priest Kaian in ‘The Blue Hood’ forces the aberrant monk to do—in order to gain religious salvation and destroy the illusions that cause suffering. Such meditation was based on the doctrine of ‘concentration and insight’ (shikan, or in Chinese, chih kuan), and it required one to silence his active thoughts and to reflect on the true nature of matter and phenomena. Mind was thought to dominate over matter. Man might control his destiny by meditation and monastic discipline, as taught in the Chinese commentaries on the Lotus Sutra.¹³

This philosophy permeates Heian literature,¹⁴ medieval poetry, the nō theatre, and haiku, as well as Akinari's tales. Indeed, at times the Tendai teachings and those of Christianity seem quite parallel. Milton's lines, ‘The Mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven,’ and his idea that ‘real and substantial liberty’ comes from within rather than from without man's heart,¹⁵ resemble Akinari's assertion that, ‘A slothful mind creates a monster, a rigorous one enjoys the fruit of the Buddha.’ Akinari believed that without religious discipline, however individualistic a form it might take, man could not survive spiritual crisis, and he accepted the idea that sorrow was inherent in human life, a point of view hardly foreign to the Puritan or Calvinist mind. Although by Akinari's time these ideas were interpreted in Shinto terms and figured prominently in Motoori's writings on classical Japanese literature, they stemmed originally from Buddhist doctrines.

Akinari and other learned men of the eighteenth century agreed that Buddhism as a religion was useless and that the clergy was degenerate. Nevertheless, the underlying themes and imagery of the tales suggest that this faith still dominated the popular imagination. Recurring Buddhist images, such as bells, drums, cymbals, and conch shells, tell of the resonant quality of the universe and indicate auditory and musical harmony. When these reassuring sounds are far away, as in the first, fifth, and eighth tales, one feels an eerie sense of foreboding. The bird of paradise, whose song is Buddha's law, in the fifth tale conveys an apocalyptic sense of miracle. In Akinari's day temples remained powerful landowners and enjoyed political patronage. Those that had been burned at the end of the middle ages, such as the Mii Temple, were rebuilt, and they continued to attract devout pilgrims.

Just as the heavenly bodies revolved, so too might dead souls return to the world of the living, though understandably their form would be altered. The past is never forgotten; the future cannot be ignored. The cosmos itself is constantly changing, and even the soul is subject to metamorphosis. In a Buddhist sense, Miyagi, of ‘The House Amid the Thickets,’ is both a reincarnation of the legendary Tegona of old and also a separate individual. Owing to the many changes in Japanese society, faith may have been reduced to a vestige of former days, but Buddhism, together with Shinto, Confucian, and other beliefs, still played a role scarcely less impressive than that of the Church in the Western world. Once having separately discerned the main philosophical and religious elements of the tales, however, the reader must let them commingle and re-emerge in a harmonious union of these beliefs, which the tales represented for an age when myth still had magical power over poets and ordinary people.

THE ART OF FICTION

In the preface to the tales Akinari briefly expresses his views on the art of fiction. Praising Water Margin and The Tale of Genji—the most widely known works of Chinese and Japanese narrative prose—as monuments of creative imagination, he suggests that they are true to life because they embody deep feeling and evoke an intimate sense of the past. Without being explicit, he compares his own tales to these older masterpieces, inviting readers to enjoy what he has created. He points out that although his tales are somewhat fanciful in subject matter, they show a degree of unity, and he hopes that people will not be misled into thinking that his stories are literally true, so that he need not fear being punished, as Lo Kuan-chung and Lady Murasaki had supposedly been, for deceiving people.

The remarks in his preface reveal an interest in the theory of literature and the uses of fiction, one which lasted for the rest of his life. He first wrote of his views on this subject in the 1770s in an essay that does not survive. Later on, in 1793, when editing Kamo Mabuchi's work on the Ise monogatari (The Tales of Ise),¹⁶ he told how the art of fiction had flourished in China and Japan. He explained that the objectives were the same both in Chinese narrative prose and in Japanese tales and romances. Writers wishing to lament their personal unhappiness about the world they lived in showed their feelings in the form of nostalgia for times past. In his own words, ‘When an author sees the nation flourishing, he knows that it must eventually decay, like the bloom of a fragrant flower. When he considers what happens in the end to leaders of state, he privately laughs at their folly. He points out to people who might seek longevity what finally became of Urashima Tarō's bejewelled box. He makes foolish men who struggle to collect rare treasures feel ashamed of themselves. He tries to avoid the desire for fame, composing his innocent tales about events of the past for which there are no sources.’¹⁷ Akinari believed that literature is a vehicle by which to express in a highly sublimated form one's discontent with society, and his views remind the Western reader of such works as Shelley's ‘Defence of Poetry,’ Wordsworth's Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, and James's Art of Fiction.

Nevertheless, no conflict arose between the demands of art for art's sake and art intended primarily as a means of communicating truth. For Akinari the two were inseparable, and he embraced both, believing that Lady Murasaki and Lo Kuanchung had done likewise. Fiction heightened one's consciousness and carried the soul to a spiritual union with higher reality. In Buddhist terms art was ecstasy, and suggested a mind or heart wonderful and profound beyond human thought. As in Tendai and Zen philosophy, the human heart became its own creator, intuitively forming a mental vision of reality. Accordingly, art did not merely imitate nature; rather, the poet shaped it, as the sculptor did his material or the painter his forms. Artistic excellence depended on the quality of the poet's vision and the level of his spiritual development or awareness. One cut away what was gross, straightened what was crooked, and lightened what was heavy. In the act of literary expression one encompassed truth and knowledge and communicated it concisely and accurately within the limits of one's understanding. Beauty was not subordinate to truth but was an intrinsic part of it. Art was not the handmaiden of religion: the two were as if the wings of a single bird, both of which were needed to fly.

Where did such views come from? On the one hand, Akinari knew of Lady Murasaki's famous passage about the art of fiction, and on the other hand he was familiar with the remarks of the ancient Chinese historian, Ssu-ma Ch'ien. Lady Murasaki herself combined the idea of art for its own sake and art as a medium for conveying truth. While stressing the practical value of literature, she wrote of how fiction might deeply move the reader and how the author himself might be stirred by ‘an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart.’¹⁸ Behind Lady Murasaki's views on fiction lay Buddhist and Chinese philosophy, as well as earlier Japanese essays such as the kana preface to the Kokinshū.¹⁹ Just as the lotus flower grows above the turbid waters, so does purity and truth rise above evil. Fiction might deal with ‘lies’ or describe evil as well as good, but its ultimate aim is to express truth and help people in their spiritual development.

Actually, as Akinari realised, Lady Murasaki's theory of literature does not contradict Ssu-ma Ch'ien's. According to both views art involves morality, and literature has a social function, though to be sure, in practice Lady Murasaki shows an unsurpassed aesthetic awareness. Utilitarian concerns are as important as strong emotions deeply felt. In Ssu-ma Ch'ien's words, authors of great literary works are aggrieved men who, ‘Poured forth their anger and dissatisfaction,’ because they feel ‘a rankling in their hearts.’ Being unable to accomplish what they wished, they write about ancient matters ‘in order to pass on their thoughts to future generations.’²⁰ The reader is immediately reminded of Lady Murasaki's understanding of literature as the outcry of the passionate heart.

In addition to being directly familiar with Ssu-ma Ch'ien and Lady Murasaki's ideas, Akinari admired a famous preface to the Water Margin, which was written by a late-Ming Chinese scholar named Li Cho-wu (1527-1602). Like Akinari, he too stressed the importance of profound feeling and asserted that good authors are always motivated by ‘anger and dissatisfaction.’ ‘To write without deep emotion,’ he said ‘was the equivalent to shivering without suffering from the cold or groaning without feeling sick.’²¹ In a flowery passage at the end of his preface, Li explains that a romance should be a serious work, which men must read in order to understand the true significance of life. When vexed and aggrieved, the writer turns to romance and criticises injustice by means of creating an idealised universe. One recalls Dickens's view that the creative faculty must have complete possession of the author or poet and master his whole life.

Deeply influenced by earlier Chinese and Japanese writers, Akinari embodies in almost every tale a typically Confucian moral, a Buddhist concept of fate, and a Shinto belief in the power of the impassioned heart. Virtue must be rewarded and vice punished, in the present as in ages past. If a man is greedy, lustful, or overly ambitious, he might lose what he loves most, suffer great hardship, and experience deep emotional pain. Avarice brings only sorrow and misfortune. Man must also beware of woman's spell, for she might use her charms to destroy him.

Akinari's basic ideas about the art of fiction contrast somewhat with those of Motoori. Whereas Motoori taught that the purpose of the novel, tale, or romance was, ‘Not to preach morality but to evoke a certain pattern of emotional sensibility,’²² Akinari tried to balance artistic and utilitarian ends. He believed that the suffering previous authors endured for their art was worthwhile, and he implied that his tales might stand comparison with the best work of his illustrious predecessors. Combining bold assertiveness and defensive humility, Akinari's views on fiction contribute to the moral integrity and the sense of beauty that distinguish his tales from lesser works.

WORLD OF THE SUPERNATURAL

‘The music of Heaven. … Wordless, it delights the mind,’ wrote the Taoist sage, Chuang-tzu.²³ On the one hand Akinari's tales deal with reality and reflect the natural world, but on the other they soar to a loftier realm, where ghosts and spirits freely appear and men encounter inscrutable forces. Out of a precarious balance between the sensory world and the realm of the unknown ‘the music of heaven’ emerges. To the travelling priest, distraught scholar, wayward husband, artist, pilgrim, or impressionable youth the shadows of the imagination may arise in music and dance. They may be heard and understood, Akinari suggests, by a simple and spontaneous man in a situation highly charged with emotion.

Before all else, the supernatural side of the tales was intended to attract the reader. The original subtitle carried the words Kinko kaidan, or ‘New and Old Tales of Wonder,’ inviting the public to enter a world charged with spectral activity and haunted by gods and spirits. Far from the reassuring notes of bells and trumpets, where Buddhist chants and ringing staves could not be heard, magical sounds fill the air. Matter and energy become fused in a miraculous union of man and shade. Whatever the mind might imagine becomes real, and man gains a sense of mystic vision and illumination, as if the soul suddenly takes light from a supreme being. Like all mystics, Saigyō and the other men in Ugetsu monogatari vividly remember their confrontation with spirits that are at once dead and alive. In each tale the climatic action takes place at night, the favourite time for ghosts and apparitions, when the past is turning into the future. The role of the supernatural underscores the belief that Japan was a country rich in gods and spirits.

Although Akinari's ghosts and other worldly creatures show an animal nature that defied control and mastery, they have neither the bleeding skulls nor luminous hands of the spirits of Gothic novels; nor are they headless apparitions clad in armour or eerie forms extending phosphorescent claws toward the victim's throat. Rather, they are at once more primitive and more modern—to curb their power one needs prayer, meditation, and purity of heart. In spite of certain gloomy or even terrifying details, they leave on one an impression not of ugliness but of beauty. Above all, Akinari believed in his spirits and wished to convince his readers that the gods still lived and that the earth was charged with their elemental force. By evoking the gods and spirits he might illumine what was dark within himself and also within the reader.

Stories of ghosts, genies, demons, miracles, and animals that influence human events have always held universal appeal. In China, despite Confucian exhortation that the spiritual world is not a proper topic for human inquiry, tales and anecdotes about supernatural beings are as old as recorded literature. Indeed, the ch'i lin, or ‘unicorn,’ a benevolent spiritual animal, is said to have appeared as an omen to the mother of Confucius before her son's birth. According to legend, a charioteer later wounded a similar beast, foretelling the sage's death. Marvellous creatures appear freely in Taoist writings. Notices of occult beings occur in early dynastic histories. The oldest separate collection of supernatural tales was compiled around the end of the third century ad. In T'ang times the literary tale of the marvellous attained maturity, and from early times Chinese examples inspired Japanese writers.

Myth and legend in Japan expressed belief in the existence of spirits. Fairies and semi-celestial beings were thought to roam about the woods, mountains, seaside, waterfalls, and lakes, appearing in the spring haze or autumn mist. Great deities might journey in search of a loved one's soul or visit palaces under the sea in quest of a lost talisman. Various powers were attributed to the benevolent gods of heaven and earth and also to malicious spirits. Other mysterious forces were felt too vaguely to be personified. One worshipped the forces of good and used various spells to exorcise those of evil. Omens, divination, dreams, and oracles taught people how to live in a world filled with magical power. A verse in The Tales of Ise, which suggested several incidents in Akinari's tales, describes how evil spirits had an affinity for abandoned dwellings:

Mugura oite
Aretaru yado no
Uretaki wa
Kari ni mo oni no
Sudaku nari keri
When the weeds grow tall,
And a tumble-down house
Stands awesomely,
You should beware that demons
Are swarming there inside.(24)

Wherever shadows were deep, spirits and phantoms were sure to lurk, as indicated in a variety of early and medieval works. Some beliefs and stories were of native origin, and others came from China or even India.

As mentioned earlier, three centuries before Akinari's time new collections of Chinese short stories were brought to Japan, giving fresh impetus to the development of the supernatural tale. After the art of landscape painting was perfected, storytellers tried all the harder to cloak the natural world in a garb of mystery, inviting the reader to exercise his imagination and depicting a universe full of mysterious beings and forces. Consequently, in Akinari's day the Chinese influence in painting and the popularity of the ghostly tale went hand in hand. Japanese collections of supernatural tales were directly inspired by Chinese examples and appeared in several forms of narrative prose, notably the kana books, the tales of the floating world, and of course the reading books.

Especially after the appearance of Otogi bōko (The Bedside Storyteller) in 1666, a number of similar works were issued, leading eventually to Akinari's tales. Ugetsu monogatari, however, differs from earlier collections in a number of ways. One finds an emphasis on the human reaction rather than on the sensational appearance of the phantom or apparition, a tendency already found in Saikaku shokoku-banashi (Saikaku's Tales from Various Provinces). Compared to Akinari's, the earlier works are more anecdotal in nature—like the Buddhist narratives and stories of the middle ages. They typically resemble a sutra turned topsy-turvy: the supernatural event comes first and the moral follows, but the instructional feature of the scriptures nevertheless remains. True enough, in Akinari's tales the moral function has by no means disappeared, but the story stands as an independent work of literary art, similar to a well-wrought ghostly tale by Henry James, or other Western masters. Moreover, Akinari strove to add features that appealed to the scholarly interests of readers who had hitherto scorned popular fiction as unworthy of their attention. Still, at the same time that he paid careful attention to literary craft and scholastic respectability, Akinari (like the Christian mystics and the neo-Platonists) believed in the occult, the supernatural, and the transcendental. To appreciate his viewpoint one must put aside rational criticism and transport himself backward in time to a dimly lit world, where moonlight as the main source of nocturnal illumination was intense and pure. Here, as Saikaku said, ‘Everyone is a ghost. Anything in the world is possible.’²⁵ Or, in Akinari's own words, in the darkness, when the flickering oil lamp dies, ‘Demons might appear and consort with men, and humans fear not to mingle with spirits.’ Then when the light is restored, ‘The gods and devils disappear and hide somewhere, leaving no trace. …’²⁶ Until the end of his life Akinari insisted that the power of the supernatural was real, and he based his argument on personal experience as well as on evidence from earlier literature. As with a Japanese garden, which represents not only nature itself but its idealization, the tales embody not only a view of reality but a vision of its essence. Akinari's reader finds himself ineluctably on the edge of a magic circle, ready to be drawn up by unseen powers in a vortex of light and song.

LITERARY STYLE

By the early middle ages a literary style that mixed both Chinese characters and Japanese phonetic symbols known as kana had become the standard form in narrative prose. Akinari's tales were in this style, which until the modern period was used primarily in novels, short stories, and popular histories. Many of the principal words were written with Chinese characters used according to their meaning, while particles, suffixes, and some semantic elements were expressed phonetically. Known descriptively as the Wakan konkōbun, or the ‘Chinese Japanese mixed style,’ it differed from the form of court poetry and Heian romance in three ways. First of all, being more straightforward, it lacked some of the elegant, poetic, and suggestive qualities of classical poetry and romance. Secondly, it permitted additional Chinese constructions, which allowed for more rigour and precision but which also demanded greater learning for its mastery. Lastly, it admitted as much colloquial grammar and vocabulary as the author fancied. In spite of influence from the spoken language, however, the mixed style remained a literary tool, largely divorced from ordinary speech.

For several reasons this style had begun to change by Akinari's time. First of all, popular drama and the rhetoric of the recital hall had a strong influence on narrative prose. Secondly, the revival in learning led by such scholars as Mabuchi and Motoori, who deliberately reverted to the classical mode of literary composition, led to fresh ideas about appropriateness in style. Yet further impetus came with the study of Chinese language and literature. Consequently, Akinari pursued a dualistic ideal. While aiming at a pure and lucid classical style, he wished to convey a sense of plain speech with a Chinese flavour. The result was a variation of the mixed style, known as gazoku-bun, ‘elegant and plain style,’ or giko-bun, ‘neoclassical style.’

Akinari realised that overly refined expression often fails to convey human sentiment, whereas simple and plain language might communicate such feelings with directness. He tried to combine the good qualities of elegance and simplicity while resisting the weight of blind tradition and refusing to be a prisoner of archaic forms. In the tales everything is expressed as one might wish to talk, but yet more dignified, attractive, and interesting. The result is a powerful and flexible tool able to impart the subtle message of the human heart and reflect the profound wisdom of the ancient sages. Better than anyone of his generation, Akinari mixed the stateliness of the old with the freshness of the new in a uniquely successful style.

By convention in Akinari's day the beginning of a tale or play was usually noble in taste, musical in tone, and composed with an ear for poetry. Ideally, the introductory section gave the reader a telescoped view of the whole. For instance, the opening passage of ‘White Peak’ adumbrates not only the theme of the first story but also that of the entire collection—a quest for enlightenment. Likewise, ‘Chrysanthemum Tryst’ begins with an imitative and sonorous passage that hints at what was to follow. Then in the body of the tale a plainer tone is employed, and at the end a short summary sentence resumes the earlier style. The rhetorical manner of classical Chinese alternates with the simpler rhythms of Japanese poetry and romance, much as the skylark soaring and diving. Akinari often strove for special effects at the beginning in order to enhance the quality of elegance and attain the desired balance.

Nevertheless, elegance in excess leads to frigidity. By capturing the word or phrase that gives the precise effect he wanted, and by adding an occasional light touch or a deft bit of irony, Akinari avoided this fault. In ‘Chrysanthemum Tryst,’ an old warrior grumbles ironically to his youthful companion about how young people are too timid. Throughout ‘The Carp That Came to My Dream’ Kōgi is treated with great whimsy. In ‘Wealth and Poverty’ Sanai's droll tone creates an atmosphere of lightness, despite the heavy nature of the subject. Akinari tried to convey a full measure of the absurdity and vulnerability of human nature.

For the most part, however, the style remains severe, formal, and erudite, largely owing to the way Akinari used his various literary sources and employed his personal feelings and experiences. Beneath the plain surface of the prose an elaborate beauty lies hidden, reminiscent of that in the nō drama or the tea ceremony. The more unwieldy the subject, the more delicately he refined it, as in ‘Bird of Paradise.’ Here the material is controlled so strictly that the uninformed reader can scarcely imagine the deeds and events that Hidetsugu's apparition represents. The story overshadows real life, as the moon may eclipse the sun.

Certain mechanical aspects of style also add to the total effect. Most of all, one recalls the cursive, calligraphic script of the original edition, which was carved on wooden blocks and printed on double leaves of soft, hand-made paper. Many abbreviations are used, along with a number of extra kana symbols that were not officially considered as part of the syllabary. When the text was printed in movable type, all of this became lost. Punctuation in the original consists simply of a small oval sign that serves as a full stop, comma, semi-colon, and question mark. A waka verse of five, or a haiku of three lines in English takes only a single, slightly indented column in the woodblock text. Because quotation marks are not used, the reader is often free to decide whether a given passage should be dialogue or narrative. To the uninitiated person it is hard to tell where one syllable ends and the next begins or whether a certain symbol is Japanese or Chinese. The hand-printed text represents a work of art, in some ways plain and simple and yet complicated and demanding. The Western reader deserves to see the calligraphic form, even though he may never learn how the script is deciphered.

Usually Akinari's style was clear and lucid, at least as traditional Japanese literary texts go, but some points remain puzzling. Was the opening tale a first- or a third-person narrative? Was Akinari really telling about Saigyō, or for artistic purposes was he assuming the personage of Saigyō? The tale begins with words attributed to the twelfth-century poet, but later the name is used in a manner that might indicate either a personal narrative or an omniscient narrator. After the ghosts of Hidetsugu and his followers appear in ‘Bird of Paradise,’ a similar change in tone occurs. But some degree of vagueness and lack of explicitness is common in traditional Japanese texts. This adds to the appeal of the work and invites the reader's active participation in recreating it in his own mind.

Concerning how Akinari combined Chinese and Japanese stylistic elements, one recalls how the playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725) wrote that with Chinese hair styles people used Japanese combs, and with the native coiffure they did the reverse, so closely were the two cultures mixed. The same is true of Akinari's diction. Far beyond normal needs, he dotted his text with curious and difficult Chinese characters. These are explained in a Japanese gloss written by the right side of each line. Oftentimes, the diction seems fanciful or even outlandish, with archaic expressions from the Man'yōshū and colloquialisms found only in Chinese vernacular novels and tales. But Akinari's mastery of syntax pleased and surprised the reader of his day, though demanding of him the patience and concentration needed to read poetry.

The preface, however, being written entirely in one double leaf of literary Chinese, without any gloss at all, presents stylistic problems of its own. Although it may have been common knowledge in Akinari's day, how many people know nowadays who Lo Kuan-chung is or why his children are supposed to have been deaf? Unless one is familiar with Chinese classics, how could he guess that the phrase ‘crying pheasants and quarrelling dragons’ is derived from such works as The Book of Changes? Few Western readers are familiar with the legend that Lady Murasaki was sent to hell. The Chinese style of the preface and the information it contains was intended to give comfort to scholars and gentlemen who might be tempted to read the tales. The technique of using such a preface that embodies allusions to previous works enhances Akinari's style and marks it as part of the mainstream of early modern Japanese literature. The only recourse for the Western reader is to have copious textual notes and steadfast patience.

Of the two contrasting elements of style—the elegant and stately neoclassicism and plain speech tempered with a Chinese flavour—the first prevails over the second. A curious mosaic is the result, rich in rhetorical devices from earlier prose and poetry. The formal cadence of Chinese classics, pillow-words from early Japanese poetry, and expressions that echo The Tale of Genji all helped Akinari to achieve the desired combination of lyric and narrative qualities. Frequently, decorative elements form images and metaphors. Many of these are quite natural, as when heavy dew is compared to a steady drizzle of rain (a figure found in The Tale of Genji). But others are more difficult and arcane. When Sutoku's life in retirement, for instance, is likened to dwelling ‘in the Grove of Jewels, or on faraway Kushe Mountain,’ knowledge of Chinese classics is needed to understand that the emperor had abdicated and continued to live in dignified circumstances. Ordinary images and obscure literary allusions both serve to intensify the mood, the former by adding intimacy and familiarity, the latter by suggesting depth and profundity. In addition, such devices as the rhythmic progression of numbers near the beginning of ‘Bird of Paradise’ and elsewhere are intended as a decorative technique to afford extra pleasure for the attentive reader. Acrostics, logograms, puzzles, riddles, and all manner of play on words have long been popular in Japan.

At times the cadence breaks into song, in a union of poetry and music. To savour the full effect, the tales must be read aloud. Like a nō play or a Gregorian chant, the flow of sound rises and falls in a solemn yet lyrical melody, because the texture of the language more nearly resembles that of traditional drama or poetry than that of modern prose fiction. Indeed, musical elements, such as rhythm, harmony, and symmetry, contribute greatly to the stylistic excellence of the tales. But image, metaphor, and music lead one back to myth and allegory. Akinari's style was ideal for spinning parables around an event and for emphasising the frailties of man. To find the ultimate meaning of the tales one must return to the content.

CHINESE INFLUENCE

Just as during the past century the Western influence has been pervasive, so in Akinari's time little remained untouched by the civilisation of China. The Four Books and the Five Classics of the Confucian tradition comprised the basic course of study in the private schools. Such texts were learned by rote and held in respect, much as the family Bible in the West. The wisdom of these classical works went unquestioned, and advanced education was built on its foundation. Quite naturally, Akinari was indebted not only to the basic Confucian texts but also to various other Chinese sources—dynastic histories, T'ang poetry and prose, Ming fiction and essays.

His indebtedness to the Confucian classics shows up in many distinctive expressions scattered throughout the tales. Some of these may have come from his direct knowledge of Chinese sources; yet others were derived indirectly. For instance, ‘the crying pheasants and quarrelling dragons’ of the preface appear not only in The Book of Changes and the Shu ching, two pre-Confucian classics, but also in the preface to the Ming collection, New Tales for Lamplight, which Akinari admired. Such phrases reflect his broad learning and his taste for classical scholarship, which he shared with other fine minds of the eighteenth century. As one would expect, he was familiar with the Analects and The Book of Mencius, a pair of texts that until the twentieth century guided men on a path of upright behaviour and taught that human beings are part of a natural order that pervades the entire universe. The laconic words and provocative ideas of Confucius and Mencius helped Akinari to convey a tone of moral urgency, a flavour of folk wisdom, and a touch of popular appeal, aiding him to achieve ready communication with his readers.

After mastering the basic books of the Confucian tradition, students in Akinari's day moved on to refined literature and instructive history. One is therefore hardly surprised to discover in his tales a number of passages indebted to Ssu-ma Ch'ien's Shih chi (Records of the Grand Historian of China), as well as other titles of the period of the warring states and the early imperial age. In particular, the scepticism and mysticism of the classical Taoist philosophers met with new popularity around Akinari's time, as previously mentioned. Bashō and other haiku poets emulated the unrestrained fancy of the Taoist masters, and the scholars of the national learning also accepted such influence in the formulation of their ideas and the development of their style. Wherever Akinari extols the beauty of nature or describes mystery and surprise, the Tao-te-ching, Chuang-tzu, and Lieh-tzu are never far removed. A measure of Akinari's wry sense of humour comes from Taoist sources.

The influence of T'ang prose and poetry and that of Ming and Ch'ing painting are also obvious, though they come partly through intermediate sources. In Akinari's day the most widely read anthology of T'ang poets was periodically reprinted and extravagantly admired. The Japanese painters who called themselves bunjin, or ‘literary men,’ some of whom were Akinari's close friends and associates, exemplified the ideals and objectives of Li Po and Tu Fu. Like the artists of his day, Akinari practiced calligraphy, poetry, and antiquarian studies. The same transcendental philosophy that these artists conveyed in purely visual terms may be found in the tales. Love of the simple life away from the noise and tension of the city, pleasant conversation with congenial friends, and a sense of the futility of worldly ambitions characterised Po Chü-i's poetry, Buson's painting, and of course Akinari's tales. Ultimately, the account of Saigyō's ascent of Mt Chigogadake owes as much to poems and paintings of the Yangtze gorges or the mountains of Shensi and Szechuan as to actual descriptions in contemporary guidebooks or earlier literature. The same may be said of Muzen and his son's climb to Mt Kōya and of Kaian's visit to the Daichūji Temple. Largely, the inspiration of T'ang poetry and prose was transmitted through the amateur painters and authors of the Ming dynasty, who worked not to fulfill a patron's wishes but rather to cultivate human character and find personal pleasure.

No doubt the most powerful and direct literary influence, however, remains that of Ming fiction and essays. Every tale shows traces of the language, style, or plots of New Tales for Lamplight and the three anthologies of colloquial short stories known as the San yen. The long picaresque romance, Water Margin, served Akinari not only in his preface but also in his description of the dilapidated temple in ‘The Blue Hood.’ One particularly unusual Ming source is an early sixteenth-century encyclopedic compilation entitled Wu tsa tsu (Five Assorted Offerings), by Hsieh Chao-che, a poet, scholar, official, traveller, and collector of old books and objects of art. Banned in eighteenth-century China, Wu tsa tsu was preserved in Japan, where owing to its breadth and scope and highly personal tone, it found special favour among artists and men of letters. Akinari consulted the work frequently in later years, as well as when he was writing the tales.

But how may one analyse the total effect of the Chinese influence on the tales? Above all, Akinari's readers expected a serious author to display his knowledge of recondite classics. They welcomed the Chinese flavour, especially that of relatively fresh and unfamiliar works, such as Water Margin and the San yen. Therefore, the student of literary history will find one sort of significance. But for the general reader several other points of view come to mind. The first of these is translation. Although one cannot apply this term rigorously to any complete story, owing to the freedom that Akinari takes, some parts of certain tales come very close to being translations. Four of these, ‘Chrysanthemum Tryst,’ ‘The House Amid the Thickets,’ ‘The Carp That Came to My Dream,’ and ‘The Lust of the White Serpent,’ retain much of the spirit of their Chinese models. Names are changed, scenes reset, and stylistic conventions, imagery, and allusions from classical Japanese literature are added, but these tales remain faithful to the Chinese and give somewhat the impression of a free and poetic translation or adaptation.

All of the four tales mentioned above, and especially ‘The Lust of the White Serpent,’ nevertheless reveal enough Japanese elements that an uninformed reader might think of them as purely a product of native inspiration. Although the immediate source for ‘The Lust of the White Serpent’ is a Chinese story about a white snake who appears in the form of a beautiful woman and bewitches a young man, Japanese legends about serpents in human guise also existed from early times. While nearly every situation in the Chinese model has its parallel in Akinari's tale, the setting, characters, and diction are all Japanese. Furthermore, the Chinese version is more loosely constructed and designed to appeal to the ordinary city-dweller. Akinari's treatment reminds the reader of a nō play. The spirit, whether really that of woman or serpent, must be firmly exorcised. Although the sacrifice is great, man achieves maturity and learns to purify his heart.

Akinari's use of Chinese material (as well as that of his Japanese sources), suggests an attitude toward originality that may seem strange to a modern Western audience. Novelty for its own sake carried a low premium. Readers accepted a story more readily if they thought it was old or had come from China. Consequently, imitation was encouraged. For Akinari this act did not mean intellectual poverty or failure of the imagination; rather, it indicated a noble trust in his own strength. Far from abandoning one's creative personality and yielding himself to another author or work, one practiced imitation in order to gain aesthetic merit. By following in the footsteps of the men of old, one hoped to find new worlds. By mastering his sources, one infused them with fresh life. Imitation as an accepted mode of creativity dated back to the practice of early Chinese and Japanese poets. Far better to copy with skill, it was generally held, than to make something that was new but inane.

By understanding how Akinari uses his Chinese sources one may learn to appreciate passages that suggest another author, literary work, or even the manner of an entire period or culture. One discovers how Chinese phrases or metaphors are skillfully adapted to enrich the Japanese language and how Akinari handles the stylistic problems of his Chinese literary sources. In their visual form Chinese characters and phrases might preserve their original meaning. By adding a phonetic gloss, Akinari could suggest a Japanese interpretation and denote specific literary associations. The possibilities were virtually limitless, as if one were to mix French and English poetry with quotations from Latin and Greek classics. Owing to Akinari's ingenuity, a reader could enjoy the visual and semantic associations of the Chinese character with the security and immediacy of the Japanese phonetic script, keeping the best of both worlds. Accordingly, nearly every tale in some degree makes free use of aphorisms, images, metaphors, motifs, and ideas from Chinese texts. The discovery of how this old material is used adds to one's pleasure and enlarges one's understanding, as if a door has opened, leading into an uncharted realm of the human imagination.

INFLUENCE OF JAPANESE CLASSICS

Two streams of narrative prose flourished in Akinari's day. The first was mainly fed by earlier literature and history—Chinese as well as Japanese. The second was inspired by actual life and experience in the everyday world. More often than not, the former was serious and noble in tone and was meant to enlighten or instruct the reader. The latter was intended to be popular, amusing, and primarily for entertainment. Although a tendency to combine the two streams persisted, on the one hand Saikaku's tales of the floating world and the character sketches published by the Hachimonjiya, or ‘Figure Eight Shop,’ usually belonged to the second category, and, on the other, Ugetsu monogatari and the ‘reading books’ are properly classified with the first. Quite understandably, Akinari's indebtedness to earlier Japanese works extended to nearly every literary form and period.

No doubt the reader has already realised that the lyric impulse of the Man'yōshū and court poetry was preeminent among the Japanese influences. Indeed, poetry pervades the entire Japanese tradition. The poet, hot with the blood of life, seized experience and turned it into song, gracing whatever he touched with a startling awareness of human feelings. Concise and melodious, the poetry that resulted was rooted in everyday life, and its basic aim was to free men and women from the restraint of mundane affairs. Whenever a person was possessed by deep emotions about life and love or overcome with sadness and sorrow, whenever he felt a smothering sense of constraint, he might try through poetry to share his feelings with others and thereby find relief from his frustrations. The simplicity of Japanese poetic forms served to further this ideal. Almost anyone might combine words to form a musical pattern with a reasonably clear meaning, though the best poets in addition achieved intimacy, allusiveness, depth of feeling, and a maximum of content within a minimum of form. Certainly the attentive reader of the tales will recognise the voice of Japanese poetry, even without the aid of detailed notes, though their inclusion may lead one to still fuller appreciation.

Above all, the earliest and greatest anthology, the Man'yōshū, exerted a conspicuous influence on the tales. Study of this collection was one of the favourite activities of the scholars of the national learning. Indeed, Akinari contributed his share to its explication and to its revival in late eighteenth-century Japan. In his choice of diction and geographic names and also in the content of the stories themselves, Akinari showed fondness for this fountainhead of Japanese poetry. A few points relating to the influence of the Man'yōshū on the tales have already been discussed, but for a full understanding of its inspiration the Western reader should consult Japanese commentaries and studies. Yet other early collections of verse, including the best-known imperial anthologies, also left their mark. The Tales of Ise, however, deserves special mention. To an early collection of waka verses it is supposed that unknown authors added brief snatches of narrative prose which told about the circumstances behind the poems. The resulting work became a classic of Japanese literature and served as a handbook for young lovers and a guide for mature men and women who wished to convey their feelings for one another in poetry. Besides the specific influence of this work on Ugetsu monogatari, in later years Akinari wrote a preface and commentary for The Tales of Ise, and the title as well as the style of his light and amusing sketches on contemporary life and manners—Kuse monogatari (Ise, a place name, becoming Kuse, meaning ‘Faults’)—were derived from this Heian classic.

Traditionally, in Japan, poetry was combined with prose. The two forms harmonised, as a man and a woman well matched. The classical romances that Akinari knew and to which he devoted great energy owe much to both the poet and the storyteller. Although works such as The Tale of Genji deal with everyday life, they suggest in lyrical prose interspersed with waka verse an unreal world, which one might wind into a painted scroll, each colourful scene merging with the next.

Without suggesting that Akinari's tales in any way rival The Tale of Genji, which breaks away in volcanic fashion from the surrounding terrain to form a magnificent peak of its own, both works suggest a quest, that simplest of all romantic structures. Neither Lady Murasaki's novel nor Akinari's collection of tales, however, shows an insatiable craving after absolute knowledge at whatever cost. Rather, each reveals a Buddhist search for wisdom—that most pragmatic and adjustable of virtues. The authors told not of adventure or high romance, but more simply the search of the soul for understanding and the struggle of man to achieve a degree of enlightenment in a human world where people often repeat their old accustomed mistakes. The wisdom found in Akinari's tales, therefore, teaches one to find happiness in this life by casting off worldly desire and by curbing ambition. It represents a Buddhist sense of resignation (though tempered by Chinese thought and native attitudes toward life), as found in the poem,

Iro wa nioedo
chiri nuru wo
waga yo tare so
tsune naran
Ui no okuyama
kyō koete
asaki yume mi shi
ei mo sezu
Though the blossoms may be fragrant,
They are doomed to fall,
Just as in this world of ours
No one lives forever.
Today I'll cross the mountains
Of this mortal world
And cast off dreams of vanity
And forget all futile pleasures.

Indeed, these simple stanzas, which use each phonetic symbol of the Japanese language one time only, have served for a thousand years as a sort of alphabet song, and they very nearly epitomise Akinari's theme.

The literature of the Yamato and Heian periods not only influenced the tone of Akinari's tales, but it also afforded him techniques for integrating poetry with prose and furnished him with his underlying motifs. In another way of expressing the search for wisdom that Ugetsu monogatari shares with the best-known works of Japanese literature, Akinari's contemporary, Motoori, wrote of mono no aware, or ‘the awareness of things,’ though he was referring specifically to ancient literary classics. Akinari's tales also evince this quality. Like The Tale of Genji, they may help make young people aware of the pain of growing old and recall to old people what it was to be young.

Still another kind of earlier literature that left its mark on the tales was the personal narrative, a form that emerged in the Heian period, developed during the middle ages, and maintained its popularity until the present day. Although in the West few such works figure as memorable classics, some of the most highly regarded books in the Japanese tradition consist of diaries, travel sketches, and personal essays. As with the court novel, these works often combined prose and poetry, showing the Japanese preference for mixed forms and demonstrating what a narrow and shifting boundary separate fact from fiction and art from reality. Moreover, these texts had a special impact on the development of taste. When art springs directly from life, then the personal diary, travel sketch, and random notes might furnish not only pleasure for the original writer but also enjoyment for the casual reader. Examples such as Lady Sei's Makura no sōshi (The Pillow Book)²⁷ and Yoshida Kenkō's Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness) in a general way influenced Akinari's style and helped to form his attitudes toward life. Kenkō's motto, ‘The one thing you can be certain of is the truth that all is uncertainty,’ indeed applies to Akinari's tales. Beauty was linked to its perishability, and the most precious thing about life was its constant surprise, a point of view that Lafcadio Hearn called ‘the genius of Japanese civilization.’²⁸

Besides the forms already discussed, collections of medieval Japanese stories known as setsuwa figured prominently in the tales. Oftentimes literary versions of legends handed down by word of mouth and compiled by Buddhist priests, these short narratives, that abound in miracles, contributed greatly to the development of the mixed style during the middle ages. Inspired by Buddhist sermons and scriptures, they reveal an intermingling of oral and written tradition, and because they are often allegorical and instructive, many of them resemble fables. Akinari's diction, metaphor, and handling of the supernatural especially benefited from the example of these medieval short stories. In particular, Akinari learned the storyteller's conventional formulas and transitional phrases from the medieval setsuwa, which partly helps to explain why he concludes several of his tales with passages that call to mind the raconteur's matter-of-fact ending.

Certain of the war tales, or military chronicles (the best examples of which set the standard for the mixed style from the middle ages until Akinari's day) left their mark as well. Not only did he reflect a familiarity with widely-known titles, such as the Heike monogatari (The Tales of the Heike) and the Taiheiki,²⁹ but Akinari also reveals indebtedness to lesser-known works. Rather than epic descriptions of massed combat or great warriors equal to a thousand men, however, Akinari found in these texts first of all an interpretation of national history, as discussed earlier. But he also derived from the memorable episodes of the medieval chronicles techniques for treating sad and poignant episodes in a touching manner. The war tales abound in examples of religious enlightenment and supernatural incidents. Among the remote precursors of the medieval chronicles, the Kojiki³⁰ and the Nihon shoki,³¹ which tell of the lineage of the gods, the conquest of unruly deities, and the exploits of the early emperors, similarly figure in both the style and content of Ugetsu monogatari. Behind these sources, no matter how indirectly, lay the inspiration of the oral tales of the mountain and forest peoples of Northern and Central Asia and the ancient prototypes of Eastern European and Siberian mythical songs, heroic folk poetry, and fully developed epics.

One more branch of medieval literature that deserves mention is the nō drama. This remarkable form of theatre combines the complex literary devices of Japanese poetry, the epic material from the war tales, the philosophical outlook of Buddhism, and new elements such as the conventional michiyuki, or ‘travel scene.’ The nō conveys its lyric beauty in both representational and poetic terms. Many of Akinari's ghosts and spirits, for instance, remind the reader of similar creatures in the nō—at once beautiful and gentle, in a world impossible to define and yet ultimately real. During Akinari's day the nō ranked high among fashionable amusements, and the ethereal quality of its texts influenced much of the popular literature and drama of the time. Both in the nō and in Akinari's tales, art and life mingle independently of time and space in a manner that demonstrates the essential oneness of existence, stirring the imagination by means of music and the dance and using travel as a symbolic motif. The structure of the individual tales reveals striking similarities to that of the nō plays, with an introductory portion (equivalent to the jo, or ‘preface,’ of the nō), a period of development (the ha), and a climax (kyū, where music, dance, and poetry merge in flowery splendour). But even more intriguing than that of any individual drama was the influence of the nō performance on the overall structure of Ugetsu monogatari. This matter deserves separate treatment.

By Akinari's time commercial publishing was widespread. Printed books had become ordinary items for purchase, and the practice of copying manuscripts declined. Authors might expect gain or profit from their occupation, rather than chiefly pleasure and self-satisfaction. New forms of imaginative literature matured, including haiku poetry, the short story, and the popular novel. Japanese scholars have come to refer to works of narrative prose by a number of special terms, such as kanazōshi (books written in the Japanese mixed style, rather than in pure Chinese), ukiyo-zōshi (the fiction of the floating world), yomihon (reading books), and kusazōshi (chapbooks). Nevertheless, the short stories and novels of the time displayed several features in common. They were written primarily in the mixed style, as previously mentioned. They were intended not for a small literary circle but for anyone who had the money to buy or borrow a book and leisure time to read. Each year new titles vied for success, and many authors relied on light wit, satire, and realism to win acceptance. On the one hand, numerous works catered to a perennial interest in the pleasure quarter and the entertainment world, but on the other hand some popular books inculcated a taste for contemplative pursuits, such as the study of national history, classical learning, and the scholarly branches of literature. Yet others fostered the practical virtues of loyalty and filial piety. A few authors, including Akinari, wrote both kinds of books—those for entertainment and also those for enlightenment. Frequently both purposes were combined in a single work, making it hard for the modern reader to set up clearly defined boundaries between what is frivolous and what is not. Nevertheless, Akinari's tales, like the best of the reading books, reflect not so much the lighter strain but rather the serious tendency in the popular literature of the day. As described above, they were part of the mainstream of Japanese literature.

STRUCTURE

The masterpieces of traditional Japanese literature include unusually long works such as The Tale of Genji and exceptionally brief forms like haiku. Sometimes small units were linked to make larger pieces that reveal an artistic unity of their own. Akinari's tales exemplify this point. It will be remembered that a tale about a former emperor who in a remote time had predicted an age of war and turmoil begins the collection. An announcement that the leadership of the Tokugawa shogun would bring peace to the realm marks the end. Although the significance of the arrangement of the nine tales and the overall structure might not be obvious at first, a total form emerges, indistinctly as a mystic scene in a Chinese landscape and hauntingly as the supernatural content of the tales.

To some extent certain familiar technical devices impart a unity of tone. One of these is the repetition of similar themes and patterns. For example, in ‘White Peak,’ ‘Bird of Paradise,’ and ‘Blue Hood,’ a holy man on his travels has a supernatural experience. In ‘The House Amid the Thickets,’ ‘The Caldron of Kibitsu,’ and ‘The Lust of the White Serpent,’ a man is involved with a woman who later takes the form of a ghost or spirit. Conflict between father and son is mentioned in four of the tales. Warfare figures in five of them. In six of them the main character experiences a physical collapse (reflecting the possibility that Akinari was a sufferer of epilepsy). Various stylistic devices also help to impart a sense of harmony to the collection. Careful use of the well-turned phrase, an occasional ironic or whimsical touch, and numerous scholarly allusions to Chinese and Japanese literary sources all serve this purpose. Intriguing though these qualities are, certain additional elements reinforce the feeling of psychological unity that marks the tales. The idea of the continuity of existence—the cycle of growth, illness, death—is stressed throughout the collection, conveying a sense of man's journey from the cradle to the grave and describing a series of acts and events leading from innocence to experience. Along the way one meets with a fleeting vision of the archetypal female goddess. All of this may be represented by the image of rain and moon.

Each story forms a unit, with a meaning of its own, but taken together the tales suggest an organic whole greater than the sum of its parts, like an imperial anthology of court poetry, a sequence of linked verse, or a full programme of nō (with plays about gods, warriors, women, ghosts, and a congratulatory prayer of thanksgiving at the end). Underlying the structural integrity of Ugetsu monogatari are Chinese aesthetic values that the Japanese had early adopted. During the T'ang and Sung dynasties poets had begun to write sequences of verse, some of which, for instance, represented the changes of nature throughout the four seasons. Similarly, painters made landscape scrolls that unfolded from one scene to the next in a progress from the fresh new buds of spring to the withering of life in winter, implying a self-renewing cycle of birth, growth, decay, and death. Inspired by magical Buddhist figures and diagrams that symbolise the power and the form of the cosmos, poet and painter learned to depict an entire universe in visual or verbal terms. The contemplative man spending a summer night observing the image of the moon reflected in his garden pool saw in microcosm the vastness of time and space and the relative insignificance of the individual.

Landscape painting and the ghostly tale both lead to mystical experience. After viewing hills and valleys clad in mist and clouds, the painter, whose every brushstroke is charged with life, discovers hidden forms that exist only in the mind's eye. When the poet elaborates on such a vision, he creates the ghostly tale. ‘The Carp That Came to My Dream,’ with a powerful touch of irony suggests how such a poetic vision might take on the dimensions of reality. A painted fish could leap into a real lake. Herein lies one of the links between the world of Akinari's tales and that which his contemporaries who called themselves bunjin, or ‘literary men,’ depicted in their landscapes, portraits, or flower and bird studies. Perhaps partly owing to the deformity of his right hand and his consequent inability to master the art of painting, Akinari was able to create an imaginary world by pouring heart and soul into his ghostly tales.

Most of all, however, the organisation of the tales is reminiscent of the arrangement of pieces in a full programme for the nō theatre. First came a play about the gods, because they stood for creation and guarded the nation down through the ages. Secondly came a drama about battle, which conveyed the struggle to protect and sustain life and the desire to commemorate the men who pacified the country with bows and arrows. After warfare came peace and a mysterious calm, which woman by means of love helped to perpetuate. But ghosts and spiritual creatures emerged to challenge man and reprove him, showing that his glory might vanish and that life was like a dream. The weaknesses and shortcomings of mankind, as well as human achievements, were thereby represented to the onlookers, but in the end the vital forces auspiciously prevailed. Man was reminded of his moral duties and of the promise that even after spring had passed, again it shall return.

From the middle ages on, sometimes there might be a different number of pieces in a nō performance, but the general principles for arranging the programme were usually followed. Akinari prepared his tales similarly (indeed one recalls that his title was derived from the nō). ‘White Peak’ stands as the equivalent of a play about gods. ‘Chrysanthemum Tryst’ brings to mind dramas in which the ghost of a warrior appears. ‘The House Amid the Thickets’ suggests a ‘wig’ play, where the principle character is a woman, and it reminds one that love is usually associated with sorrow. ‘The Carp That Came to My Dream’ and ‘Bird of Paradise’ show certain characteristics related to the deep and mysterious quality of life in the everyday world. ‘The Caldron of Kibitsu,’ ‘The Lust of the White Serpent,’ and ‘The Blue Hood’ all contain scenes that cautioned the reader what disaster might befall the man who failed to show prudence and circumspection in daily conduct. Last of all, ‘Wealth and Poverty,’ complementing the opening piece, serves a purpose similar to that of a ‘congratulatory’ play. In the tales, as in the nō, decline is followed by restoration. Peace and prosperity succeed toil and suffering. The tales, therefore, describe a paradigm of life.

Besides calling to mind a full programme of the nō theatre, most of the tales, as mentioned earlier, show traces of being organised around the theme of the archetypal quest. Saigyō, searching for enlightenment, meets Sutoku, the rebellious and unrepentant ghost of a former emperor. Samon, a youthful scholar, whose adventures were previously limited to the world of books, takes inspiration from Sōemon's ghost. As a result of confronting the world of real experience, he avenges his friend's murder. Katsushirō leaves home and wife to seek worldly wealth, but in the end what he really achieves is understanding and wisdom. Kōgi's view of the depths of Lake Biwa through the eyes of a fish afford him true knowledge of the impermanence of earthly pleasures and realisation of the fragile quality of life. The experience of Muzen and his son on Mt Kōya has a similar effect on the pair. Katsushirō seeks personal happiness, but he is unprepared to accommodate himself to the demands of home and family. Toyoo at first gives in to temptation, endangering his life, but later he finds maturity, though only at an extreme price. The fatherly mendicant, Kaian, saves a lost soul and in the process discovers a new facet of the human spirit. Lastly, Sanai's ghostly interview with the spirit of gold yields him a vision of a future era of peace.

As with many nō dramas, much of the significant action in the tales involves relations among men. In contrast to the earlier court romances, woman plays a secondary role, reminding one of her subordinate position in a Confucian society. According to Buddhist beliefs, as well, she suffers from various hindrances that make it difficult for her to attain enlightenment without first being reborn as a man. Compared to the men in the tales, the women are less firmly in control of their destiny. Nevertheless, Western readers will likely find the three stories in which women play a central role to be the most memorable of all. Despite her subordinate position, woman in the tales suggests the charm and grace of the archetypal female goddess or the mysterious calm of the natural environment, which man never wholly subdues. In her other guise she shows the demonic quality of the witch or shamaness. In ‘The House Amid the Thickets’ woman appears in her passive form as a loving but forsaken wife, but in ‘The Caldron of Kibitsu’ and ‘The Lust of the White Serpent’ she takes on the more active role of the lamia, the witch, and the vampire. The strength of love might transcend the grave. Overwrought feelings transform a jealous woman into a deadly fury. An excess of fervour creates a beautiful woman from a snake—or perhaps it is the other way around. In general, however, Akinari describes a man's world, where woman is either devoted or dangerous. Ironically enough, an excess of devotion leads to danger, which in Buddhist terms means clinging to desire. Akinari suggests that woman must devote herself to man but that too much of this quality might cause pain and anguish.

During the years while he was working on his tales and trying to find a suitable occupation, Akinari possibly felt that his own wife and his step-mother were painfully devoted to him, and that he was undeserving of their love. As did his hero, Samon, he dabbled in scholarship. Like Katsushirō, he had abandoned his father's business, essentially for selfish reasons, to enter a new line of work that offered no assurance of success. Like Shōtarō, he had philandered in the gay quarter and neglected his family's occupation. He felt himself to be weak, like Toyoo, undeserving of his adoptive father's patronage, and remote from the family trade. Thus the tales reflect phases of his own psychological development.

At the beginning of the tales the Buddhist view finds espousal as the quickest way to wisdom, but in the end an attempt is made to transcend this outlook for a more pragmatic approach, in keeping with a new age. Meantime, throughout the collection Akinari sustains his meditative and detached tone. The lonely hermits and the youths who search for fulfilment and enlightenment emerge as his heroes. Mainly he tends to avoid direct confrontation with tragedy, bloodshed, or suffering. Nevertheless, enough gruesome material finds its way into the tales to reveal an ample glimpse of a demonic vision, with symbols of the prison, the madhouse, and death by torture. Shock and horror, one recalls, must figure in any journey from innocence to experience.

But despite certain unusual features in the overall structure and the influence of early Chinese and Japanese works, Akinari in each tale emphasised a single moment of insight, as have good modern short story writers. As a totality of related parts all of the tales combine to form an integral and unified work of art.

AKINARI'S LEGACY

After the first appearance of the tales in Osaka and Kyoto in 1776, they steadily rose in popularity, and the text passed through several editions. Like other books of the time, Ugetsu monogatari circulated mainly through lending libraries in the large urban centres and smaller provincial cities. Relatively few people could afford to buy their own private copy, and some readers even transcribed the text that they borrowed. Scholars as well as casual readers took note of the tales, and Akinari's fame and reputation rose. Motoori Norinaga, doyen of the school of national learning, exchanged views with him on a variety of matters, including Japan's proper role in the world community.³² By the end of the century Ōta Nampo visited Akinari and called him the outstanding writer of the day.³³ Another Edo author, Takizawa Bakin (1767-1848), tried without success to meet him, but he praised Akinari as a great man of letters and regretted only that he shunned social intercourse and was so retiring by nature.³⁴

Meanwhile, the tales began to exert an influence on the literary scene. Itami Chin'en (1751?-81?) in a reading book entitled Kinko kaidan miyamagusa (Deep Mountain Grass: New and Old Tales of Wonder), which came out in Osaka in 1782, used situations from ‘The Caldron of Kibitsu’ and ‘The Lust of the White Serpent.’³⁵ Other authors, particularly in Edo, the most rapidly growing urban centre in Japan at the time, tried to emulate Akinari's successful combination of a neoclassical style and a popular mode of storytelling. Even authors of chapbooks, such as Tōrai Sanna (1749-1810),³⁶ borrowed passages from Akinari's tales. Santō Kyōden (1761-1816),³⁷ realised the significance of Akinari's work and used the same techniques and materials in his historical romances. But above all, Bakin himself perfected the idea of using real or imaginary characters out of the past to create historical novels that appealed to serious readers who were interested in art, scholarship, society, and politics.³⁸ Bakin several times employed the idea of an interview with the ghost of a famous man, as had Akinari in ‘White Peak’ and ‘Bird of Paradise.’³⁹

Many of the same names of people, places, events, and even the classical Chinese metaphors of Akinari's tales appeared in Bakin's novels.⁴⁰ The idea of a worthless man who for the sake of another woman neglects his wife and eventually meets a violent death at the hands of her rancorous ghost not only found expression in ‘The Caldron of Kibitsu’ but also in Bakin's reading book, Kanzen Tsuneyo no monogatari (The Story of Tsuneyo).⁴¹ The situation described at the beginning of ‘The Lust of the White Serpent’ was also imitated by Bakin in Kinsesetsu bishōnenroku (Handsome Youths),⁴² where a young man similarly meets a woman at a temple during a sudden rain shower and lends her his umbrella. Later in the same episode a mysterious serpent appears. But aside from specific influence on Kyōden and Bakin's plots, Akinari's greatest contribution to later authors was his skilful use of classical metaphor and his treatment of the supernatural world. Without his work Japanese literature of the nineteenth and twentieth century would have been much the poorer.

Men such as Nampo, Bakin, and Kyōden helped to preserve the memory of Akinari's work. The former pair correctly identified two earlier titles that Akinari refused to admit having written.⁴³ Bakin was instrumental in transmitting the posthumous work, Harusame monogatari (Tales of Spring Rain). During Akinari's own lifetime he and his tales became objects of study. Then not long after his death, a certain Obayashi Kajō (1782?-1862), a retainer in the Ōban, or ‘Guard,’ the military branch of the government service, who was conversant with Confucian doctrines, as well as the tenets of the school of national learning, in 1823 edited Akinari's Kuse monogatari, adding a variety of notes and comments⁴⁴ and attesting to the growing recognition of his genius.

With the surge of Western influence after 1868, for a time interest in Akinari and his tales diminished. But by 1890 the climate had changed, and people began paying more attention to things Japanese. The tales were mentioned in an early history of prose fiction.⁴⁵ Movable-type editions became available,⁴⁶ and hereafter Ugetsu monogatari was often reprinted. Writers and poets of the Meiji Era—especially those involved with the Japanese romantic movement—turned to them for inspiration and found the same enduring qualities that had attracted an earlier generation. The novelist Kōda Rohan described Saigyō's journey to the emperor Sutoku's grave in terms that showed ‘White Peak’ to have been the model. A poet named Takeshima Hagoromo was influenced by the tales. A poetic version and a dramatisation of ‘The House Amid the Thickets’ appeared.⁴⁷ During these years Lafcadio Hearn introduced ‘Chrysanthemum Tryst’ and ‘The Carp That Came to My Dream’ to English-speaking readers, marking the beginning of their recognition in world literature.⁴⁸

In the twentieth century Akinari's literary reputation has continued to flourish, and his tales have been acknowledged as a central work in the Japanese tradition. Suzuki Toshinari's annotated edition in 1916⁴⁹ included a lengthy introductory essay on such topics as Akinari's views on literature, how the tales came to be written and published, their literary background, the influence of medieval narrative prose, the role of the supernatural, and the impact on later authors. A revised version of Suzuki's work in 1929 boasted of four illustrations by Kaburagi Kiyokata, in which Akinari's themes were represented in pictorial terms.⁵⁰ Suzuki's careful and innovative study influenced later scholars, and Kaburagi's drawings demonstrated the hold that the tales exerted on artists as well as poets.

Literary men continued to respond to Akinari's classical style and emotional power. The novelist Tanizaki Jun'ichirō in 1920 prepared a scenario for a motion picture based on ‘The Lust of the White Serpent.’⁵¹ In 1924 Satō Haruo (who, incidentally, was born in Shingu, the home of Akinari's fictional hero, Toyoo) published the first of many items he was to write about the tales and their author.⁵² Akutagawa Ryūnosuke was an ardent student of the tales. One of Dazai Osamu's first stories, ‘Gyofukuki,’ which appeared in 1933, was inspired by ‘The Carp That Came to My Dream,’ and the author wrote that when he first read Akinari's tale as a child, it made him want to become a fish.⁵³ In the mid-1930s Okamoto Kanoko published an essay on Akinari.⁵⁴ As mentioned in the Translator's Foreword, two film versions were produced in the 1950s. Meanwhile, Mishima Yukio in 1949 wrote an appreciative essay that showed the powerful influence Akinari's work had on him during his formative years. To him, Akinari represented ‘a marriage of moralist and aesthete,’ and Mishima praised the poetry, beauty, irony, and detachment found in the tales. ‘White Peak’ was his favourite, followed by ‘The Carp’ and ‘Chrysanthemum Tryst.’ The romantic quality of Mishima's own writings owes a good deal to Akinari, whom he called ‘the Japanese Villiers de L'Isle-Adam.’⁵⁵ Literary critics have similarly shared a high opinion of the tales.⁵⁶

Among early twentieth-century scholars, a number of men have helped to make Ugetsu monogatari one of the most familiar titles in Japanese literature. Fujii Otoo, for instance, played a special role in Akinari studies. He assisted in editing a collection of the authors representative works; he prepared a separate volume of posthumous writings; he wrote scholarly and critical essays, and he produced a valuable biographical study.⁵⁷ Other men in the meantime concentrated on understanding Akinari's indebtedness to earlier literature. Two of the most prominent of these, Yamaguchi Takeshi and Gotō Tanji,⁵⁸ have demonstrated the complexity of the Chinese and Japanese literary sources. Tsujimori Shūei published a biographical study.⁵⁹ In 1946 an independent monograph on the tales, by Shigetomo Ki, appeared. Maruyama Sueo presented a detailed bibliography of secondary sources, and in 1951 he introduced newly discovered work by Akinari, which enabled readers to grasp more fully the degree of his talent and genius.⁶⁰ By the middle of the twentieth century Akinari's tales were sometimes compared in extravagant terms with such works as The Tale of Genji, the most remarkable achievement in all of Japanese literature.

More recently, intensive research and analysis has led to new knowledge and understanding. Nakamura Yukihiko, a widely respected scholar of early modern literature, has contributed to a realisation of Akinari's breadth as a literary man.⁶¹ Others, such as Moriyama Shigeo, Sakai Kōichi, Ōba Shunsuke, and Morita Kirō, have published appreciative studies.⁶² Takada Mamoru has pieced together all the available details of Akinari's life, and he has also published a well received critical monograph.⁶³ Until his untimely death, Uzuki Hiroshi was working on an exhaustively thorough annotated text of Ugetsu monogatari, which his co-worker, Nakamura Hiroyasu, completed—a monumental effort that all future students of the tales will surely consult. Asano Sampei has prepared a collection of Akinari's waka verse with essays and notes on the sources and criticism and discussion of the author's ideas on poetry. More recently he has edited a text of Tales of Spring Rain.⁶⁴ Yet other well known scholars and critics have written about the tales, reaffirming their value. General anthologies of Japanese literature normally include selections from them, and a person can hardly claim to be well read unless he is conversant with Ugetsu monogatari.

Since Lafcadio Hearn's introduction of two of the tales in English, other translators have tried to convey the elusive beauty of the work to the rest of the world. In the 1920s a version of ‘The Blue Hood’ appeared in an English language periodical in Japan.⁶⁵ In the 1930s Wilfred Whitehouse published translations of five of the tales with notes and commentary in Monumenta Nipponica,⁶⁶ an important journal for Japanese studies. Pierre Humbertclaude in the same journal began an ambitious critical study on Akinari including his early popular works.⁶⁷ By the early 1940s all of the tales had been translated at least once. In the 1950s René Seiffert, in Paris, published a complete French translation with notes and commentaries on the individual tales.⁶⁸ Meanwhile, other Western scholars of Japanese literature were also attracted to Akinari's work. Carmen Blacker and W. E. Skillend translated ‘The Carp That Came to My Dream.’⁶⁹ Dale Saunders published new translations of several tales,⁷⁰ and Lewis Allen one of ‘Chrysanthemum Tryst.’⁷¹ James Araki wrote an essay introducing scholars to recent Japanese studies.⁷² Also, during the 1960s a Hungarian translation appeared in Budapest, a Polish one in Warsaw. Kazuya Sakai, of Mexico City, published eight of the nine tales in a Spanish version.⁷³ An analysis of the tales may be found in a Czechoslovakian doctoral dissertation available in Prague. The author, Libuse Bohackova, has also published a complete translation.⁷⁴ Most recently, several young English-speaking scholars have turned their attention to Tales of Spring Rain,⁷⁵ and Kengi Hamada has published a translation of Ugetsu monogatari in book form.⁷⁶

Notes

1. Gukanshō, comp. the priest Jien, in 1220, in NKBT [Nihon koten bungaku taikei, 99 vols. (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1957-66)], vol. 86, p. 206. See also H. Paul Varley, Imperial Restoration in Medieval Japan, Studies of the East Asia Institute (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), pp. 15-21.

2. The edition that commonly circulated in early modern times was the Kokatsujibon Hōgen monogatari, in NKBT, vol. 22, pp. 335-99 (hereafter Hōgen monogatari). See also William R. Wilson, trans., Hōgen monogatari: Tale of the Disorder in Hōgen, A Monumenta Nipponica Monograph (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1971).

3. Intoku taiheiki, comp. Kagawa Masanori and Kagetsugu, in the 17th century, in Tsūzoku Nihon zenshi, vols 13-14 (Tokyo: Waseda Daigaku Shuppan-bu, 1913).

4. Especially the Kamakura ōzōshi, in Gunsho ruijū, vol. 13 (Tokyo: Keizai Zasshi-sha, 1900), pp. 650-714. This work treats events of the 14th-15th century, beginning with an account of the ambitions of Ashikaga Ujimitsu (1357-98) and ending with a description of the rise to power of Ōta Dōkan (1432-86). Unlike the other titles mentioned so far, the Kamakura ōzōshi apparently was not printed and circulated only in manuscript.

5. See Varley, The Ōnin War: History of Its Origins and Background, Studies of the East Asia Institute (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), pp. 88-95.

6. In Witter Bynner, trans., The Jade Mountain: A Chinese Anthology, Being Three Hundred Poems of the T'ang Dynasty (1928; rpt. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), p. 170.

7. Akinari's main source was the Taikōki, comp. Kose Hoan, in 1625. See Shiseki shūran, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kondō Kappansho, 1900). Western readers may wish to consult accounts such those by Sir George Sansom, A History of Japan, vol. 2: 1334-1615 (London: The Cresset Press, 1961), pp. 364-7, 370; and James Murdoch and Yamagata Isoh, A History of Japan During the Century of Early Foreign Intercourse (1542-1651) (Kobe: The Chronicle Office, 1903), pp. 380-4.

8. See Donald Keene, ed., Twenty Plays of the Nō Theatre (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), pp. 237-52. Also see text, note 490.

9. See Hayashiya Tatsusaburō, ‘Nihon bunka no higashi to nishi,’ Sekai (Jan. 1971), p. 339.

10. For the relations between the school of national learning and the Taoist teachings and for Akinari's indebtedness to this branch of Chinese philosophy, see Sakai Kōichi, Ueda Akinari (Kyoto: San'ichi Shobō, 1959), pp. 138-49; for the similar interest of one of Akinari's contemporaries, see Keene, The Japanese Discovery of Europe, 1720-1830, rev. ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969), p. 82.

11. Lionel Giles, trans., Taoist Teachings from the Book of Lieh-Tzu …, Wisdom of the East Series (1912; rpt. London: John Murray, 1947), pp. 49, 108.

12. See Robert N. Bellah, Tokugawa Religion (Glencoe: Free Press, 1957); and Ronald Philip Dore, Education in Tokugawa Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), pp. 230-43.

13. See Wm. Theodore de Bary, ed., The Buddhist Tradition in India, China, and Japan, The Modern Library (New York: Random House, 1969), pp. 155-66; and Morris, The World of the Shining Prince (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 103, who refers to the same doctrine as ‘calm contemplation.’

14. Morris, ibid., p. 98.

15. ‘Paradise Lost,’ The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton …, ed., William Vaughn Moody (1899; rpt. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1924), p. 105; and ‘The Second Defence of The English People,’ Milton's Prose Writings, ed. K. M. Burton, Everyman's Library, No. 795 (1927; rpt. London: Dent, 1958), p. 345.

16. Ise monogatari ko-i; for Akinari's preface to it, see Akinari ibun, pp. 544-6; for complete English translations of this Heian classic, see Helen Craig McCullough, Tales of Ise: Lyric Episodes from Tenth-Century Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968); and H. Jay Harris, The Tales of Ise: Translated from the Classical Japanese (Tokyo: Chas. E. Tuttle Co., 1972).

17. See ‘Yoshiya ashiya,’ in Ueda Akinari zenshū, II, 408.

18. The Tale of Genji, p. 501; NKBT, vol. 15, p. 432.

19. An important milestone in the history of Japanese literary criticism, by Ki no Tsurayuki (868?-945?), co-editor of the Kokinshū, comp. in ad 905, the first imperial anthology of waka poetry. See NKBT, vol. 8, pp. 93-104. See also Makoto Ueda, Literary and Art Theories in Japan (Cleveland: The Press of Western Reserve University, 1967).

20. Letter to Jen Shao-ch'ing, trans., Burton Watson, Ssu-ma Ch'ien: The Grand Historian of China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), pp. 65-6; found also in the early Chinese anthology, Wen hsüan, a text well known to educated people in Lady Murasaki's day and in Akinari's time. See the Japanese edition, Monzen bōkun taizen (Osaka: Ōta Gon'uemon, 1699), 11, 29a-34b.

21. ‘Tu Chung-i shui hu chuan chü’ (Japanese, ‘Doku chūgi suikoden jo’), in Ritakugo sensei hiten chūgi suikoden, 1, 1a-3b. See also, Chūgoku koten bungaku taikei, vol. 55 (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1971).

22. Quoted in Ryūsaku Tsunoda, de Bary, Keene, et al., Sources of Japanese Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), p. 534.

23. Watson, trans., The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), p. 158.

24. NKBT, vol. 9, p. 143.

25. Hito wa bakemono yo ni nai mono wa nashi. Preface, Saikaku shokoku-banashi, Saikaku-bon fukusei, in Koten bunko, vol. 17 (Tokyo: Koten Bunko, 1953). IV, 4.

26. Oni mo idete hito ni majiwari, hito mata oni ni majiwarite osorezu; and kami mo oni mo izuchi ni hai-kakururu, ato nashi. ‘Me hitotsu no kami,’ Harusame monogatari (Tales of Spring Rain), Sakurayama Bunko text, ed. Maruyama Sueo, Ueda Akinari-shū, in Koten bunko, vols 47-8 (Tokyo: Koten Bunko, 1951), I, 108.

27. For a complete translation, see Morris, The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon, 2 vols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967).

28. See Keene, trans., Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), pp. xviii, 163.

29. For a complete translation of the former, see Arthur Lindsay Sadler, ‘The Heike Monogatari,’ Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 1st ser., 46, part 2 (1918), i-xiv, 1-278; 49, part 1 (1921), 1-354, 1-11 (rpt. Tokyo: Yushodo, 1965). For a partial translation of the latter, see McCullough, Taiheiki (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958).

30. For a recent translation, see Donald Philippi, Kojiki (Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1968).

31. Also called the Nihongi.

32. See ‘Kakaika,’ Ueda Akinari zenshū, I, 423-64.

33. Recorded in ‘Tandai shōshin-roku,’ NKBT, vol. 56, p. 316. Ōta Nampo was also known by his pen name, Shokusanjin.

34. See ‘Kiryo manroku,’ Nikki kikō-shū in Yūhōdō bunko (Tokyo: Yūhōdō Shoten, 1913-15), p. 597.

35. I am indebted to Professor Hamada Keisuke of Kyoto University, for calling this to my attention.

36. Mentioned in my ‘Kusazōshi: Chapbooks of Japan,’ Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 3rd ser., 10 (1968), 126-7; and James T. Araki, ‘Sharebon: Books for Men of Mode,’ Monumenta Nipponica, 24 (1969), 39, 41-2.

37. For a summary of Kyōden's literary activities, see my Takizawa Bakin, Twayne's World Authors Series, 20 (New York: Twayne, 1967), N.B., pp. 56-99; and Araki, ‘Sharebon,’ passim.

38. See Chapter 3 of my Takizawa Bakin.

39. Most notably with Sutoku, in Chinsetsu yumihari-zuki; see NKBT, vol. 60, pp. 215-25.

40. As pointed out in Asō Isoji, Edo bungaku to Chūgoku bungaku (1946; rpt. Tokyo: Sanseidō, 1957), pp. 661-2.

41. Kanzen Tsuneyo no monogatari (Osaka: Kawachiya Tōbei, 1806).

42. See Kinsesetsu bishōnenroku, in Teikoku bunko, 2nd ser. (Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1928-30), vol. 6, pp. 38-9.

43. See Nakamura, ed., Akinari, in Nihon koten kanshō kōza, vol. 24 (Tokyo: Kadokawa, 1956), p. 31.

44. First reprinted in Kinko bungei onchi sōsho, vol. 4 (Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1891), pp. 165-233; more recently, a different text of Kuse monogatari has appeared in Maruyama, ed., Ueda Akinari-shū, II, 79-197.

45. Sekine Masanao, Shōsetsu shikō (Tokyo: Kinkōdō, 1890), N.B., part 2, pp. 29-31.

46. Matsumura Shintarō, ed., Ugetsu monogatari (Tokyo, 1893); and the popular series, Teikoku bunko, 50 vols (Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1893-97), vol. 32.

47. All mentioned in Suzuki Toshinari, Shinchū ugetsu monogatari hyōshaku, 2nd ed. (Tokyo: Seibunkan, 1929), pp. 132-4.

48. See ‘A Promise Kept,’ and ‘The Story of Kogi,’ A Japanese Miscellany (1901), in The Writings of Lafcadio Hearn (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922), X, 193-8, 230-7. In addition, readers may find similarities between ‘The Caldron of Kibitsu’ and Hearn's ‘Of a Promise Broken,’ pp. 199-207.

49. When the 1st ed. of his Ugetsu appeared.

50. Ibid., frontispiece, and facing pp. 290, 300, 310.

51. Mentioned in Joseph L. Anderson and Donald Richie, The Japanese Film: Art and Industry (Tokyo: Tuttle, 1959), pp. 39-40.

52. Collected in his posthumous Ueda Akinari (Tokyo: Tōgensha, 1964).

53. In Dazai Osamu zenshū, I (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1967), 61-70, XII (1968), 383. See also Keene, Landscapes and Portraits: Appreciations of Japanese Culture (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1971), p. 188. Thomas J. Harper, trans., ‘Metamorphosis,’ Japan Quarterly, 17 (1970), 285-8.

54. Okamoto Kanoko, ‘Ueda Akinari no bannen,’ Bungakkai (Oct. 1935), pp. 351-369. This has been reprinted in Kuwabara Shigeo, ed., Ueda Akinari: Kaii yūkei no bungaku arui wa monogatari no hokkyoku (Tokyo: Shichōsha, 1972), pp. 300-11.

55. Mishima Yukio, ‘Ugetsu monogatari ni tsuite,’ Bungei ōrai (Sept. 1949), pp. 48-51.

56. See Takada Mamoru, Ueda Akinari kenkyū josetsu (Tokyo: Nara Shobō, 1968), p. 8.

57. His essays and other work may be found most notably in Edo bungaku kenkyū (Kyoto: Naigai Shuppan, 1922); Edo bungaku sōsetsu (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1931); and Kinsei shōsetsu kenkyū (Osaka: Akitaya, 1947).

58. For Yamaguchi's efforts, see Edo bungaku kenkyū (Tokyo: Tōkyōdō, 1933); and ‘Kaisetsu,’ Kaidan meisaku-shū, in Nihon meicho zenshū, vol. 10 (Tokyo: Nihon Meicho Kankōkai, 1927), pp. 1-100; Gotō Tanji's work, more than thirty essays in all, beginning in 1934 appeared in various scholarly journals and collections; these are cited in the detailed bibliography in Uzuki, Ugetsu, pp. 713-27, mentioned above.

59. Ueda Akinari no shōgai (Tokyo: Yūkōsha, 1942).

60. ‘Ueda Akinari kankei shomoku gainen,’ Koten kenkyū, 4, no. 2 (1939), 76-86; no. 3, 95-104; no. 4, 180-93; and ‘Kaisetsu,’ in Ueda Akinari-shū, I, 5-51; II, 3-7.

61. In addition to editing Ueda Akinari-shū and Akinari (see notes 4, 57) and other works, he has published numerous essays, all of which are held in high regard.

62. See Moriyama's interpretive essays in various journals and collections; for Sakai, see note 24; for Ōba, see Akinari no tenkanshō to dēmon (Tokyo: Ashi Shobō, 1969); for Morita, see Ueda Akinari, Kinokuniya shinsho (Tokyo: Kinokuniya, 1970).

63. Ueda Akinari nempu kōsetsu (Tokyo: Meizendō, 1964).

64. See … his Kōchū harusame monogatari (Tokyo: Ōfūsha, 1971).

65. Alf. Hansey, trans., ‘The Blue Hood,’ The Young East, 2 (1927), 314-9.

66. ‘Ugetsu Monogatari: Tales of a Clouded Moon,’ Monumenta Nipponica, 1, no. 1 (1938), 242-51; no. 2, 257-75; 4, no. 1 (1941), 166-91.

67. ‘Essai sur la vie et l'oeuvre de Ueda Akinari,’ ibid., 3, no. 2 (1940), 98-119; 4, no. 1 (1941), 102-23; no. 2, 128-38; 5, no. 1 (1942), 52-85.

68. Contes de pluie et de lune (Ugetsu-Monogatari): Traduction et commentaires (Paris: Gallimard, 1956).

69. ‘The Dream Carp,’ in Selections from Japanese Literature (12th to 19th Centuries), ed. F. J. Daniels (London: Lund Humphries, 1959), pp. 91-103, 164-71.

70. ‘Ugetsu Monogatari, or Tales of Moonlight and Rain,’ Monumenta Nipponica, 21 (1966), 171-95.

71. ‘“The Chrysanthemum Vow,” from the Ugetsu Monogatari (1776) by Ueda Akinari,’ Durham University Journal (1967?), pp. 108-16. Mr Allen mentions having received a copy of the tales from a Japanese naval officer in Saigon in 1946.

72. ‘A Critical Approach to the Ugetsu Monogatari,’ Monumenta Nipponica, 22 (1967), 49-64.

73. Hani Kjoko and Maria Holti, trans., Esō ēs hold nesei (Budapest: Kulture Kiado, 1964) (not seen); Kazuya Sakai, Cuentos de lluvia y de luna, Enciclopedia Era, 7 (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1969); and a translation by Wieslaw Kotanski, mentioned in Kyrystyna Okazaki, ‘Japanese Studies in Poland,’ Bulletin, International House of Japan, no. 27 (April 1971), p. 12

74. Libuse Bohavkova, ‘Ueda Akinari Ugecu monogatari: Rozbor sbírky a jednotlivých povídek a jejich motivických prvkŭ’ (The Ugetsu monogatari of Ueda Akinari: An Analysis of the Collection, of the Individual Stories, and of Their Motifs), Diss. Charles University, Prague, 1966-67, mentioned in Frank J. Shulman, Japan and Korea: An Annotated Bibliography of Doctoral Dissertations in Western Languages, 1877-1969 (Chicago: The American Library Association, 1970), p. 190. Her translation is entitled Vyprávění za měcíce a děstě (Prague: Odeon, 1971), 204 pp.

75. See Anthony Chambers, ‘Hankai: A Translation from Harusame monogatari, by Ueda Akinari,’ Monumenta Nipponica, 25 (1970), 371-406; Blake Morgan Young, The Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 32 (1972), 150-207.

76. Complete except for the author's preface, Tales of Moonlight and Rain: Japanese Gothic Tales by Ueda Akinari (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1971). Takada Mamoru contributed an essay to this volume, ‘Ugetsu Monogatari: A Critical Interpretation.’ See pp. xxi-xxix.