by Ueda Akinari
1 Meaning of the Title
U means ‘rain.’ Getsu means ‘moon.’ Monogatari suggests an elegant kind of fiction, such as that in ancient Japanese court romances. In the twelfth century during a time of war and turmoil the poet Saigyō (1118-90), who was also a Buddhist priest, travelled about the countryside praying and composing verse. He was remembered for his simple way of life, his belief in art, and his fondness for peace, not war. Besides his poetry, he also wrote a collection of Buddhist tales and sketches designed to instruct and inform as well as to move the heart. The first of Akinari's nine tales begins with a passage taken from one of these sketches, and Saigyō may be thought of as the fictitious narrator. A no play entitled Ugetsu also tells of Saigyō’s travels and of an encounter he had with the world of spirits. Therefore, Akinari's title is related first of all to the opening tale and reminds one of the poet Saigyō in real life and in the world of make-believe. But still deeper levels of meaning are also implied, showing further association with all nine of the tales.
Dream and fantasy characterise the nō play, Ugetsu. The season is autumn. In a poor hut at Sumiyoshi, on the eastern edge of what is now Osaka Bay, an old man and woman are arguing. She likes the moonlight and wants to let it through the chinks of a board roof. He enjoys the sound of rain on one of straw. But he complains in poetic diction,
Shizu ga noki-ba wo Thatching the eaves of our poor hut
fuki zo wazurō Means too much fuss and bother.
Saigyō appears and asks for a night's lodging. The old man agrees to let him stay on condition that he find a good beginning for the verse. Saigyō replies,
Tsuki wa more Moonlight may enter,
ame wa tamaredo And rain may stand in puddles,
tonikaku-ni But at any rate . . .1
Thus he meets the challenge and suggests how foolish it is to quarrel over trivial matters. Later, the old man and woman are revealed as messengers of the deity of Sumiyoshi-god of poetry, happiness, travel, the sea, and protector of the nation.
In his preface Akinari writes that he finished the tales late one spring night, when the rain ended and the moon shone faintly by his window. The terms that he uses resemble those in a Chinese collection of supernatural tales of the Ming dynasty, Ch'ien teng hsin hua (New Tales for Lamplight),2 to which Akinari was indebted. Not only does the title conjure memories of Saigyō and evoke the world of the supernatural, but it also shows a taste for the classical prose, poetry, and drama of China as well as Japan.
‘Rain’ and ‘moon’ are contrasting qualities. The first implies life, love, youth, passion, and innocence-in Yeats's terms, ‘The young with one another in their arms.’ The moon, that coolest of heavenly bodies, on the other hand connotes grief and sorrow and stands for wisdom, maturity, and enlightenment. Together, rain and moon suggest a movement from innocence to experience. In the end the idea of moon gains ascendancy, as youthful ardour is mitigated by wisdom. Appropriately for a collection of supernatural tales, the elements of rain and moon-female and male, softness and hardness, feeling and logic-are kept in harmony, with neither a destructive flood nor cold chill prevailing.
Finally, the title alludes to the author's home city of Osaka, where the god of Sumiyoshi was worshipped with special reverence. Both in the tale and in the play, Saigyō travels westward and has a poetic exchange with a miraculous being. By means of art man communicates with the world beyond. A feeling of awe and terror is created within a framework of restrained beauty. Saigyō stands for the archetypal master of magic, whose chants have hypnotic effect and induce a trancelike state. He is seer, prophet, interpreter of the gods, sorcerer, and entertainer. Akinari's title promises not only an enjoyable collection of ghostly tales but also a memorable literary achievement, which reflects man's eternal problems and embodies the finest spirit of an age. Deservedly, Ugetsu monogatari is recognised as a great work in the Japanese tradition.
Ghostly tales have always stirred the imagination, and Akinari's collection continues to attract a wide audience. But the work's high reputation as a literary classic comes partly from the author's indebtedness to old Chinese and Japanese literature and to Buddhist philosophy and partly from his involvement with the moral questions of his own time. Besides dealing with spectres, demons, and apparitions, Akinari takes enduring themes, ideas, and metaphors from the Oriental tradition and puts them in fresh new garb, conveying a full measure of human wisdom and understanding and revealing profound connections with earlier works. Still, he avoids the bookish character of many Confucian classics in favour of the gentle persuasiveness associated with Taoism and the Buddhist teachings. As in the best products of Japanese genius, he communicates states of feeling by means of the skillful creation of mood and emotion. He uses not direct assertion, but rather implication and suggestion, thereby inducing a lyrical and romantic tone. Underlying the tales is a subtle response to nature in a world where good and evil co-exist in a delicate balance, easily upset. The tales receive a rich tradition, reinforce it, and transmit it to posterity in a stronger form. While ordinary people have enjoyed the stories for entertainment, readers aware of their literary and historical background have found all the more reason to study and treasure them.
2 Biographical Sketch of Ueda Akinari
Of his real mother he had but a shadowy memory. She was a woman of pleasure in the Osaka gay quarter. He never knew his true father's identity. Luckily, he was adopted by a former samurai named Ueda Mosuke, who had prospered as an oil and paper merchant in Osaka and lived with his wife and daughter. But trouble followed in the wake of good fortune, and soon after coming to the Ueda house Akinari fell ill of smallpox. His father and mother prayed to the god of the Kashima Inari Shrine, and Akinari later believed that this deity had saved his life. He himself recovered, but his foster mother died soon afterward. Mosuke remarried, and his new wife proved to be a capable helpmate and a good mother.
Unfortunately, the middle finger of Akinari's right hand was deformed, making it as short as the little one. He thought this to be a result of his childhood illness, but more likely it was a congenital defect caused by venereal disease, a common malady in the gay quarter, where he was born. ‘Whenever I took a brush, the finger might as well not have been there,’ he later wrote, and because of this deformity he could never become a famous calligrapher or master the art of painting.
Growing up in the Ueda household, he and his step-sister benefited from the new mother's maternal care and the father's stern discipline. To some extent his childhood feelings are suggested in certain of the tales. Perhaps he thought of himself as a lazy, unworthy, and irresponsible son, like Katsushirō, in ‘The House Amid the Thickets,’ or as a secondary child, like Toyoo, in ‘The Lust of the White Serpent’-subordinate and secretly resentful. Just as Toyoo met with scorn from his father and elder brother while his mother and sister-in-law showed sympathy and understanding, perhaps Akinari's father was firm and resolute, and his stepmother tended to be somewhat lax and permissive.
By the standards of the day, he had a good education. He attended a private school primarily for the merchant class, where he did classical studies under Nakai Shūan (1693-1758) and Goi Ranshū (1698-1762). Also, he joined in a haiku group over which Takai Kikei (1687-1761) presided, and he remained a lifelong friend of Kikei's son, Kito (1741-89), a recognised poet in his own right. In time he became familiar with Yosa Buson (1716-84), the most famous haiku poet after Basho and also a master of the literary style of painting. The haiku poet and artist Matsumura Gekkei (1752-1811; Goshun was his painting name) was numbered among his acquaintances, and in later years Akinari enjoyed the friendship of Ozawa Roan (1722-1801), one of the outstanding waka poets of the age. Therefore, Akinari's circle of acquaintances extended to the fields of haiku, waka, Chinese poetry, painting, and of course scholarship. He developed a very broad and cultivated range of interests.
During the 1750s, his step-sister fled with a lover. In spite of Akinari's pleas on her behalf, his father disowned
the girl, and as a result he held sole responsibility for carrying on the family name and business. Although his father tried to force him into a marriage of convenience, Akinari insisted on wedding a girl from Kyoto, named O'Tama, who had been serving for five or six years at the Ueda house. The fictional scene in ‘The Lust of the White Serpent,’ where Toyoo fears that he will be disowned if he reveals his love for the unobtainable Manago, may reflect emotions that Akinari experienced before he was married. Afterward, he and O’ Tama remained childless, and one wonders if Akinari was sterile by heredity. Still, O’ Tama retained her husband's love and devotion, and years later, when she died, Akinari felt heartbroken. He expressed his grief in terms similar to those found in several of his tales, where men confronted deep, personal tragedy.
As a young man he tried his hand at fiction in the manner of the ‘floating world,’ publishing in 1766 and 1767 two collections of amusing character sketches, mostly about naughty young men and women. But around this time he began to study with Katō Umaki (1722-77), who in turn was a disciple of Kamo Mabuchi (1697-1769), the greatest teacher of ancient Japanese learning. Under Katō’s tutelage Akinari discovered new seriousness of purpose. Hereafter he turned in earnest to scholarship and classical literary pursuits and regretted ever having dabbled in the fiction of the floating world. The mature Akinari may be thought of as a poet and scholar who gained wide renown for his works of fiction.
For a period of time after his father's death Akinari managed the family business, though hardly with enthusiasm. Like Samon, in ‘Chrysanthemum Tryst,’ or Toyoo, he cared more for learning than for practical affairs. His ideas in ‘The Caldron of Kibitsu’ concerning a former warrior whose degenerate son runs away, abandoning home and family, may have reflected in part his step-sister's similar action or even his own wish to do the same. But just as the fictitious Toyoo eventually reformed and assumed his adult responsibilities, so too did Akinari, at least in some degree.
When home and business were destroyed by fire, early in 1771, he exerted little effort to make up the loss, realising that his talents did not suit him for the world of trade and commerce. As he indicated in ‘Wealth and Poverty,’ he thought that the wisest course of action was to stop pushing himself in this direction and instead live a simple and tranquil life, maintaining his ‘purity of heart.’ Thus he liquidated his father's business and decided to become a physician, studying under Tsuga Teishō (1718?—95?), who was an erudite Confucian scholar and a popular author, as well as a medical practitioner. Teishō had previously published two collections of tales inspired largely by Chinese vernacular literature, which was increasingly in vogue. From him Akinari learned about both medicine and colloquial Chinese fiction, joining a group of men who were experimenting with new modes of short-story writing. In 1776, the same year that he began independently to practice medicine, he published Ugetsu monogatari, using the pen name of Senshi Kijin, which means something like ‘The eccentric Mr Cut-Finger,’ an apparent reference to his physical deformity.
Although he did not openly acknowledge that he was the author, the appearance of his tales may have been related to his beginning practice as a physician. Perhaps here was a way to attract patrons and advertise his skill. One notices the prominent role that illness played in the tales-Soemon's condition in ‘Chrysanthemum Tryst,’ the description of Sode's malady in ‘The Caldron of Kibitsu.’ Travellers stranded far from home took ill, and owing to the charity of a kind benefactor they recovered. Akinari believed that sickness was largely psychological, an idea derived from his studies of classical Japanese, and one shared by Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801) and other scholars of the school of national learning. Significantly enough, Sode's suffering, and indeed her possession by a spirit, was modelled on that of Lady Aoi, in The Tale of Genji3 In real life, Akinari later revealed that a certain man from the Hamlet of Oka (the place name itself appeared in ‘Bird of Paradise’) had once come to Osaka to study medicine and been stricken ill. Akinari's acquaintances proved unable to treat him. Then the patient's elder brother arrived. Asking the doctors to leave, he said to his brother, ‘You've studied medicine for a long time in Kyoto and Osaka, but you still haven't mastered the art. . . . Now put your trust in me.’ He stripped the sick man naked and calmly began fanning him. At intervals he fed him thin porridge and made him drink broth. At last the fever subsided and the man recovered. Akinari was deeply impressed by the incident, and it strengthened his conviction that illness was largely a state of mind.
He expressed his philosophy as a physician in the maxim, ‘Enough is already too much.’4 Forebearance, restraint, and discretion were to him positive ideals. But he also said, ‘Not to remain indifferent to what one sees is the essence of being human,’5 an attitude that reminds Western readers of the Oath of Maimonides, and one that also reflects the Confucian classics. Both as an author and as a medical man, he dedicated himself to relieving people of pain and suffering. Throughout his life he maintained this simple ideal, vowing never to use his profession to gain riches, peddle influence, or amass wordly possessions.
While practicing medicine he kept up his serious study of classical literature, especially early poetry, diaries, and court romances. But increasingly he realised his limitations as a doctor, and he confessed his inadequacy to heal pain and cure disease. ‘I knew that I was neither learned nor skillful,’ he wrote, ‘but I did my best. . . .’ Whenever he found an illness that he did not understand, he would inquire after the patient two or three times a day. Even after referring someone to another physician, he would pay daily visits. Once, however, he made an erroneous diagnosis of a young girl's illness, and she died. The father was unaware of the mistake and accepted his loss philosophically, but Akinari continued to feel shame long afterward. Perhaps as a consequence of this incident, he practiced medicine for only eleven years, giving up the profession and retiring with his wife and stepmother to a modest cottage on the outskirts of Osaka. Especially in the years following 1793, when he moved to Kyoto, he prepared lectures and commentaries on the Manyoshū6 and other early works and relied on the help of patrons and friends. All the while his reputation as a waka poet and scholar of the national learning grew, and his views attracted wide attention.
Throughout his life Akinari enjoyed travel. As a youth he had gone sightseeing in Nara and Yoshino with his father, and some evidence (though admittedly incomplete and ambiguous) indicates that he had visited eastern Japan. During the years when his home was in Osaka he regularly travelled to the Kyoto area, and after moving to the capital he often journeyed to Osaka. On earlier trips to Kyoto he had met the haiku poet, Buson, and he remained on friendly terms with other poets and painters, as previously mentioned.
After his wife's death, in 1797, for a time he suffered a degree of blindness. But miraculously he regained his vision, and during the last decade of his life he showed renewed vigour as an author. Except for the years between 1798 and 1803, when he made his home in a quiet district of Kyoto, Akinari repeatedly moved, seldom staying in one place for even a year. A woman who had long served in the Ueda family lived with him briefly until 1799, when she died. Then the widow of an old friend from Osaka, the nun Yuishin, joined his simple household. She found amusement in writing waka verse and devoted herself to Akinari, becoming known as his ‘adopted daughter.’ Among the significant events of his declining years, friends in Osaka in 1803 held a banquet to honour his seventieth birthday according to Japanese reckoning. For the occasion a literary personality and government official, Ota Nampo (1748-1823), sent a poem from Edo, and congratulatory verses also came from well-wishers in Kyoto, attesting to the high regard in which he was held.
His life fell between the two most fertile periods of cultural revival, or renaissance, of early modern times-that of the Genroku Era at the end of the seventeenth century, and that of the Bunka and Bunsei Eras, in the early nineteenth. His best-known title, Ugetsu monogatari, stands out as the most memorable Japanese prose work of the eighteenth century, and
Akinari is remembered as the last great early modern author of the Kyoto-Osaka area. Although writing fiction was not his favourite activity, it brought him enduring fame. His first love remained for scholarship and ancient Japanese literature, especially early poetry and court romances such as The Tale of Genji. Always aware of the irony of life, he showed much of the satirist's rapier thrust, wounding with a touch that is scarcely seen. Deeply affected by the conflicting currents of thought that swept Japan in the late eighteenth century, he held deep reverence for the past and respected eccentric behaviour in others. More and more he felt dismayed by the shallowness and materialism of Kyoto and Osaka society, and his attitudes made people think of him as an intransigent and anti-social person. In addition, there remained the mystery of his birth and his physical deformity, which affected his character and made him profoundly sensitive about his origins.
A unique mixture of the poet, scholar, and storyteller, he felt indignant at his contemporaries who refused to believe in miracle, fantasy, and the power of the gods. He was at once a traditionalist and a rebel against tradition. No doubt, the most revealing act of his last years was his effort, in 1807, to destroy his manuscripts by throwing them into a well, at which time he wrote,
Nagaki yume Long-felt delusions
mi-hatenu hodo ni Shall never more disturb me,
waga tama no For my soul has gone-
furu i ni ochite Cast into an ancient well-
kokoro samushi mo And how cold my heart now grows.7
A cool mind in a warm body, he wished to renounce all earthly ties; yet, to the end, he clung precariously to life.
