Ugetsu Monogatari or Tales of Moonlight and Rain (Routledge Revivals)

by Ueda Akinari

  3 Reading Books

  For Akinari, publishing the tales meant a radical departure from his earlier works, which had been ukiyo-zōshi, or sketches of life in the ‘floating world.’ Beginning with Ihara Saikaku (1642-93) and his successors in the seventeenth century,8 this form of narrative prose developed partly from earlier modes of the short story, partly from guidebooks that described life and society in the gay quarter, and partly from haikai poetry, though to be sure the continuing influence of the theatre left its mark as well. Often satirical or whimsical in tone, the tales of the floating world remained in vogue for nearly a century, diverting readers with caricatures of various types of people. In addition, however, in some of the collections there appeared supernatural tales, stories of famous historical persons, and accounts of samurai vendettas. But Ugetsu monogatari represented another kind of prose fiction, known as yomihon, or ‘reading books,’ a form that even more than the fiction of the floating world was intended for the medium of the printed page and for perusal in one's study, rather than for the recital hall, teahouse, or stage. As with the fiction of the floating world, the reading books carried attractive illustrations.

  Several features affected literary fashion in the late eighteenth century and distinguished Akinari's tales and other reading books from earlier publications and won for them growing acclaim. First of all, they were not based mainly on incidents from real life gleaned in the market place or on dramatic material taken from the popular stage. Many of the tales boasted of skillful and inventive plots and afforded somewhat fuller development of character than earlier kinds of prose fiction. Also the authors used history and classical scholarship imaginatively to create new stories, and they emphasised the moral purpose of literature. Emerging national consciousness, fresh interest in foreign studies, and especially the growing tide of Chinese vernacular fiction influenced the taste of readers for tales that were at once complex, exotic, romantic, and yet in a sense realistic. Although the style combined elements of Chinese and Japanese and showed characteristics of both literary and colloquial diction, it remained a modified form of classical prose, not significantly different from that of Saikaku. In some of the early reading books the language seemed tortuous and affected, but Akinari managed to combine the suppleness of Heian prose, the delicacy of court poetry, the solidity of classical Chinese, and the familiarity of everyday speech to create an elegant and graceful effect.

  Commonly, the reading books appeared in sets of from three to seven thin volumes bound separately with heavy paper covers, coloured like soft origami, in shades of beige, amber, peach, blue, or green, sometimes with an embossed pattern or a printed design. Title slips in cursive script were pasted in the upper left-hand corner of each volume. The pages themselves, in imitation of medieval manuscripts, were hand-printed by means of wooden blocks, each one being a unique design, individually carved-a composite product of the author, designer, and engraver. Every volume usually carried at least a pair of illustrations, mostly by artists of the ukiyoe school. For purposes of display the bookseller wrapped the sets in attractive paper envelopes, suggestive of the contents. The format of the reading books was modelled after that of the tales of the floating world and popular Chinese works of the Ming and Ch'ing dynasty. Most of the early titles consisted of short stories, and today all of these books are collector's items.

  The remote origins of the reading books may be traced to the middle ages, when Zen priests and other travellers brought from China compilations of ghostly tales. Later on, samurai returning from the Korean expeditions of the 1590s imported similar titles along with newer colloquial novels and collections of short stories. Some of these were reprinted in Japan and avidly studied by groups of men as well as by individual scholars. Indeed, fascination with Chinese popular literature accompanied official support for Confucian learning, though most early commentators viewed these works with contempt, treating them not as serious literature but rather as a means to gain new understanding of Chinese social and legal institutions that might be applicable to Japan. Gradually, ordinary readers also learned about such novels as the picaresque romance, Shui hu chuan (Water Margin, or in Pearl Buck's translation, All Men Are Brothers)9 and about the collections of short stories that were published around the end of the Ming dynasty. Japanese writers adapted Chinese titles, and booksellers readily issued these as new works. The popular author, Saikaku, as well as the shogun's Confucian advisor, Hayashi Razan (1583-1657), contributed to the development of the reading books, which may really be seen as a long and gradual process.10

  By the middle of the eighteenth century Tsuga Teishō, the Osaka physician from whom Akinari learned medicine, had published a collection of tales in which he combined Chinese plots with Japanese literary traditions and a historical setting. Although they were marred by a stiffness of style and an unnatural idiom similar to that used in Japan for reading classical Chinese, Teishō’s short stories in particular foreshadowed Akinari's tales. Teishō and his fellow authors wanted a form of literature that might express their views on life and art in an elegant style and with a neoclassical diction. They hoped that by means of their work they might reach a wider audience and create new interest in foreign literature, classical learning, and public affairs. Therefore, to some degree the reading books were moralistic and instructional. They were written by talented and high-minded men who wished to save the country from internal strife, economic decay, and even foreign invasion.

  Quite naturally, Chinese and Japanese influences went hand in hand. Indeed, behind the revival of interest in the Man'yōshū around Akinari's time lay not only the efforts of Japanese scholars but also the teachings of their Chinese counterparts, who emphasised the study of ancient classics and the value of historical and textual criticism. Akinari himself was such a scholar. Although Japan still faced another century of isolation, new books and fresh ideas were entering from the outside world; men once again looked beyond the borders, the institutions, and the existing modes of literary expression in Japan. The reading books afforded opportunity to show daring and imagination and suggested signs of a changing intellectual climate.

  Later on, the form that Akinari helped to perfect led to a species of historical romance similar to the Gothic novel in the West. Noted artists designed lavish illustrations with heroes in bombastic poses, and the reading books reached a growing audience. Nowadays Akinari's tales and other titles deserve attentive study not only because of their literary merit but also because of their contribution to the modern Japanese novel. In the preface to the tales, for example (which was written in literary Chinese rather than plain Japanese), Akinari revealed his interest in the literature of his own nation and also that of other countries. The Chinese Water Margin and the Japanese Tale of Genji were placed on the same high level.

  To be sure, the reading books are often thought of as classics to study rather than tales to enjoy, but one quickly recognises the lively spirit of these entertaining works, as well as the high moral values for which they stood. Even without years of study one might learn to appreciate the skill with which the Chinese and Japanese elements were blended. The titles themselves were often published for profit, but the samurai, as well as townsmen like Akinari, who wrote the tales, were deeply involved with contemporary life, and they managed to create serious fiction that still compels the reader's attention. The techniques for cladding foreign literature in Japanese guise, which Akinari and others pioneered, provided a model for early-Meiji students of Western literature, foreshadowing the wholesale adoption of modern influences during the past century. Today in the West the introduction of works such as Ugetsu monogatari may give readers new awareness of traditional Asian values and make one pause for thought as the age of plastic replaces that of bamboo.

  4 The Romance of Travel and the Poetry of Place

  Within Japan every place is home. Among few people has the spirit of the open road attained more refined expression in art and literature. ‘The days and months are the tr
avellers of eternity and so are the passing years,’ wrote the haiku poet, Matsuo Bashō (1644-94), less than a century before Akinari's time. ‘Those who steer boats across the sea or drive horses over the earth till the end of their days make their home wherever their travels take them. Many men of old have died on the road, and I too for long have been stirred by the wind that blows the clouds and filled with a ceaseless desire to wander.’11 Not only in Akinari's day but during earlier periods as well, the theme of man as wayfarer found rich expression in Japanese literature. Indeed, the voyage and the pilgrimage have always figured in poetry, diary, and romance. No wonder, then, that travel should play such a large part in Akinari's work, and that it suggested a journey toward enlightenment and an effort to learn the hidden nature of man himself. This theme appears in the opening passage of the first tale and recurs in nearly every story.

  2 Self-caricature of Ueda Akinari, inscribed with a light verse (kyōka). (Tenri; photograph courtesy of Kadokawa Shoten.)

  3 Detail from caricature of Ueda Akinari, by Tomioka Tessai (1836-1924); probably inspired by the above. (Kyoto, Tomioka Masutarō.)

  4 Waka verse, ‘All through the ages . . .’ in the author's own hand. (Osaka, Fuji Fujio.)

  5 ‘Once upon a time ... I began to journey’ (p. 98). Saigyō on his travels, from a picture scroll of the Kamakura period, Saigyō monogatari emaki, attributed to Tosa Tsunetaka. (Okayama, Ōhara Museum of Fine Art; National Treasure.)

  6 ‘I passed through Naniwa of the falling reeds’ (p.98). Painting by Reisei (or Okada) Tamechika (1823-64), ‘Moonlight and Rain.’ (Tokyo, Kosaka Junzō; from Kinsei meiga taikan; Important Cultural Property.)

  7 ‘Here where one may see only the tracks of the wandering stag’ (p. 99). Painting by Matsumura Goshun (1752-1811). (Hyōgo, Itsuō Art Museum.)

  By Akinari's day travel was a conventional theme in elegant writing, and allusion to earlier works was an essential element. From the Man'yōshū, for instance, Akinari borrowed images such as autumn hillsides bright with yellow foliage and names of specific places like Narumi bay, ‘where the plovers leave their tracks on the beach.’ Typically, the localities mentioned at the beginning of ‘White Peak’ and elsewhere were found in earlier essays, diaries, and romances. Similar usage occurred not only in dramatic literature but also in fiction and in prose-poems by haiku masters. The technique of weaving the names of renowned scenic spots rhythmically into the text to conjure a series of scenes and vistas calls to mind a thousand years or more of writing about travel. Known as the michiyuki, or ‘road going,’ it imparts a tone of sadness and lends a touch of poetic elegance.

  The spirit of earlier travellers haunted Akinari. Time had brought change to many of the places mentioned in the tales, and the two centuries that have passed since they were written have witnessed yet further transformation. But the poetic names survive, as if ghosts of bygone eras. The barrier of Ōsaka, lofty Mt Fuji with its characteristic trail of smoke, the plain of Ukishima, the barrier of Kiyomi, the inlets and bays around Ōiso, the purple grass of Musashino moors, and all the rest bring to mind scenes immortalised by the bards of the Man'yōshū and by subsequent generations of poets. The place names of the first tale, for instance, which describe a great arc from Kyoto eastward, northward, and then westward, figure in Saigyō’s record of his travels. Bashō later emulated Saigyō, whose terms of description Akinari used virtually without change. On the spot where Saigyō’s ghostly audience with the former emperor took place there stands even today a simple earthen mound covered with dried leaves and fallen twigs. The limestone fence that now encloses Sutoku's grave is of recent construction, but the distant view of the islands and bays has altered but little since ancient times, with ships that trade between distant lands or carry people and goods between various provinces reminding one of more than a millennium of history.

  Whereas the central action in ‘White Peak’ takes place overlooking the Inland Sea, that of ‘Chrysanthemum Tryst’ involves the old post road that linked the home provinces with western Japan. The province of Sanuki stands for travel by sea. The town of Kako represents journey by land, and it appeared in the earliest written records. The legendary first emperor passed by here on his eastward trip to Yamato. A verse in the Man'yōshū described how,

  ‘While I linger,

  Passing Inabi Plain,

  The Isle of Kako,

  Dear to my heart,

  Appears in sight.’12

  During Akinari's time crowds of foot travellers stopped nightly at Kako's many inns, and the town was an important place to the weary people who every evening scurried to find lodging. The winding coastline and the nearby beaches of Akashi and Takasago, with white sand and green pines, suggest the quintessence of loveliness. The main character in the tale meets his faithful friend as a result of the vicissitudes of travel, and the latter's need to continue on his way separates the two men. In the end Samon himself, in order to avenge his ‘brother's’ death, journeys down the high road. Today, however, no one knows where the ancient inns stood, and the town, destroyed in war, is indistinguishable from other cities of similar size. The beauty of the beaches remains only in the mind's eye.

  Although the main action in the first two tales carries the reader to the west of Kyoto, that of ‘The House Amid the Thickets’ deals with what in those days was the more remote Kanto region in eastern Japan, between the towering Chichibu mountains and the web of rivers and canals that drain into Tokyo Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Places famed in Man'yōshū poetry and mentioned in the military chronicles of the middle ages set the scene for a poignant theme-the sorrow of parting and the bittersweet return of the long-lost husband or lover. The precariousness of travel in wartime and the revelation of a ghostly reunion lend an additional measure of fragile beauty. Visitors to the village of Mama, not far from Tokyo, may still find near a neglected temple a well from which the legendary young woman, Tegona, is said to have drawn water. Her restless spirit is still thought to wander in search of salvation.

  Surely few authors have described historical and poetic places through the eyes of a painter who has dreamed that he was a fish. ‘The Carp That Came to My Dream’ is set at Lake Biwa, the largest body of fresh water in Japan-renowned for its natural beauty and for its role in the nation's history. By its shores in the seventh century an emperor briefly held his court. Afterward uncle became pitted against nephew, and the imperial house was divided. Since early times the ‘Great Bay of Shiga’ and the surrounding mountains and villages have evoked deep sentiment among poets and visitors. From the Mii Temple, where the painter in the tale dwells and where Ernest Fenollosa's ashes were buried, spring the waters with which emperors and empresses were washed at birth.13 About two centuries before Akinari's time nearly all of the temple had been destroyed in war and then rebuilt. In Akinari's own day and later, popular wood-block prints celebrated the eight famous sights around the lake-‘snow in the evening on Mt Hira,’ ‘sailboats returning to Yabase,’ ‘the autumn moon over Ishiyama Temple,’ ‘dusk at Seta,’ ‘the evening bells at Mii Temple,’ ‘wild geese alighting at Katada,’ ‘sunset at Awazu,’ ‘rain at night in Karasaki’-many of which were sung in the no plays and mentioned by Bash and even by Saikaku, as well as Akinari. The passage in the fourth tale that tells of riding ‘the waves that rise and fall with the gusts that blow from Mt Nagara,’ employs the conventional poetic journey, or michiyuki, with unusual daring and imagination and brings visions of the green mountains encircling the lake.

  In the fifth and seventh tales, the scene is set to the south of the rich Yamato plain, which nourished early Japanese civilisation. The Yoshino and Kumano area still boasts of such scenic splendours as flowering trees, plummeting waterfalls, deep gorges, and secluded holy spots. It figures often in history, legend, and poetry. ‘Bird of Paradise,’ the fifth tale and the only one directly involving the author's own period, begins with two travellers, a father and son, who pass through the deepest recesses of Yoshino to view the cherry-bloss
oms. Footworn from their exertions, they reach the Buddhist citadel of Mt Kōya, sacred peak of the esoteric Shingon sect, which the author himself as a youth had similarly visited with his father and climbed ‘with impulsive heart’ to spend the night.14 Besides the story of Kūkai's miraculously founding the temple and the material about Hidetsugu's fateful journey at the end of the sixteenth century, the place name itself evokes memory of drama, tale, and legend, such as that about a son searching in vain for his father, who had retired to the forbidden cloisters of Mt Kōya.

  Except for the last, all of the tales similarly involve places famed in earlier literature and history. ‘The Caldron of Kibitsu,’ for instance, also uses place names from the ubiquitous Man'yōshū and the ancient and medieval chronicles. ‘The Lust of the White Serpent’ conjures up scenes in Kumano, Yoshino, and Yamato. To many of the blossoming mountains, rushing streams, and tide-swept beaches early emperors had made imperial pleasure trips, and virtually every spot that Akinari mentions reveals rich literary and historical associations. Another tale set in the Kant region is ‘The Blue Hood.’ Here, a priest in search of religious enlightenment passes through the village of Tonda, below the Daichūji Temple, which once flourished as a great religious institution in the northern Kant but now languishes as a rural place of worship near the road to Nikkō. Like Saigyō’s journey to Sutoku's grave, Kaian's ascent of the mountain is described in terms typical of travel in literature and drama, with overtones of poetry and high romance.

  Of course the motif of travel in Akinari's tales brings the reader into contact with earlier history and literature, but it performs other functions as well. First of all, the journey calls to mind the archetypal quest. Akinari's, however, is not epic and directed outward; rather, it represents a search for self-knowledge and for understanding of ones place in time and space. Also, it draws the reader from his private universe to join the author in a make-believe world. But finally, it indicates that his tales are not provincial, dealing only with Osaka and Kyoto, but national-spanning the length and breadth of the land. The sixty-six provinces formed one nation, though not until a century after Akinari completed his preface was it reborn as a modern state.