In the Margins of Dreams: The Ghosts of Ueda Akinari

Trans­lated from French

It is of­ten in the mar­gins that the most sin­gu­lar ge­niuses nes­tle. Son of an un­known fa­ther and an al­l-too-known moth­er—a cour­te­san from the plea­sure quar­ter­s—Ueda Ak­i­nari (1734-1809)¹Re­jected forms:
Ak­i­nari Oue­da.
Ueda Tôsaku.
Uyeda Ak­i­nari. saw his mother only on­ce, when he was al­ready a grown man and cel­e­brated writ­er. Adopted by a mer­chant fam­ily in Os­aka, his ex­is­tence was marked by this orig­i­nal shame upon which his en­e­mies never hes­i­tated to at­tack him: “My en­e­mies say of me: he is a tav­ern child; worse still, he is some off­spring of an aged pimp! To which I re­ply: […] in any case, I am in my moun­tain the sole gen­eral and I know no peer there”. Added to this was an in­fir­mity of the fin­gers²An in­fir­mity he would wear as a badge by sign­ing his mas­ter­piece with the pseu­do­nym Sen­shi Ki­jin, that is, the Crip­ple with De­formed Fin­gers. that pre­vented him from per­fect cal­lig­ra­phy, para­dox­i­cally ori­ent­ing him, the proud young man lit­tle in­clined to com­merce, to­ward a re­lent­less in­tel­lec­tual and lit­er­ary quest. From this trou­bled ex­is­tence, from this raw sen­si­tiv­i­ty, would be born his mas­ter­piece, the Tales of Rain and Moon (Ugetsu mono­gatari)³Re­jected forms:
Con­tes des mois de pluie (Tales of Rainy Month­s).
Con­tes de la lune vague après la pluie (Tales of the Vague Moon Af­ter Rain).
Con­tes de la lune et de la pluie (Tales of Moon and Rain).
Con­tes de pluies et de lune (Tales of Rains and Moon).
Con­tes de la lune des pluies (Tales of the Moon of Rain­s).
Con­tes de lune et de pluie (Tales of Moon and Rain).
Con­tes du clair de lune et de la pluie (Tales of Moon­light and Rain).
Uegutsu mono­gatari..

Of Sources and Dreams

Pub­lished in 1776, these nine fan­tas­tic tales mark a turn­ing point in the lit­er­a­ture of the Edo pe­ri­od. Ak­i­nari, break­ing with the “tales of the float­ing world”, a friv­o­lous genre then in vogue, in­au­gu­rates the man­ner of the yomihon, or “read­ing book”, aimed at a cul­ti­vated pub­lic to whom he of­fers a space of dream and es­cape. The orig­i­nal­ity of his ap­proach lies in a mas­ter­ful syn­the­sis be­tween Chi­nese nar­ra­tive tra­di­tions and Ja­pa­nese lit­er­ary her­itage. While he draws abun­dantly from col­lec­tions of fan­tas­tic tales from the Ming and Qing dy­nas­ties, such as the Tales by Can­dle­light (Jian­deng xin­hua), he never con­tents him­self with a sim­ple trans­la­tion or servile adap­ta­tion. Each tale is en­tirely Japanized, trans­posed into a na­tional his­tor­i­cal and ge­o­graph­i­cal frame­work and, above all, trans­fig­ured by a unique melan­choly.

To con­ti­nen­tal sources, Ak­i­nari blends with con­sum­mate art the rem­i­nis­cences of his coun­try’s clas­si­cal lit­er­a­ture. The in­flu­ence of nō the­ater is ev­ery­where per­cep­ti­ble, not only in the ges­tures and phys­iog­nomies—venge­ful spir­its, war­rior ghosts, des­per­ate lover­s—but also in the very com­po­si­tion of the tales, which skill­fully ar­range the dis­tanc­ing from the world and the dra­matic pro­gres­sion up to the ap­pear­ance of the su­per­nat­u­ral. Sim­i­lar­ly, the el­e­gant and flow­ery prose (gabun) is a vi­brant homage to the golden age of the Heian pe­ri­od, and par­tic­u­larly to the Tale of Genji (Genji mono­gatari).

A Ghostly Humanity

What strikes in the Tales of Rain and Moon is that the world of spir­its is never en­tirely cut off from that of the liv­ing. Far from be­ing sim­ple mon­sters, Ak­i­nar­i’s ghosts are en­dowed with a com­plex per­son­al­i­ty, of­ten richer and more orig­i­nal than that of the hu­mans they come to haunt. Their ap­pear­ances are mo­ti­vated by pow­er­fully hu­man feel­ings: fi­delity be­yond death, scorned love, de­vour­ing jeal­ousy, or in­ex­tin­guish­able ha­tred. The specter is of­ten merely the ex­ten­sion of a pas­sion that could not be sat­is­fied or ap­peased in the earthly world. Its voice, com­ing from be­yond the grave, speaks to us with trou­bling moder­nity about our­selves.

Thus with Miyagi, the aban­doned wife who, in The House Among the Reeds, waits seven years for the re­turn of her hus­band who left to seek his for­tune. Dead from ex­haus­tion and sor­row, she ap­pears to him one last night be­fore be­com­ing noth­ing more than a burial mound upon which this heart­break­ing poem is found:

“So it was,
I knew it and yet my heart
Lulled it­self with il­lu­sions:
In this world, un­til this day,
Was this, then, the life I have lived?”

Ueda, Ak­i­nari. Con­tes de pluie et de lune (Ugetsu mono­gatari) (Tales of Rain and Moon), trans. from Ja­pa­nese by René Sief­fert. Paris: Gal­li­mard, coll. “Con­nais­sance de l’Ori­ent. Série japon­aise”, 1956.

The fan­tas­tic in Ak­i­nari is there­fore not a sim­ple mech­a­nism of hor­ror; it is the mag­ni­fy­ing mir­ror of the soul’s tor­ments. Specters come to re­mind the liv­ing of their fail­ings, the moral con­se­quence of their acts. The vengeance of a be­trayed wife or the loy­alty of a friend who takes his own life to keep his prom­ise are so many para­bles about the force of com­mit­ments and the fa­tal­ity of pas­sions.

The Chiseler of Chimeras

Ak­i­nar­i’s style is un­doubt­edly what con­fers upon the work its per­ma­nence. He com­bines the no­bil­ity of clas­si­cal lan­guage with a sense of rhythm in­her­ited from nō, cre­at­ing a sin­gu­lar mu­sic that be­witches the read­er. The very ti­tle, Ugetsu, “rain and moon”, trans­lates this be­witch­ing melody into an im­age—that of moon­light blur­ring in the mur­mur of fine rain, es­tab­lish­ing an ideal set­ting for su­per­nat­u­ral man­i­fes­ta­tions, a spec­tral world where the bound­aries be­tween dream and re­al­ity fade.

An in­de­pen­dent artist, Ak­i­nari took nearly ten years to pol­ish his mas­ter­piece, a sign of the im­por­tance he at­tached to it. An in­tel­lec­tual in­de­pen­dence that also man­i­fested it­self in his vir­u­lent polemics with the other great scholar of his time, Mo­toori Nori­na­ga, a na­tion­al­ist be­fore his time. While the lat­ter erected Japan’s an­ces­tral myths as “the only truth”, Ak­i­nari mocked this ideal by as­sert­ing that “in any coun­try, the spirit of the na­tion is its stench”. Thus, this son of a cour­te­san knew how, through the sole force of his art, to es­tab­lish him­self as a cen­tral fig­ure, a “per­fect an­ar­chist”⁴The ex­pres­sion is Al­fred Jar­ry’s about Ubu, but it could, by a dar­ing anal­o­gy, qual­ify Ak­i­nar­i’s spirit of com­plete in­de­pen­dence. who, by play­ing with con­ven­tions, brought the fan­tas­tic tale to an un­equaled de­gree of re­fine­ment. His sin­gu­lar­i­ties, which re­quired par­tic­u­lar courage in a Ja­pa­nese so­ci­ety that erected con­form­ity as the supreme virtue, did not fail to fas­ci­nate Yukio Mishi­ma, who con­fesses in Mod­ern Japan and the Samu­rai Ethics (Ha­gakure nyū­mon) to hav­ing car­ried Ak­i­nar­i’s work with him “dur­ing the bomb­ings” and ad­mired above all his “de­lib­er­ate anachro­nism”. The Tales of Rain and Moon are not merely an an­thol­ogy of the gen­re; they are a rein­vented im­age of sto­ry­telling in the Ja­pa­nese man­ner, where the mar­velous and the macabre com­pete with the most del­i­cate po­et­ry, leav­ing the reader un­der the last­ing charm of a strange and mag­nif­i­cent dream.

To Go Further

Around Tales of Rain and Moon

Quotations

“Iso­ra, Kasada’s daugh­ter, from the day she had en­tered (her new fam­i­ly), ris­ing early and re­tir­ing late, or­di­nar­ily never left her par­ents-in-law’s side; she had weighed her hus­band’s char­ac­ter, and ap­plied her­self whole­heart­edly to serv­ing him; thus, the Izawa cou­ple, touched by her at­tach­ment to her fil­ial du­ties, were be­side them­selves with joy; Shō­tarō, for his part, ap­pre­ci­ated her good will, and lived with her in har­mo­ny. How­ev­er, against the bad in­cli­na­tions of an ego­ist, what can be done? From a cer­tain mo­ment on, he be­came thor­oughly in­fat­u­ated with a cour­te­san, one named Sode, from To­mo-no-tsu⁵To­mo-no-tsu (to­day Tomonoura): Port of the In­land Sea, Hi­roshima Pre­fec­ture, whose steep land­scapes in­spired the an­i­mated film Ponyo on the Cliff by Stu­dio Ghi­b­li.; he ended up buy­ing her free­dom, set up a house for her in a neigh­bor­ing vil­lage, and spent days and days with­out re­turn­ing home.”

Ueda, Ak­i­nari. Con­tes de pluie et de lune (Ugetsu mono­gatari) (Tales of Rain and Moon), trans. from Ja­pa­nese by René Sief­fert. Paris: Gal­li­mard, coll. “Con­nais­sance de l’Ori­ent. Série japon­aise”, 1956.

Downloads

Sound Recordings

• Jean Douchet, René Sief­fert, Daniel Serceau and Danielle Elis­se­eff about Con­tes de pluie et de lune (Tales of Rain and Moon). (France Cul­ture).

Bibliography

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