A Complete English Version of the Eighteenth-Century Japanese Collection of Tales of the Supernatural
by UEDA AKINARI
1734-1809
based on the first woodblock edition of 1776 with illustrations and an introduction for Western readers
A collection of nine beautifully wrought tales of the supernatural, Ugetsu Monogatari (‘Tales of Moonlight and Rain’) is one of the greatest masterpieces of Edo fiction. Written by Ueda Akinari and first published in 1776, it is universally admired for the classical elegance of its style and for the supreme skill with which the tales are constructed and recounted.
As hauntingly beautiful as the title suggests, Ugetsu Monogatari became popular in the western world through the famous film based on the tales made by Japanese film director Kenji Mizoguchi in 1953.
Although the stories have been translated into English before, Professor Zolbrod’s translation can justly claim to be the first full scholarly version, complete with the original preface and the original order of the tales unchanged, together with some of the delightful old Japanese illustrations and a full introduction and notes designed to enable scholar, student, and the general reader alike to understand the allusive quality of the tales and thus appreciate their true beauty and subtlety.
Of all the stories in the book the most intriguing and spine-chilling perhaps are the tales that tell of how a poet confronts the ghost of a former emperor, how a spirit travels hundreds of miles on a single night to keep a promise, how a jealous wife returns from the dead to wreck bloody revenge on her faithless husband, and how a Buddhist priest exorcises a demon from the body of a mad monk.