User:MenoEnds/Ugetsu Monogatari

Adapted Novels
Ugetsu Monogatari is a hon’an shosetsu (adapted novel). It was part of a new genre of books that had become popular in the 18th century: translations of Chinese stories adapted to fit into Japanese culture and historical settings. The stories in Ugetsu Monogatari were pulled from various Chinese story collections, including Chien Teng Hsin Hua (New Stories After Snuffing the Lamp) and Yu-shih Ming-yen (Clear Words to Illuminate the World). Since these stories had already been adapted by others, Ueda was able to draw, not only from the original stories, but also from the existing adaptations. This was not viewed as plagiarism, as “the notion of the artist prevalent in [his] time defined [literary] practice as one involving an adaptation of the tradition.” Rather, his writing was praised for its unique take on the existing stories.

Notably, Ueda, a devoted kokugaku scholar, went farther than his contemporaries in changing the source material to remove evidence of its Chinese origins. In his reinterpretation of these stories, Ueda recast them as historical tales set in Japan, weaving together elements of the source stories with a rich array of references to historical events, personages, and literary works, as well as Japanese folklore and religion.

Kokugaku Scholarship
Ueda's kokugaku beliefs led him to adapt the stories in ways that were different from, and sometimes counter to, the ways his Confucian and Buddhist peers did. Like other members of the kokugaku movement, he utilized fiction as a tool to reinvigorate Japan's past, by bringing to life the aesthetics of antiquity in the present. At the same time, he presents in Ugetsu Monogatari some of the moral views of the kokugaku school. Ueda's version of Shiramine is a particularly strong example of this. Discarding Confucian and Buddhist readings of the story, Ueda uses the protagonist as a mouthpiece for his kokugaku interpretation of the legend of Emperor Sutoku, ascribing the cause of the emperor's tragedy to the infiltration of foreign, and especially Confucian, ideologies.

Borrowing
Ugetsu Monogatari draws heavily from other books, borrowing imagery, references, structures, stylistic choices, and more from famous works including Inga Monogatari, A Garland of Heroes, Otogi Boko, Ise Monogatari, Nihon Ryoiki, and Konjaku Monogatari-shu. (whitehouse) Japanese literature researcher Noriko T. Reider observed that “more than sixty passages in Ugetsu Monogatari are derived from Chinese literature, while over a hundred are taken from Japanese literature.” In particular, Ueda borrowed so heavily from Genji Monogatari that certain sentences in Ugetsu Monogatari seem to have been directly lifted from it.

Noh Theater
Influence from Noh theater can be found woven throughout Ugetsu Monogatari. Within each story, the characters fit into the traditional shite (lead actor) and waki (supporting actor) roles of Noh plays and the acts are arranged using the jo-ha-kyū dramatic structure made famous in Noh. In addition, “by subject, [the stories] are arranged according to the order of a single-day’s Noh program, in sequence: plays of gods, warriors, women, mad person (or miscellaneous present plays), and demons.”

The stories Shiramine and Jasei no In take their interpretations of the folktales they are based on from specific Noh plays that are adaptations of the same stories.

Kaidan
Ugetsu Monogatari is one of the best-known and most highly regarded kaidan-shu, collections of supernatural or ghost stories that became popular in Japan during the Edo Period. It utilizes elements from all three primary types of kaidan: adaptations of Chinese stories, Buddhist ghost stories, and Japanese folk-tales. Despite the collection’s popularity, these are the only kaidan Ueda ever published.

During the Edo Period, Japan was enjoying a period of peace and stability after the end of the turbulent Sengoku Period and, with the emergence of an increasingly interconnected economy that connected rural and urban areas, kaidan experienced a shift “in the direction of entertainment from the overtly religious or didactic”. Many Chinese kaidan were translated and adapted into Japanese culture during this time and were secularized in the process, including tales from Suzuki Shosan's Inga Monogatari (1661) and Asai Ryoi's Otogi Bōko (1666), which would go on to influence the writing of Ugetsu Monogatari.

Ueda continued this trend of secularization in Ugetsu Monogatari, removing certain religious elements from stories such as Asaji ga Yado and Kibitsu no Kama. He references his non-didactic approach to fiction writing in the preface of the book, joking that, unlike other well-known authors such as Lo Kuan-chung and Murasaki Shikibu, whom some Confucian and Buddhist scholars of the time believed had received divine punishment for leading readers astray, he was safe from divine punishment because no one was expected to believe his writing to be truthful.

The secularization of kaidan was amplified by an interest among intellectuals of the time, especially among Neo-Confucianists, in using logic grounded in Confucian yin-yang theory to find mundane explanations for supernatural phenomena. Ueda, however, rejected mundane explanations for supernatural phenomena, believing that only Japanese folk belief could explain such events. Despite this, he didn’t remove all the religious elements from the stories; Aozukin in particular follows the tradition of Buddhist setsuwa storytelling.