Ueda Akinari
Encyclopedia
Ueda Akinari or Ueda Shūsei (上田 秋成, July 25, 1734, Osaka
Osaka
is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...

 - August 8, 1809, Kyoto
Kyoto
is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...

) was a Japanese
Japanese people
The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...

 author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

, scholar and waka
Waka (poetry)
Waka or Yamato uta is a genre of classical Japanese verse and one of the major genres of Japanese literature...

 poet, and a prominent literary figure in 18th century Japan. He was an early writer in the yomihon
Yomihon
is a type of Japanese book from the Edo period , that was influenced by Chinese vernacular novels such as Water Margin. Unlike other Japanese books of the period, they had few illustrations, and the emphasis was on the text. Often described as moralistic, the books also featured plot elements taken...

genre and his two masterpieces, Tales of Moonlight and Rain
Tales of Moonlight and Rain
is a collection of nine independent stories, written by Ueda Akinari, first published in 1776, adapted from Chinese ghost stories. It is considered to be among the most important works of Japanese fiction of the 18th century, the middle of the Edo period...

(Ugetsu monogatari) and Tales of Spring Rain (Harusame monogatari), are central to the canon of Japanese literature
Japanese literature
Early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese. Indian literature also had an influence through the diffusion of Buddhism in Japan...

.

Biography

Born to an Osaka
Osaka
is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...

 prostitute
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...

 and an unknown father, Ueda was adopted in his fourth year by a wealthy merchant who reared him in comfort and provided him with a good education. As a child he became gravely ill with smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...

, and although he survived, he was left with deformed fingers on both hands. During his illness, his parents prayed to the god of the Kashima Inari Shrine, and Ueda felt that this deity had intervened and saved his life. Throughout his life he remained a strong believer in the supernatural, and this belief seems to inform important elements of his literature and scholarship such as his most famous work, a collection of ghost stories titled Tales of Moonlight and Rain.

He inherited the Ueda family oil and paper business when his adoptive father died. However, he was not a successful merchant, and he lost the business to a fire after running it unhappily for ten years. During this time, he published several humorous stories in the ukiyozōshi
Ukiyozoshi
is the first major genre of popular Japanese fiction, written between the 1680s and the 1770s in Kyoto and Osaka. Ukiyozōshi literature developed from the kanazōshi genre and was in fact initially classified as kanazōshi...

style (literally translated as “tales of the floating world”, the name of a style of books of popular fiction published between the 1680s and 1770s).

Taking the fire as opportunity to leave the business world, Ueda began studying medicine under Tsuga Teishō, who in addition to teaching Ueda to be a doctor also taught him about colloquial Chinese fiction. In 1776 he began to practice medicine and also published Tales of Moonlight and Rain. This work places Ueda Akinari alongside Takizawa Bakin among the most prominent writers of yomihon — a new genre that represented a dramatic change in reading practices from the popular fiction that came before it.

In addition to his fiction, Ueda was involved in the field of research known as kokugaku
Kokugaku
Kokugaku was a National revival, or, school of Japanese philology and philosophy originating during the Tokugawa period...

(National Learning), the study of philology and classical Japanese literature. Kokugaku was often typified by a rejection of foreign influences on Japanese culture, notably Chinese language, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Ueda took a highly independent position within these circles, and his vigorous polemical dispute with the leading scholar of the movement, Motoori Norinaga
Motoori Norinaga
was a Japanese scholar of Kokugaku active during the Edo period. He is probably the best known and most prominent of all scholars in this tradition.-Life:...

, is recorded in the latter's dialogue Kagaika (呵刈葭 1787-1788). Some argue that Ueda also worked out this conflict in stories such as Tales of Moonlight and Rain by beginning his stories grounded on Chinese stories and moral and intellectual discourses and that he then foregrounded a Japanese sensibility by calling on supernatural elements and having his characters feel deep emotion (as opposed to Chinese reliance on the intellect). However it is also true that he had a strong rational, empirical temper, dismissed as nonsensical the myth-reviving fantasies of kokugaku
Kokugaku
Kokugaku was a National revival, or, school of Japanese philology and philosophy originating during the Tokugawa period...

 scholars, and throughout showed an intense curiosity, distinctive for its lack of patriotic superiority, in foreign cultures, both within Japan (the Ainu and Okinawan cultures) and abroad (China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

, and Western countries).

In the years after his wife’s death in 1798 he suffered from temporary blindness, and although eventually sight returned to his left eye from that point on he had to dictate much of his writing. It was at this time that he began working on his second yomihon, and he finished the first two stories of what would be Tales of the Spring Rain (Harusame monogatari) in around 1802. The complete version was not published until 1951, when missing sections of the manuscript were discovered. Spring Rain is quite different from Tales of Moonlight and Rain, and there is some discussion among scholars as to which is the superior work. Among other differences, Spring Rain does not invoke the supernatural, and the stories are of greatly varied length. The story titled “Hankai” is about a disreputable ruffian who suddenly converts to Buddhism and spends the rest of his life as a pious monk. The story anchors the collection by virtue of its length and the literary skill it exhibits.

In 1809, Ueda died at the age of 76 in Kyoto
Kyoto
is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...

.

Ueda Akinari timeline

  • 1755 Published first haikai at the age of 21.
  • 1760 Married Ueyama Tama
  • 1761 Adoptive father died.
  • 1766 Published Worldly Monkeys with Ears for the Arts (Shodō kikimimi sekenzaru).
  • 1767 Published Characters of Worldly Mistresses (Seken Tekake Katagi)
  • 1771 The family oil and paper business was destroyed in a fire.
  • 1776 Published Ugetsu Monogatari. Began to practice medicine.
  • 1788 Retired from medicine and devoted himself full time to writing and scholarship.
  • 1797 Wife died. He suffered from temporary blindness.
  • 1802 Oldest extant versions of “The Bloodstained Robe” and “The Celestial Maidens”, the first two stories of Harusame monogatari (Tales of the Spring Rain).
  • 1808 Published Tandai shōshin roku (Notes Bold Yet Pithy).

Works

  • Tales of Moonlight and Rain
    Tales of Moonlight and Rain
    is a collection of nine independent stories, written by Ueda Akinari, first published in 1776, adapted from Chinese ghost stories. It is considered to be among the most important works of Japanese fiction of the 18th century, the middle of the Edo period...

    (雨月物語 Ugetsu monogatari) (1776)
  • Tales of the Spring Rain (春雨物語 Harusame monogatari) (1809)
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