Akinari Ueda (1734–1809)

A collection of 9 short stories. Common characteristic of these Japanese Gothic stories is the intervention of ghosts and daemons in humans life. Most of the stories are based on myths and stories from ancient Japan and China. Some of them have filmed like the film "Ugetsu Monogatari" from Mizogutsi. The texts are accompanied by a lot of comments to facilitate the non Japanese readers to understand better the plethora of religious, philosophical. theatrical and other cultural references of 17th century in Japan. Very good translation directly from Japanese. The text is accompanied with engravings related to the content of each story. Excellent edition.… (meer)

This will be in many ways an inadequate review, but at least it won’t be long. I want a draft another review, but I know it’ll never happen on my break, but describing how I came up against the limits of my knowledge is, in this case, simpler.

I just reviewed a Sophocles book, and it surprised me because I’ve never read Sophocles before, and I’m far from a classicist, but it felt very familiar. I almost couldn’t write about it because I feel like I’ve spent my whole life writing about Antigone and Creon.

This is the only book I’ve read by somebody from Japan, and I didn’t have anything to say about it, really; and now, I’m talking about that. I’ve read Asian-American syncretists and cool kids and if life were a movie I probably would have been in East Meets West with “Cool Kids” playing as the soundtrack—I wish that I could, be like the cool kids—but no other book by a native Japanese person, or classical East Asian lit….

And I almost couldn’t be nice once, to a very classically emoting person from Japan, internally couldn’t get along, because he was, different, you know. I’m an American; I think I’m cool. And nothing would be easier for me, than to blame my antipathy for the Asians on the Blacks, and my antipathy for the Blacks on the Asians.

Autopilot says, Gotta get it just right.… (meer)

I enjoyed Akinari's Tales of Moonlight and Rain - eventually. Unfortunately, the translator's introduction is long and gives the impression that one simply will not possibly be able to understand or enjoy the tales unless one is a scholar of Japanese history and literature - if that's not bad enough, the intro also contains spoilers! This is a great shame because, while of course one will get more out of them if one has read the same texts as the author and has in mind the same history as readers of the day, they are perfectly accessible stories which can be enjoyed for their own sake.

If I may be so bold, I'd like to suggest a different order in which to read this book.
1)skip the book introduction and the introduction to each tale and go straight to the tales themselves (marked by a dark moon and a large, illustrated first letter) and read them for pure enjoyment, first. The footnotes that the translator supplies relate to notes at the end of each tale (not the notes at the bottom of the pages which are essentially language notes) and they provide plenty of information, if not a little too much, for pure enjoyment.
2)AFTER you have read each tale, read the translator's introduction to each one, they will give you historical notes etc... which will shed a little more light on what you've just read but will also make more sense to you after you've read the tale, and you'll also avoid spoilers.
3)After THAT, if you want to know more about the author and the place of the Tales in Japanese literature, read the introduction and the bibliography and throw yourself into an academic frenzy!

If you do enjoy the tales, then look for the works of Lafcadio Hearn :)
… (meer)