The ''Harusame monogatari'' (
kanji
are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequ ...
:
春雨 物語,
hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''.
It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contras ...
: はるさめ
ものがたり）, translated as ''"The Tales of Spring Rain"'' (less commonly "Tales of the Spring Rain") is the second famous collection of
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...
ese stories by
Ueda Akinari after the ''
Ugetsu Monogatari'' ("Tales of Moonlight and Rain").
The collection of ten stories is part of the
yomihon genre of
Japanese literature
Japanese literature throughout most of its history has been influenced by cultural contact with neighboring Asian literatures, most notably China and its literature. Early texts were often written in pure Classical Chinese or , a Chinese-Japanes ...
, which is a notable representative of Japan's contribution to the world's
Early Modern literature
The history of literature of the early modern period (16th, 17th and partly 18th century literature), or early modern literature, succeeds Medieval literature, and in Europe in particular Renaissance literature.
In Europe, the Early Modern p ...
, though this second collection of Ueda's was not printed until a century after his death in 1907. The 1907 printing was based on an incomplete manuscript, and the full edition was not published till 1950.
Contents
The semi-historical stories reflect Akinari's
kokugaku
''Kokugaku'' ( ja, 國學, label= Kyūjitai, ja, 国学, label= Shinjitai; literally "national study") was an academic movement, a school of Japanese philology and philosophy originating during the Tokugawa period. Kokugaku scholars worked t ...
interests in historical fiction.
* Chikatabira (血かたびら, The Bloody Robe) - historical
* Amatsu otome (天津処女, The Amatsu Maid) - historical
* Kaizoku (海賊, The Pirate) - historical
* Nise no en (二世の縁, The Destiny That Spanned Two Lifetimes)- also known as "The Marriage Bond." The story of a relationship reincarnated by means of
Sokushinbutsu.
* Me hitotsu no kami (目ひとつの神) - historical
* Shinikubi no egao (死首の咲顔, The Smile on the Face of the Corpse)
* Suteishi maru (捨石丸, The ship Suteishi) - the name of the lost vessel suteishi means a discarded stone in a
Japanese rock garden
The or Japanese rock garden, often called a zen garden, is a distinctive style of Japanese garden. It creates a miniature stylized landscape through carefully composed arrangements of rocks, water features, moss, pruned trees and bushes, and u ...
, or a sacrificed stone in
Go (game)
Go is an abstract strategy board game for two players in which the aim is to surround more territory than the opponent. The game was invented in China more than 2,500 years ago and is believed to be the oldest board game continuously played t ...
.
* Miyagi ga tsuka (宮木が塚, The Grave of Miyagi)
* Uta no homare (歌のほまれ, In praise of Song) - historical
* Hankai (樊噲) - "a picaresque narrative of the eventful life of a young man ... who later calls himself Hankai" (Jackman, 1975)
Comparisons with ''Ugetsu Monogatari''
Both collections share Akinari's "
kokugaku
''Kokugaku'' ( ja, 國學, label= Kyūjitai, ja, 国学, label= Shinjitai; literally "national study") was an academic movement, a school of Japanese philology and philosophy originating during the Tokugawa period. Kokugaku scholars worked t ...
-inspired delight in the mysterious and problematic". Unlike ''Ugetsu Monogatari'' the Harusame Monogatari is not essentially a collection of ghost stories. The elegant style of the earlier collection is replaced with a terse "sometimes choppy" style.
Translations
* ''Tales of the Spring Rain: Harusame Monogatari by Ueda Akinari''. 249 pages. University of Tokyo Press (1975)
[Barry Jackman "The Harusame Monogatari of Ueda Akinari (1734-1809)." Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1973. , Barry Jackman trans. Tales of the Spring Rain: Harusame Monogatari by Ueda Akinari. Tokyo: Japan Foundation, 1975]
References
{{reflist
Edo-period works