SOURCE: Zolbrod, Leon M. Introduction to Ugetsu Monogatari: Tales of Moonlight and Rain: A Complete English Version of the Eighteenth-Century Japanese Collection of Tales of the Supernatural by Ueda Akinari 1734-1809, translated and edited by Leon M. Zolbrod, pp. 19-94. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974.

In the following excerpt, Zolbrod provides an overview of Akinari's Tales of Moonlight and Rain, discussing the work's style, influences, and historical background.

Historical Background

Much of the fascination with travel and the lyric beauty of place names in the tales comes from Akinari's sense of history and the passage of time. For over a thousand years the nation had endured, and as a student of its traditions, Akinari knew what changes had taken place in customs, manners, and institutions. Each of his tales was set in times past, mostly during the middle ages, between the twelfth and the late sixteenth century, as the...