Tales of Moonlight and Rain by Ueda Akinari

Published 1776 · 31,007 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Short Fiction, Horror, Historical Fiction

How many words are on a page? A ReadingRate study

How hard is Tales of Moonlight and Rain to read?

Tales of Moonlight and Rain scores 50 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 62 out of 100
Akinari packs classical references, Buddhist terms, place names and poetry into the tales. The English translation keeps this archaic register but explains much, making it denser than The Great Gatsby and lighter than Moby-Dick.
Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
Long chained clauses with semicolons carry Akinari's classical Japanese rhythm, and the speeches such as Sutoku's run on at length. The syntax stays clearer than Tolstoy's.
Abstraction: 58 out of 100
Tales hinge on concrete ghosts and snakes, but long debates on kingship, karma and wealth bring in abstract argument. Closer to Pedro Paramo than to Crime and Punishment.
Information density: 60 out of 100
Historical figures, geography, Chinese anecdotes and poems pile up in each tale. Dense for a short book, comparable to Flights.
Narrative indirection: 50 out of 100
Narration is direct and moral is often stated, but readers must infer who is ghost, snake or fox before the reveal, as in Katsushiro's waking among reeds.
Symbolic density: 62 out of 100
Chrysanthemums, the cauldron, the blue hood and the serpent all carry meaning, and each tale rests on a central symbol. Less pervasive than Gatsby's imagery.
Ironic distance: 40 out of 100
The tales mostly play straight with a Buddhist and Confucian moral, though Akinari's preface winks at his own fictions and the gold spirit undercuts both creeds.
Resolution withholding: 28 out of 100
Each story closes with ghosts laid to rest or victims destroyed and a moral stated. The Sutoku and gold-spirit prophecies leave only slight unease.
Structural complexity: 48 out of 100
Nine separate tales with frame narratives, embedded dreams and tales within tales, such as Kogi's account of his carp dream. Simpler than Midnight's Children.

How Tales of Moonlight and Rain is regarded

Tales of Moonlight and Rain holds a literary regard score of 78 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Where Tales of Moonlight and Rain sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (64 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, Tales of Moonlight and Rain scores 50 out of 100. A second mythos, romance, pulls at it with a weight of 0.2. About the map of stories.

Mode: Low Mimetic
I am not a man of this world. A filthy ghost has taken this form briefly to appear before you.
Symbol: Mythical (archetypal)
It appears that out of lust, inspired by your beauty, it has attached itself to you and led you astray.
Mythos: Tragedy vi (tragedy vi)
he found a man’s topknot hanging there, and nothing else.
Genre: Romance + Anatomy
Fan Li, Zigong, and Bo Gui profited from selling produce and accumulated vast amounts of gold.

Where the story of Tales of Moonlight and Rain takes place

  • Shiramine, Sanuki, 1168-1185 (1168 to 1185), the main setting
  • Kii, Yamato and Kumano, an unspecified earlier age (900 to 1200)
  • Miidera and Lake Biwa, Enchō era (923 to 931)
  • Shimotsuke mountain village and temple, Sengoku-era Zen (1400 to 1600)
  • Kibi and Harima, after the Kakitsu Incident (1441 to 1480)
  • Shimōsa and Kyoto, 1455-1461 (1455 to 1462)
  • Harima and Izumo during the Amako rise, early Sengoku (1484 to 1520)
  • Mutsu under Gamō Ujisato, Toyotomi age (1585 to 1598)
  • Mount Kōya, 1595

5 things that are true of Tales of Moonlight and Rain, with the passage for each

  1. The preface is dated to a night in late spring of Meiwa 5 and signed with the pen-name Senshi Kijin.

    In the late spring of Meiwa 5, on a night with a misty moon after the rains have cleared, I compose this at my window and give it to the bookseller.

  2. Akana Sōemon reaches Samon on the appointed day by killing himself and traveling as a ghost.

    Recalling this, I fell on my sword and tonight rode the dark wind from afar to arrive in time for our chrysanthemum tryst.

  3. None of the painter Kōgi's carp paintings survived, because he released the painted fish into the lake.

    For this reason, none of Kōgi’s paintings survived.

  4. Shōtarō is confined for forty-two days under the yin–yang master's talismans before he is taken.

    This continued until the forty-second night.

  5. The Zen master's blow dissolves the abbot, leaving only a hood and bones.

    until only the blue hood and some bones remained on the leaves of grass.

Scenes in Tales of Moonlight and Rain that Frye would name

54 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Anagnorisis, The Reed-Choked House
Realizing now for the first time that his wife was dead, he cried out and collapsed. The recognition that the night's wife was a ghost pivots the tale.
Sparagmos, The Kibitsu Cauldron
he found a man’s topknot hanging there, and nothing else. Shōtarō is torn from existence, leaving a topknot and fresh blood.
Sparagmos, The Blue Hood
he ate the flesh and licked the bones until nothing was left. The abbot's consumption of the dead boy's body.
Demonic imagery, Shiramine
Saigyō saw a face as red as though blood had been poured over it; a tangle of knee-length hair; angry, glaring eyes The ghost-emperor appears as the King of Evil.
Pathos, The Chrysanthemum Vow
Recalling this, I fell on my sword and tonight rode the dark wind from afar to arrive in time for our chrysanthemum tryst. Akana's sacrificial death to keep his pledge.
Hamartia, The Kibitsu Cauldron
Once he had the money, he slipped out of the house and fled with Sode toward the capital. Shōtarō's deceit of the faithful Isora is the fatal misstep.

Books that share these scenes with Tales of Moonlight and Rain

About the author

Ueda Akinari