Harusame Monogatari

The Harusame Monogatari (kanji: 春雨物語, hiragana: 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 Japanese stories by Ueda Akinari after the Ugetsu Monogatari ("Tales of Moonlight and Rain").[1]

The collection of ten stories is part of the yomihon genre of Japanese literature, which is a notable representative of Japan's contribution to the world's Early Modern literature, though this second collection of Ueda's was not printed until a century after his death in 1907.[2] The 1907 printing was based on an incomplete manuscript, and the full edition was not published till 1950.[3][4]

Contents

The semi-historical stories reflect Akinari's kokugaku interests in historical fiction.[5]

  • Chikatabira (血かたびら, The Bloody Robe) - historical[6]
  • Amatsu otome (天津処女, The Amatsu Maid) - historical
  • Kaizoku (海賊, The Pirate) - historical[7]
  • 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.[8]
  • 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, or a sacrificed stone in Go (game).
  • 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-inspired delight in the mysterious and problematic".[9] Unlike Ugetsu Monogatari the Harusame Monogatari is not essentially a collection of ghost stories.[10] The elegant style of the earlier collection is replaced with a terse "sometimes choppy" style.[11]

Translations
  • Tales of the Spring Rain: Harusame Monogatari by Ueda Akinari. 249 pages. University of Tokyo Press (1975)[12]

References
  1. Shūichi Katō, Don Sanderson -A History of Japanese Literature: From the Man'yōshū to Modern Times 1997 - Page 191 "Akinari produced two collections of excellent short stories, Ugetsu Monogatari (Tales of the Rain and Moon, completed 1768, published 1776), and Harusame monogatari (Tales of Spring Rain, posthumous)"
  2. Susan L. Burns Before the Nation: Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community 2003 Page 246 "The modern Harusame monogatari has a complicated textual history. It was first printed in 1907, almost a century after Akinari's death. The printed version, based upon a manuscript owned by Tomioka Tessai (1836-1924), contained only ..."
  3. Akinari Ueda, Barry Jackman Harusame monogatari 1975- Page xx "editors of that period.4 Subsequent printed editions of Harusame Monogatari were based on the Fujioka version. In 1939, however, Shigetomo Ki went back to the Tomioka manuscript itself and prepared an edition that adhered closely to ..."
  4. Paul Gordon Schalow, Janet A. Walker -The Woman's Hand: Gender and Theory in Japanese Women's Writing 1996- Page 194 "Notes 1. "Nise no en" is from Ueda Akinari's collection of stories, Harusame monogatari (Tales of the spring rain; 1802-9). A complete version of the text did not become available in print until 1950, "
  5. Monumenta Nipponica Jōchi Daigaku- Volume 25 1970 -- Page 374 "... historical and critical pieces that are a clear reflection of Akinari's National Learning researches ('Chikatabira', 'Amatsu Otome', 'Kaizoku', 'Me hitotsu no kami', and 'Uta no homare'); and stories of psychological and humanistic interest ('Nise ..."
  6. Shūichi Katō, Don Sanderson A History of Japanese Literature: From the Man'yōshū to Modern Times - 1997 Page 193 "Three of them - Chikatabira (The Bloody Robe), Amatsu otome (The Amatsu Maid) and Kaizoku (Pirate) - feature people from history; the other five are based on popular tales and true stories: Nise no en (The Marriage Bond), Shinikubi no egao (The Smile on the Face of the Corpse), Suteishi maru, Miyagi ga tsuka (The Grave of Miyagi) and Hankai. "
  7. Susan L. Burns Before the Nation: Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in ... 2003- Page 127 "Kaizoku... The rest of the stories that comprise the Harusame monogatari are similarly positioned between history and fiction, and from that space Akinari attempted to critically explore the process of historical change from the perspective of the individual ..."
  8. Paul Gordon Schalow, Janet A. Walker The Woman's Hand: Gender and Theory in Japanese Women's Writing 1996- Page 174 "Most likely, Akinari's principal source for "The Destiny That Spanned Two Lifetimes" was "Sanshu amagane no koto" (About the rain bell of Sanshu [Sanuki province]), from Kingyoku neji-bukusa (The golden gemmed twisted wrapper; 1704)."
  9. Conrad D. Totman Early Modern Japan 1995 - Page 414 "In the course of his life, Akinari also wrote two collections of tales that expressed his kokugaku-inspired delight in the mysterious and problematic, Ugetsu Monogatari, written between 1768 and 1776, and Harusame monogatari, dated 1808."
  10. Akinari Ueda, Barry Jackman Harusame monogatari 1975 - Page xvi "The overall impression left by Harusame Monogatari is certainly not one of the supernatural ; but Ugetsu Monogatari is essentially a collection of ghost stories. Compared to Ugetsu Monogatari, Harusame Monogatari contains a much greater ..."
  11. Monumenta Nipponica Jōchi Daigaku -- Volume 31 1976 - Page 97 "... is minimal in Harusame; and the elegant, polished language of Ugetsu gives way to a plain, terse, sometimes choppy style in the later collection. Most conspicuously, as Mr Jackman aptly puts it, 'Harusame Monogatari is a work of "
  12. 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
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