Tales of Moonlight and Rain

In friendship, bond not with a shallow man.

The moon glows on the river, wind rustles the pines. Long night clear evening--what are they for?

Without a constant livelihood, there will be no constant heart.

Shape I may take, converse I may, but neither god nor Buddha am I, rather an insensate being whose heart thus differs from that of man.

...wealth without pride is the way of the great sage.

He who fails to control his mind becomes a demon; he who governs his mind attains to buddhahood.

He continued his writing and scholarship as he moved here and there in Kyoto, depending on friends for support, until his death in 1809 on the twenty-seventh day of the Sixth Month (August 8, in the Western calendar), in his seventy-sixth year. His grave is at the Buddhist temple Saifukuji, near the Nanzenji monastery.

Pilgrims to the Mausoleum recite the chant Namu Daishi Henjō Kongō: “I put my faith in the great teacher who brings light to all the people, Universal Adamantine Illuminator.“2

Miidera, also known as Onjōji, an important Buddhist temple established in the seventh century on a hill overlooking Lake Biwa, in what is now the city of Ōtsu, just east of Kyoto, is the setting of “The Carp of My Dreams.

possibly at the Kaitokudō, one of the most prominent of the new schools chartered by the government to provide “an appropriately practical Confucian education” to the children of the merchant and artisan classes.8 The curriculum would have included the Confucian canon—the Four Books (Lun yü [Analects] of Confucius, Da xue [The Great Learning], Zhong yong [The Doctrine of the Mean], and Mengzi [Mencius]) and the Five Classics (I jing [The Book of Changes], Shu jing [The Book of Documents], Shi jing [The Book of Songs], Li ji [The Book of Rites], and Chun qiu [Spring and Autumn Annals])—and Japanese classics, especially waka (thirty-one-syllable court poems), Ise monogatari (Tales of Ise, ca. 947), and The Tale of Genji.

The first blossoming of early modern literature came toward the end of the seventeenth century, particularly with the work of three major figures: the fiction writer Ihara Saikaku (1642–1693), the poet Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), and the dramatist Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653–1724).

Many novelists—including Izumi Kyōka (1873–1939), Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (1886–1965), Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (1892–1927), Ishikawa Jun (1899–1987), Enchi Fumiko (1905–1986), and Mishima Yukio (1925–1970)—were avid readers of the collection. Two of the tales inspired Mizoguchi Kenji’s cinematic masterpiece Ugetsu monogatari (1953; known to Western viewers as Ugetsu), which is widely regarded as “one of the greatest of all films.

Haljas, haljas on kevadine paju, aga oma aeda ära teda istuta. Ja seltsiliseks ära vali endale pealiskaudseid inimesi. Paju läheb küll kiiresti lopsakasse lehte, aga kas suudab ta vastu panna, kui esimene sügistuul puhub? Pealiskaudse inimesega on samuti kerge kiiresti sõbraks saada. Aga mitu korda ka jõeääre paju igal kevadel uuesti roheliseks ei läheks, kui pealiskaudne inimene kord silmapiirilt kaob, ei tule ta kunagi tagasi.