Ugetsu Monogatari: Nine Tales of Moonlight and Rain

by Ueda Akinari, Clayton Maris (Translator)

Ghosts keep promises more faithfully than the living. Desire takes the shape of a serpent. A ruined house waits through years of war, and a monk confronts an emperor whose anger has outlived him.

First published in 1776, Ugetsu Monogatari is one of Japan’s defining collections of supernatural tales. Ueda Akinari draws on history, Buddhist cosmology, court poetry, warrior legend, and Chinese and Japanese narrative traditions to create nine stories of longing, loyalty, delusion, vengeance, and awakening.

This new English translation preserves the collection’s formal tale-teller’s voice while remaining clear and readable. It

• all nine tales in source order;
• an introduction and note on the text;
• concise notes on chronology, names, religious terms, and historical figures;
• translations of every poem and verse in the text.

Elegant, unsettling, and morally complex, these tales reveal a world in which the dead return not merely to frighten the living, but to demand that promises, betrayals, and desires be faced.

116 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 8, 2026

About the author

Ueda Akinari or Ueda Shūsei (上田 秋成) was a Japanese author, scholar and waka poet, and a prominent literary figure in 18th century Japan. He was an early writer in the yomihon genre and his two masterpieces, Ugetsu Monogatari ("Tales of Rain and the Moon") and Harusame Monogatari ("Tales of Spring Rain"), are central to the canon of Japanese literature.