From Brother Square-Hole to the Spirit of Gold: Ueda Akinari's Adapted Discourse on Wealth

• In Event: Following the Money in Early Modern Japanese Literature and Drama - Sponsored by Early Modern Japan Network

Abstract

The 18th century writer Ueda Akinari’s (1734-1809) influential story collection Tales of Moonlight and Rain (Ugetsu monogatari, 1776) is renowned both for its evocative depictions of the supernatural, and for its sophisticated adaptation of diverse Chinese source texts into Japanese narratives. These twin elements were crucial in inaugurating the important genre of yomihon (“reading books”) which proliferated throughout the second half of the Edo period. The two intersect in intriguing fashion in Akinari’s concluding story, an odd little tale about a dialogue between a miserly samurai and the spirit of money, manifested as a small, old man at his bedside. The story draws on material from a range of Chinese sources, including the Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) and the vernacular story collection New Tales Told While Trimming the Lamp (Jiandeng xinhua, 1378), but a particularly important intertext is a famous essay on the god of money by the 4th century dissident Lu Bao. In this paper I focus in particular on Akinari’s distinctive treatment of Lu Bao’s personification of money as “Brother Square-Hole.” In the process I demonstrate how attention to the literary techniques of adaptation and localization, which characterized the genre of yomihon, can also afford us a valuable avenue for understanding the conceptualization of wealth in 18th century Japan.

Author

• Nan Ma Hartmann, Earlham College