Reflections on Ugetsu Monogatari. The original book by Akinari.

My favourite stories in here were what are apparently the 'usual' ones: 'The Chrysanthemum Vow', 'The Reed-Choked House' (the basis for one subplot in Mizoguchi's excellent film), 'The Carp of My Dreams', and 'A Serpent's Lust' (the basis for another subplot in the film). 'The Kibitsu Cauldron', which is apparently another highly-regarded one, I didn't quite understand and will have to read again.

'The Reed-Choked House' has a feel and aesthetic very similar to that of the film in addition to very similar events occurring (though the potter is gone for longer and Miyagi dies of unclear causes), whereas 'A Serpent's Lust' is more lustily macabre, delves with more gusto into the demonic. The woman of the book's 'A Serpent's Lust' is named Manago, not Wakasa, and is a snake demon, not a ghost. The one thing that does not change is her sympathetic and tragic portrayal.

'The Chrysanthemum Vow' is about a gay samurai who is waylaid on his way to a tryst with his lover, a Confucian scholar. The samurai kills himself and then, as a ghost or zombie (it's not really clear which), goes back to see his lover after all. The scholar then plots his revenge against the men who wronged him. It is basically Dumas's great novel The Count of Brokeback Mountain and I liked it a lot.

'The Carp of My Dreams', which has nothing to do with anything in the film Ugetsu, is my personal favourite story. It's short and sweet. A painter-monk who has spent his life rendering exceptionally beautiful and accurate pictures of koi fish is transformed into one in a dream and undergoes a harrowing experience in a net and in a sushi cookery before awakening. After this he grants life to all of his paintings and allows them to swim freely in the ponds of his monastery.

Tales of Moonlight and Rain is a great book as well as a great movie and I would recommend the stories in it to anyone who is interested in Japanese literature or the forebears of modern fantasy.