Adapted novels is a . It was part of a new genre of books that had become popular in the 18th century: translations of Chinese stories adapted to fit into Japanese culture and historical settings. The stories in were pulled from various Chinese story collections, including
Jiandeng Xinhua and
Clear Words to Illuminate the World. Since others had already adapted these stories, Ueda was able to draw, not only from the original stories, but also from the existing adaptations. This was not viewed as plagiarism, as "the notion of the artist prevalent in [his] time defined [literary] practice as one involving an adaptation of the tradition." His writing was praised for its unique take on the existing stories. In his reinterpretation of these stories, Ueda recast them as historical tales set in Japan, weaving together elements of the source stories with a rich array of references to historical events, personages, and literary works, as well as
Japanese folklore and religion. Notably, Ueda, a devoted
kokugaku scholar, went farther than his contemporaries in changing the source material to remove evidence of its Chinese origins.
scholarship Ueda's beliefs led him to adapt the stories in ways that were different from, and sometimes counter to, the ways his
Confucian and
Buddhist peers did. Like other members of the movement, he utilized fiction as a tool to reinvigorate Japan's past, by bringing to life the aesthetics of antiquity in the present. At the same time, he presents in some of the moral views of the school. Ueda's version of is a particularly strong example of this. Discarding Confucian and Buddhist readings of the story, Ueda uses the protagonist as a mouthpiece for his interpretation of the legend of
Emperor Sutoku, ascribing the cause of the emperor's tragedy to the infiltration of foreign, and especially Confucian, ideologies.
Borrowed components draws heavily from other books, borrowing imagery, references, structures, stylistic choices, and more from famous works including ,
A Garland of Heroes, , , , and .
Japanese literature researcher Noriko T. Reider observed that "more than sixty passages in are derived from Chinese literature, while over a hundred are taken from Japanese literature." In particular, Ueda borrowed so heavily from
The Tale of Genji that certain sentences in seem to have been directly lifted from it.
Noh theater Influence from
Noh theater can be found woven throughout . Within each story, the characters fit into the traditional and roles of Noh plays and the acts are arranged using the dramatic structure made famous in Noh. In addition, "by subject, [the stories] are arranged according to the order of a single-day's Noh program, in sequence: plays of gods, warriors, women, mad person (or miscellaneous present plays), and demons." The stories and take their interpretations of the folktales they are based on from specific Noh plays that are adaptations of the same stories.
is one of the best-known and most highly regarded , collections of supernatural or ghost stories that became popular in Japan during the Edo period. It utilizes elements from all three primary types of : adaptations of Chinese stories, Buddhist ghost stories, and Japanese folk-tales. Despite the collection's popularity, these are the only Ueda ever published. During the
Edo period, Japan enjoyed a period of peace and stability after the end of the turbulent
Sengoku period and, with the emergence of an increasingly interconnected economy that connected rural and urban areas, experienced a shift "in the direction of entertainment from the overtly religious or didactic". Many Chinese were translated and adapted into Japanese culture during this time and were secularized in the process, including tales from
Suzuki Shōsan's (1661) and
Asai Ryōi's (1666), which would go on to influence the writing of . Ueda continued this trend of secularization in , removing certain religious elements from stories such as and . He references his non-didactic approach to fiction writing in the preface of the book, joking that, unlike other well-known authors such as
Lo Kuan-chung and
Murasaki Shikibu, whom some Confucian and Buddhist scholars of the time believed had received divine punishment for leading readers astray, he was safe from divine punishment because no one was expected to believe his writing to be truthful. The secularization of was amplified by an interest among intellectuals of the time, especially among
Neo-Confucianists, in using logic grounded in Confucian
yin-yang theory to find mundane explanations for supernatural phenomena. Ueda, however, rejected mundane explanations for supernatural phenomena, believing that only Japanese folk belief could explain such events. Despite this, he did not remove all the religious elements from the stories; , in particular, follows the tradition of Buddhist storytelling. ==Stories==