Tales of Moonlight and Rain

…he produced Ugetsu monogatari (Tales of Moonlight and Rain). These ghost tales showed a concern for literary style not present in most popular fiction of the time, in which the text was usually simply an accompaniment for the illustrations that formed the main part of the books.

…advantage in Ugetsu monogatari (1776; Tales of Moonlight and Rain), a collection of supernatural tales. The gesaku writers, however, did not follow Akinari in his perfectionist attention to style and construction; instead, many of them produced books of almost formless gossip, substituting the raciness of daily speech for the elegance…