Background
Ueda was born on July 25, 1734 in Osaka, Japan. He was born to an Osaka prostitute and an unknown father, Ueda was adopted in his fourth year by a wealthy merchant who reared him in comfort and provided him with a good education.
秋成 上田
Ueda was born on July 25, 1734 in Osaka, Japan. He was born to an Osaka prostitute and an unknown father, Ueda was adopted in his fourth year by a wealthy merchant who reared him in comfort and provided him with a good education.
Akinari Ueda inherited the Ueda family oil and paper business when his adoptive father died. However, he was not a successful merchant, and he lost the business to a fire after running it unhappily for ten years. During this time, Akinari Ueda published several humorous stories in the ukiyo-zoshi style, literally translated as "tales of the floating world".
Taking the fire as opportunity to leave the business world, Ueda began studying medicine under Tsuga Teisho, who in addition to teaching Ueda to be a doctor also taught him about colloquial Chinese fiction. In 1776 he began to practice medicine and also published Ugetsu Monogatari.
In addition to his fiction, Ueda was involved in the field of research known as kokugaku, the study of philology and classical Japanese literature.
In the years after his wife's death in 1798 he suffered from temporary blindness, and although eventually sight returned to his left eye from that point on he had to dictate much of his writing. It was at this time that he began working on his second yomihon, and he finished the first two stories of what would be Harusame Monogatari ("Tales of the Spring Rain") in around 1802. In 1809, Ueda died at the age of 76 in Kyoto.
(Japanese Edition)
1990Throughout his life he remained a strong believer in the supernatural.
Physical Characteristics: As a child he became gravely ill with smallpox, and although he survived, he was left with deformed fingers on both hands.
Akinari married the daughter of Ueda, a rich merchant of Osaka.