I just watched the film Ugetsu for the first time in many years, as part of my Mizoguchi retrospective, and found it just as great as I remembered (starring both Machiko Kyō and Kinuyo Tanaka — the only such film, as far as I know, although Tanaka later directed Kyō in The Wandering Princess). As every schoolboy knows, it’s based on Ugetsu Monogatari, “a collection of nine supernatural tales first published in 1776”; Wikipedia explains the title thus:
The word Ugetsu is a compound word; u (雨) means “rain”, while getsu (月) translates to “moon”. It derives from a passage in the book’s preface describing “a night with a misty moon after the rains”, and references a Noh play, also called Ugetsu, which also employs the common contemporary symbols of rain and moon. These images evoked the supernatural and mysterious in East Asian literature; Qu You’s Mudan Deng Ji (Chinese: 牡丹燈記; a story from Jiandeng Xinhua, one of Ueda’s major sources), indicates that a rainy night or a morning moon may presage the coming of supernatural beings. […] Tales of Moonlight and Rain is the most common English translation; other translations include Tales of a Clouded Moon and Tales of Rain and the Moon.
I think it was wise to keep Ugetsu as the title in English-speaking lands — it’s mysterious and memorable. (Other languages seem to mostly translate it; in Russian, for example, it’s Сказки туманной луны после дождя, ‘Tales of a misty moon after rain.’) My question is, what do Japanese speakers understand by the title? Wiktionary has two definitions for 雨月 [úꜜgètsù], ‘the moon unseen due to the rain’ and ‘the fifth month in the lunar calendar,’ neither of which corresponds to the versions in the Wikipedia article. I guess the ‘rain-moon’ collocation could be used in a variety of ways, but I’m curious what it normally means to the bearers of the language.
Also, I looked up that Noh play, and it sounds right up my alley; not only do the old couple ask the traveler Saigyō to compose the first lines of a poem for which they provide the continuation, but this is the finale:
The old shrine guard possessed by Sumiyoshi Myōjin (nochi-shite) appears, praises the virtues of waka poetry, and dances. Stating that a vast range of phenomena in the world is the source of waka poetry, the deity ascends to heaven, and the shrine guard returns to his normal self.
That’s what I call theater!
An astonishing movie. I must watch it again myself.
I think it used to be common to advertise the film in English as “Ugetsu—Tales of the Pale and Silvery Moon after the Rain”, with the hyperexotic translation becoming an optional sub-title. Plenty of Google hits, and I seem to remember it on a VHS cover, although my memory may be auto-translating a French VHS/DVD cover. I don’t know if the sub-title ever appeared as a subtitle.
> what do Japanese speakers understand by the title?
In the Kotonoha corpus https://shonagon.ninjal.ac.jp/, which doesn’t let me link to its search results, almost all occurrences of 雨月 occur either as part of 雨月物語 (the title in Japanese, 物語=’tales’), or as a proper name.
‘Ugetsu’ isn’t a common word, but despite the many homophone morphemes of Japanese, ‘u’ and ‘getsu’ are rare enough that ‘rain’ and ‘moon/month’ would come to mind even if you hadn’t heard it before. And the rain and the moon do trigger some association to mystery or supernatural phenomena, come to think if it probably not only in Japanese culture.
Not sure if that was the kind of info you were looking for.
That’s exactly what I was looking for — thanks!
OP:
Before reading the comments, I was going to suggest that with such a transparent compound in the original, a simple Rain Moon, as title or subtitle, should work well in English. The fact that it isn’t an established compound in English adds just enough exotism that the audience will expect there to be other cultural overtones, probably to become clear in the movie. The overexplaining title cited by mollymooly is ugly – and confusing if anything. I’ll take dainichi’s facts on the ground as support.
Seconded.
Serendipitously I just recently became aware of this word thanks to the Cedar Walton composition of the same name, recorded among others by the Jazz Messengers. On the live recording Art Blakey (I assume it’s him) introduces the tune as simply meaning “fantasy”, so I’m happy to learn the much more interesting actual meaning.
I’ve never heard of this movie, but it sounds like exactly the sort of thing I’d like.
While Rain Moon would work, I like Ugetsu better. Even before finding out what it meant, it caught my interest, somehow.
I like “Rainy Moon” slightly better than “Rain Moon,” but both would work.
Rained-on Moon?
Rain in the Moonlight?
While Rain Moon would work, I like Ugetsu better. Even before finding out what it meant, it caught my interest, somehow.
Yeah, I feel the same way. (Also, I love the Jazz Messengers recording TR mentions.)
I love the callback here to your Mimesis and Democracy post
Thanks @TR for that link!
That brought back a possibly-fake memory of hearing the Jazz Messengers live at Bradford Jazz Festival early/mid-80’s. (The warm-up act was Stan Tracey solo piano.)
If wikip is to be believed, I might have heard the young Marsalis brothers. (I also heard, possibly a different year, the Gil Evans big band.)
Search assist claims they (JM’s) did/as part of touring extensively/they were in Manchester March 1981. When I tell it they never performed in Bradford, it concedes I’m right. When I then ask where they performed in that 1981 tour, and again claim they never performed in Bradford, it disagreed with me but without citing evidence.
Grr. Can any muso-savvy Hatters confirm or deny?
IANA muso but FWIW https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/search/results/1981-01-01/1981-12-31?basicsearch=%22jazz%20messengers%22&phrasesearch=jazz%20messengers&retrievecountrycounts=false finds only Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre (1 March) and Chichester Jazz Festival (22 Oct)
According to the Japanese dictionaries I can access, Wiktionary is correct that the important meaning is that an ugetsu is a moon you cannot see ( (“雨で見られないこと”). That would seem to carry a connotation of mystery and concealed phenomenon that is a perfect fit for a collection of stories about the supernatural, and is entirely lost in a title like Rain Moon. Maybe “Tales of the Hidden Moon” might work.
Works for me.
The internet has a scan of the March 11, 1983 issue of the _Leeds Student_, previewing (page 10) the then-upcoming Bradford Jazz Festival including Gil Evans (“fronting a British thirteen piece band”*) on March 18, w/ Lester Bowie on the same bill, and then the Freddie Hubbard Quintet on March 19 and the Art Farmer – Benny Golson Quintet (“a late replacement for Gerry Mulligan”) on March 20. The writer notes disapprovingly that this is all a “less adventurous” lineup than the previous year when the Art Ensemble of Chicago had been featured.
https://digital.library.leeds.ac.uk/11473/145/LUA-PUB-002-LS-303_000.pdf
*In fact, that 3/18/83 show at St. George’s Hall, Bradford, W. Yorks. was recorded and released and you can buy used copies of that album on the internet. https://www.discogs.com/release/1650253-Gil-Evans-The-British-Orchestra This looks to be a very different lineup of players than the Americans with whom he recorded the _Live at Sweet Basil_ albums released in ’85 and ’87, which is approximately the lineup I saw him with in probably ’86.
Come to think of it it was ’83 (June 11, sez the internet) when I saw those two Marsalis brothers playing in the so-called V.S.O.P. II quintet, with Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams. This at that year’s Philadelphia edition of the traveling “Kool Jazz Festival,” sponsored by a leading brand of menthol cigarettes, the same month I graduated from high school and just before I turned 18. The young Marsalises were replacing Wayne Shorter and the just-mentioned Freddie Hubbard, who had played as “V.S.O.P.” with the same rhythm section in the mid-late Seventies.
This part of Wynton’s website has a pretty thorough-looking list of dates/venues for live gigs he did as a Jazz Messenger. https://wyntonmarsalis.org/ensembles/detail/art-blakey-and-the-jazz-messengers
I still have a somewhat faded and shrunken but still perfectly wearable Kool Jazz Festival 1981 NYC t-shirt (Etsy image).
(I was and remain pissed off that they deep-sixed the time-honored name Newport Jazz Festival for the benefit of a cigarette company.)
@hat: What, you think they should have named their festival after Kool’s major competitor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newport_(cigarette)?
Maybe “Shrouded Moon” would work?
What, you think they should have named their festival after Kool’s major competitor
That was the reason given at the time. I thought then and think now that it was stupid — nobody on earth thought the Newport Jazz Festival had anything to do with Newport cigarettes. It’s just some asshole corporate toady trying to curry favor with his boss.
“It Was a Dark and Rainy Night”
Hey, “asshole corporate toady” isn’t a nice way to describe the legendary promoter George Wein. By his own account, Wein pioneered the idea of going out to get $ from corporate interests and preemptively offering them naming rights in exchange. The corporate suits didn’t come up with the idea and then impose it on him (with him reluctantly protesting his bohemian credentials and disdain for filthy lucre or some such). He was quite proud of this innovation, as you can see by the self-laudatory penultimate paragraph of this 2009 press release announcing that the naming rights for the original Rhode Island event were back on the market.
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/news/george-wein-announces-sponsorship-opportunities-jazz-festival-in-newport/
Newport Jazz Festival
Hey that’s as in Jazz on a Summer’s Day. Totally iconic. You can’t fuck with that.
Exactly!
BTW, while that Gil Evans album recorded at the 1983 Bradford Jazz Festival does not appear to be on spotify, youtube has the audio of a show he did in August of that year in Antwerp with many of the same players: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z59FtBagPnE