Large Picture(click here!)

AKINARI UEDA, WITH CANCROID HANDS

　We cannot forget the name of Akinari Ueda,author of Ugetsu
Monogatari(Story of rain and moon), which is full of noble 
romantic scent and fantastic atmosphere, rare masterpiece in
Japanese literature before modern ages.
　His grave is located in the garden of a subordinate temple
in the precinct of Nanzenji Temple in Kyoto. The tomb stone
was engraved with crab, shows the epitaph Tomb of Mucho(
without intestines).
  Mucho is the alias of crabs as they seem to have no bowels
. He often used it as his pen name of Haiku poems, etc. .
　Why did Akinari particularly stick to crabs? The reason 
was his fingers.
  He suffered smallpox and lost or shortened some fingers by
the poison. When he wrote, he had to hold a pen with the 
remained two fingers like of crab.
　A scholar of Akinari once wrote, a person with disability 
of legs can forget it while writing something even if he 
cannot walk. In case of Akinari,however, he had to face with
the hands whenever he wrote.
　Using hands with disability, he created incomparable 
masterpieces.

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