The name of Ueda Akinari is familiar to the reader from the collection of fantasy short stories “Ugetsu mono-gatari” (“Tales of the Misty Moon”), published by the publishing house “Fiction” under the title “Moon in the Fog”. This collection does not include all the works that make up collection "Tales of Spring Rain", but only four out of ten short stories and essays. The first three - Death's Head Smile, Suteishi-maru and Miyagi's Tomb - form a special group within the book. Their core is the story of “naoki kokoro”—an honest, sincere, loyal heart—which has always been a favorite theme in Japanese literature. The heroes of these short stories - humble and poor people, but noble in soul - are described by the author with undisguised sympathy and compassion. The selection is completed by the anti-Buddhist short story “Ties of Two Lives” - one of two satires, which also form an independent cycle within “Tales of the Spring Rain”. When selecting short stories For this publication, the translator was guided, in addition to considerations of volume, by the entertaining nature of the plot, as well as the literary merits of the works. The short stories presented to the reader can rightfully be considered the most mature artistically.