Storyline

The Ghost Tale of the Peony Lantern provides us with a portrayal of the dream world that is at once similar and quite different from that in The Tale of Genji. While Peony Lantern starts with the same premise, that powerful emotions can allow ghosts to affect the physical realm via the dream world, the emotions expressed in Peony Lantern are those of love and longing rather than of jealousy and spite. Furthermore, the spirit in Peony Lantern is already dead, which shows that the dream world can act as a bridge between this world and the next.