In the novella, the narrator, a scholar ofthe long-dead poet Jeffrey Aspern, insinuates himself into the household of Juliana Bordereau, the poet's aged former lover, to try and secure the valuable papers that may be in her possession.
It rose from collaboration among Koetsu, the painter Sotatsu, a suitably skilled papermaker, and not least the dead hand ofthepoet whose waka, or classic verses, Koetsu was transcribing.