The novel was originally inspired by Diego Rivera's mural "Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Central Alameda Park".

This emphasizes the central theme of the novel: simultaneous ambiguity, in the amalgamation of past and present, fact and dream, as well as history and myth.

Oe uses satire, parody and black humour to describe the many deeds and events of the samurai.

The word mori is ambivalent in that in Japanese it conjures an image of regeneration or rebirth, but in Latin (an entirely unrelated language) it stands for death.

Other Japanese authors with considerable literary contributions to this genre are: Abe Kobo, Yasunari Kawabata and Yasushi Inoue.