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    Kwaidan - Stories and Studies of Strange Things
    Kwaidan - Stories and Studies of Strange Things
    Kwaidan - Stories and Studies of Strange Things
    Ebook155 pages2 hours

    Kwaidan - Stories and Studies of Strange Things

    By Lafcadio Hearn

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    Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateJul 2, 2015
    ISBN9781473376472
    Author

    Lafcadio Hearn

    Lafcadio Hearn, also called Koizumi Yakumo, was best known for his books about Japan. He wrote several collections of Japanese legends and ghost stories, including Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things.

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    4/5

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    • 4/5
      An interesting little collection of short folk-tales and bits of legend, translated and explained by Hearn. There's a good mixture of stories and I enjoyed them. The closing section is rather random - a set of little musings on insects, including a distinctly weird piece which ends up speculating on how evolutionary and societal advances could allow humans to reach the ethical perfection of ants, and perhaps become near-immortal. Sounds like a quote from a transhumanist character in a bit of 1970s sci-fi.
    • 4/5
      I'm late to the Lafcadio Hearn party, having only read two stories in this collection before picking up this book -- "The Story of Mimi-Nashi-Hoichi" and "Yuki-Onna," which have long been personal favorites. There are seventeen actual "Kwaidan" ( kaidan) in this book, and then a section by Hearn called "Insect Studies," three compositions that in their own right are definitely worth reading. From what I've been able to discover, Hearn's wife Setsu related a number of these tales to him, but as Oscar Lewis notes in his introduction, Hearn spent a lot of energy and time trying to "unearth some quaint legend or trace down some curious bit of superstition...and he worked with the same slow patience to render his discoveries accurately and without distortion into English."He was so keen to get it right that"he made her [Setsu] enact again and again a part of some ancient legend, studying her every gesture, insisting on the exact intonation of every word."Now, I don't know about anyone else, but to me, that's a prime example of unshakable passion at its peak. Luckily, his admiration and persistence have paid off in spades -- these are some of the finest weird folk tales, legends, and ghostly tales to be collected in a single volume. Ranging from out-and-out creepy ghost stories to monks roaming the countryside where various monsters, demons and other creatures seem to abide, there is never a bad note struck throughout the entire collection.At seventeen stories, I'm not about to go into each one, but I'll highlight my favorites. As mentioned earlier, I am quite partial to "the Story of Mimi-nashi Hoichi," a tale in which a blind biwa player is summoned to recite the Tale of the Heike (平家物語Heike Monogatari -- another personal favorite) in front of a distinguished audience. He is asked to relate the part about the battle at Dannoura, "for the pity of it is most deep." Unfortunately for our blind biwa player, his recital is magnificent -- and he is called back for another performance. Then there's "Yuki-Onna," in which a young woodcutter is about to meet his death, but is miraculously saved by a strange woman he encounters in a cabin in the woods. What happens afterward is just downright freaky creepy. While all of the tales in this collection are excellent, I also loved "Rukoru-Kubi," the story of a high-ranking samurai turned wandering priest after his master's house was defeated in the ongoing warfare of the time and the house fell. Kwairyō (the priest) makes a habit of sleeping outdoors, but accepts a humble woodcutter's offer for shelter. Insomnia gets the best of him, and he literally stumbles into a closely-held secret that will literally stick with him for some time. Another fine entry is "The Dream of Akinosuke," in which the dreamer is whisked off to a sort of fairyland in order to marry the king's daughter -- but on waking from the dream, discovers exactly where he's been. Just super.The stories are short but their length doesn't affect their potency; by virtue of being stories that have been handed down over several centuries, the reader also gets a look at ancient Japan from different angles, from the world of the samurai on down to that of the peasant. It is a world of constant upheaval in terms of the physical world and also vis a vis the traditional social order. One major exception is "Hi-Mawari," a story that takes place in Wales, obviously penned by Hearn himself. After the kaidan section is finished, the reader moves into Hearn's "Insect Studies," where he dwells on butterflies, mosquitoes and ants. While you might be tempted to skip them, don't. They're absolutely fascinating, drawing on traditional folklore, etc. from Japan and China. I realize that not everyone is going to admire these stories like I do, but I love all things Japanese and this collection was simply superb. It might just be a good opening into all sorts of kaidan for a novice reader, and there are several works available in English that would make for great follow-up reading. Another thing worth noting here is that there is a movie called Kwaidan, based on Hearn's stories, two from this book and two more from other works he compiled. The two from this collection are "Yuki-Onna" and "The Story of Miminashi Hoichi;" these are joined by dramatizations of "The Reconciliation" (from Shadowings) and "In a Cup of Tea," (which is delightfully creepy) from his Kotto: Being Japanese Curios and Sundry Cobwebs. I loved this book and I can't recommend it highly enough.

    Book preview

    Kwaidan - Stories and Studies of Strange Things - Lafcadio Hearn

    KWAIDAN: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

    by

    Lafcadio Hearn

    Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

    This book is copyright and may not be

    reproduced or copied in any way without

    the express permission of the publisher in writing

    British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

    A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

    Contents

    Lafcadio Hearn

    INTRODUCTION

    THE STORY OF MIMI-NASHI-HOICHI

    OSHIDORI

    THE STORY OF O-TEI

    UBAZAKURA

    DIPLOMACY

    OF A MIRROR AND A BELL

    JIKININKI

    MUJINA

    ROKURO-KUBI

    A DEAD SECRET

    YUKI-ONNA

    THE STORY OF AOYAGI

    JIU-ROKU-ZAKURA

    THE DREAM OF AKINOSUKE

    RIKI-BAKA

    HI-MAWARI

    HORAI

    INSECT STUDIES

    MOSQUITOES

    ANTS

    Notes

    Lafcadio Hearn

    Patrick Lafcadio Hearn was born in Lefkada, Greece in 1850. He was baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church, but in his infancy, his family relocated to Dublin, Ireland, where Hearn attended the Roman Catholic Ushaw College. Neither of these religious faiths stuck, however, and when he was nineteen Hearn went to the United States, where he began to work in journalism. He gained employment as a reporter for the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer in 1872, and became known as an investigative yet sensational journalist.

    In 1877, Hearn left Cincinnati for New Orleans, where he remained for almost a decade. His writings about the city’s unique cultural life, especially its Creole population and distinctive cuisine, were published in magazines such as Harper’s Weekly and Scribner’s Magazine. His best-known New Orleans works are Gombo Zhèbes, Little Dictionary of Creole Proverbs in Six Dialects (1885), La Cuisine Créole (1885), and Chita: A Memory of Last Island, a novella first published in Harper’s Monthly in 1888. Over the decade, Hearn became a much-loved chronicler of the city; today, more books have been written about him than any former resident of New Orleans other than Louis Armstrong.

    Between 1887 and 1890, Hearn worked as a correspondent in the West Indies, before settling in Japan, a country that would provide his greatest inspiration. At a time when Japan was largely unknown to Westerners, Hearn became world-famous for his writings on the country. His book Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894) was hugely popular, and in 1896 he began teaching English literature at Tokyo Imperial University. Hearn penned three more books concerned with Japan and Japanese culture. Amongst the best-remembered of these are his collections of Japanese ghost stories and legends, such as Japanese Fairy Tales (1898) and Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1903). Kearn died in Tokyo, Japan in 1904, aged 54. His grave is at the Zōshigaya Cemetery in Toshima, Tokyo.

    INTRODUCTION

    The publication of a new volume of Lafcadio Hearn’s exquisite studies of Japan happens, by a delicate irony, to fall in the very month when the world is waiting with tense expectation for news of the latest exploits of Japanese battleships. Whatever the outcome of the present struggle between Russia and Japan, its significance lies in the fact that a nation of the East, equipped with Western weapons and girding itself with Western energy of will, is deliberately measuring strength against one of the great powers of the Occident. No one is wise enough to forecast the results of such a conflict upon the civilization of the world. The best one can do is to estimate, as intelligently as possible, the national characteristics of the peoples engaged, basing one’s hopes and fears upon the psychology of the two races rather than upon purely political and statistical studies of the complicated questions involved in the present war. The Russian people have had literary spokesmen who for more than a generation have fascinated the European audience. The Japanese, on the other hand, have possessed no such national and universally recognized figures as Turgenieff or Tolstoy. They need an interpreter.

    It may be doubted whether any oriental race has ever had an interpreter gifted with more perfect insight and sympathy than Lafcadio Hearn has brought to the translation of Japan into our occidental speech. His long residence in that country, his flexibility of mind, poetic imagination, and wonderfully pellucid style have fitted him for the most delicate of literary tasks. He has seen marvels, and he has told of them in a marvelous way. There is scarcely an aspect of contemporary Japanese life, scarcely an element in the social, political, and military questions involved in the present conflict with Russia which is not made clear in one or another of the books with which he has charmed American readers.

    He characterizes Kwaidan as stories and studies of strange things. A hundred thoughts suggested by the book might be written down, but most of them would begin and end with this fact of strangeness. To read the very names in the table of contents is like listening to a Buddhist bell, struck somewhere far away. Some of his tales are of the long ago, and yet they seem to illumine the very souls and minds of the little men who are at this hour crowding the decks of Japan’s armored cruisers. But many of the stories are about women and children,—the lovely materials from which the best fairy tales of the world have been woven. They too are strange, these Japanese maidens and wives and keen-eyed, dark-haired girls and boys; they are like us and yet not like us; and the sky and the hills and the flowers are all different from ours. Yet by a magic of which Mr. Hearn, almost alone among contemporary writers, is the master, in these delicate, transparent, ghostly sketches of a world unreal to us, there is a haunting sense of spiritual reality.

    In a penetrating and beautiful essay contributed to the Atlantic Monthly in February, 1903, by Paul Elmer More, the secret of Mr. Hearn’s magic is said to lie in the fact that in his art is found the meeting of three ways. To the religious instinct of India—Buddhism in particular,—which history has engrafted on the aesthetic sense of Japan, Mr. Hearn brings the interpreting spirit of occidental science; and these three traditions are fused by the peculiar sympathies of his mind into one rich and novel compound,—a compound so rare as to have introduced into literature a psychological sensation unknown before. Mr. More’s essay received the high praise of Mr. Hearn’s recognition and gratitude, and if it were possible to reprint it here, it would provide a most suggestive introduction to these new stories of old Japan, whose substance is, as Mr. More has said, so strangely mingled together out of the austere dreams of India and the subtle beauty of Japan and the relentless science of Europe.

    March, 1904.

    Most of the following Kwaidan, or Weird Tales, have been taken from old Japanese books,—such as the Yaso-Kidan, Bukkyo-Hyakkwa-Zensho, Kokon-Chomonshu, Tama-Sudare, and Hyaku-Monogatari. Some of the stories may have had a Chinese origin: the very remarkable Dream of Akinosuke, for example, is certainly from a Chinese source. But the story-teller, in every case, has so recolored and reshaped his borrowing as to naturalize it... One queer tale, Yuki-Onna, was told me by a farmer of Chofu, Nishitama-gori, in Musashi province, as a legend of his native village. Whether it has ever been written in Japanese I do not know; but the extraordinary belief which it records used certainly to exist in most parts of Japan, and in many curious forms... The incident of Riki-Baka was a personal experience; and I wrote it down almost exactly as it happened, changing only a family-name mentioned by the Japanese narrator.

    L.H.

    Tokyo, Japan, January 20th, 1904.

    KWAIDAN

    THE STORY OF MIMI-NASHI-HOICHI

    More than seven hundred years ago, at Dan-no-ura, in the Straits of Shimonoseki, was fought the last battle of the long contest between the Heike, or Taira clan, and the Genji, or Minamoto clan. There the Heike perished utterly, with their women and children, and their infant emperor likewise—now remembered as Antoku Tenno. And that sea and shore have been haunted for seven hundred years... Elsewhere I told you about the strange crabs found there, called Heike crabs, which have human faces on their backs, and are said to be the spirits of the Heike warriors [1]. But there are many strange things to be seen and heard along that coast. On dark nights thousands of ghostly fires hover about the beach, or flit above the waves,—pale lights which the fishermen call Oni-bi, or demon-fires; and, whenever the winds are up, a sound of great shouting comes from that sea, like a clamor of battle.

    In former years the Heike were much more restless than they now are. They would rise about ships passing in the night, and try to sink them; and at all times they would watch for swimmers, to pull them down. It was in order to appease those dead that the Buddhist temple, Amidaji, was built at Akamagaseki [2]. A cemetery also was made close by, near the beach; and within it were set up monuments inscribed with the names of the drowned emperor and of his great vassals; and Buddhist services were regularly performed there, on behalf of the spirits of them. After the temple had been built, and the tombs erected, the Heike gave less trouble than before; but they continued to do queer things at intervals,—proving that they had not found the perfect peace.

    Some centuries ago there lived at Akamagaseki a blind man named Hoichi, who was famed for his skill in recitation and in playing upon the biwa [3]. From childhood he had been trained to recite and to play; and while yet a lad he had surpassed his teachers. As a professional biwa-hoshi he became famous chiefly by his recitations of the history of the Heike and the Genji; and it is said that when he sang the song of the battle of Dan-no-ura even the goblins [kijin] could not refrain from tears.

    At the outset of his career, Hoichi was very poor; but he found a good friend to help him. The priest of the Amidaji was fond of poetry and music; and he often invited Hoichi to the temple, to play and recite. Afterwards, being much impressed by the wonderful skill of the lad, the priest proposed that Hoichi should make the temple his home; and this offer was gratefully accepted. Hoichi was given a room in the temple-building; and, in return for food and lodging, he was required only to gratify the priest with a musical performance on certain evenings, when otherwise disengaged.

    One summer night the priest was called away, to perform a Buddhist service at the house of a dead parishioner; and he went there with his acolyte, leaving Hoichi alone in the temple. It was a hot night; and the blind man sought to cool himself on the verandah before his sleeping-room. The verandah overlooked a small garden in the rear of the Amidaji. There Hoichi waited for the priest’s return, and tried to relieve his solitude by practicing upon his biwa. Midnight passed; and the priest did

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