Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things by Lafcadio Hearn

The Japanese ghost stories of Kwaidan are not your average haunting tales. Most horror stories are simply good verses evil, but in the stories of Kwaidan, this is not the case. For example, in “Yuki-Onna,” or “The Woman of the Snow,” the spirit it is not evil, she is personified winter. She killed the old man because it was cold and he was weak and the storm would have killed him. The stories of Kwaidan focus greatly on a person’s morals. If someone makes a promise, like when Minokichi told the Woman of Snow he would never tell anyone of what had happened, he is expected to keep that promise, and if he broke it there would be dire consequences.  In “The Story of Mimi-nashi Hōichi,” or “Hoichi the Earless,” Hoichi tells the samurai and the nobleman that he will come back a second night to play for them. But when the priest discovers they are actually ghosts, he puts protective symbols on him to make him invisible so he wont have to go back. The samurai comes to get him and only sees his ears, and rips them off. The spirits were not evil, and Hoichi is wounded because he did not keep his word.

            My favorite story in Kwaidan is “The Dream of Akinosuke.” The fable was a bit too descriptive in its explanations that I thought was unnecessary but I loved the fantasy of it, especially towards the end when his friends pictured the butterfly as his soul. It’s strange and wonderful that everything in his dream had turned out to be real and in a bug version. It was interesting and surreal, and all of the Kwaidan stories are uncanny.