Certain things are universal, such as a person's sense of dread and fear, and perhaps, even, the belief in an existence after death. Readers of my book review blog will note a moderate number of horror or dark fantasy books that I have read and reviewed. I do enjoy the genre, which is a little bit surprising, because I don't enjoy these sorts of movies. Maybe it's the ability to control it that I like in literature? But I also have a long-standing appreciation for Japanese arts and culture and so a combination of the two ghost stories and Japanese culture, proves highly interesting to me.

The first thing people may notice is that these ghost stories have a very different tone to them. These aren't horror stories - there are a few that are kind of terrifying - but in some ways these are more mythology. Author/editor Lafcadio Hearn gives us a good cross section of stories and does a really fine job of retelling these stories for an English reading audience. We do get a sense that these were written at very different times by Hearn as they don't really have a consistent sound to them. It does make it seem as though these are told by different people, which is good.

All of these stories were good, in different ways and for different reasons. There were a few that stood out as exceptional to me.

"The Corpse-Rider" has one of the best opening paragraphs of a short story I've ever read. It's a story of a woman scorned and right from the start we know this is going to be a dark and bitter story. It's fantastic!

"The Story of Kwashin Koji" was a fun tale (not so much a ghost story) in which an artist shows what he can do.

I enjoyed "Rokuro-Kubi" quite a bit. It is the story of a great samurai who becomes a wandering priest when the house he served as samurai falls into ruin. He comes across five bodies without heads and knows them to be Rokuro-Kubi and that he must move the bodies to a new location so that the heads can never be rejoined. This has such a great sense of being Japenese. This is not the sort of tale or myth that could easily come from another culture.

Perhaps my favorite story in the collection was "Yuki-Onna". This was very much a ghost story, and very much a theme I feel I've read before in other myths from other cultures in which a spirit makes a man promise he will do certain things or never do certain things and in exchange the spirit will be an ever-faithful wife. You can probably guess what ultimately happens.

Overall, this is a wonderful collection. The book contains the following:

Chronology
Introduction
A Note on the Text
Further Reading
"Of Ghosts and Goblins"
"The Dream of a Summer Day"
"In Cholera-Time"
"Ningyō-no-Haka"
"The Eternal Haunter"
"Fragment"
"A Passional Karma"
"Ingwa-Banashi"
"Story of a Tengu"
"The Reconciliation"
"A Legend of Fugen-Bosatsu"
"The Corpse-Rider"
"The Sympathy of Benten"
"The Gratitude of the Samébito"
"Of a Promise Kept"
"Of a Promise Broken"
"Before the Supreme Court"
"The Story of Kwashin Koji"
"The Story of Umétsu Chūbei"
"The Legend of Yurei-Daki"
"In a Cup of Tea"
"Ikiryō"
"The Story of O-Kamé"
"The Story of Chūgorō"
"The Story of Mimi-Nashi-Hōïchi"
"Jikininki"
"Mujina"
"Rokuro-Kubi"
"Yuki-Onna"
"The Story of Aoyagi"
"The Dream of Akinosuké"
"Riki-Baka"
"The Mirror Maiden"
"The Story of Itō Norisuké "
Appendix: Nightmare-Touch
Notes
Sources of the Stories

Looking for a good book? <em>Japanese Ghost Stories</em>, by Lafcadio Hearn, is an excellent collection of Japanese tales, myths, and ghost stories. Don't look for an assortment of horror and terror, though there are some, but rather multiple types of stories.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

This book is worth the introduction alone. Lafacdio Hearn is an interest character, who is best remembered for "translating" Japanese ghost stories and folklore and presenting them to the English speaking world. I use "translating" loosely, because he had his wife tell and retell stories she remembered from childhood and he would write and embellish them as she told the tales. And the stories contained in this volume, read just like that; as if someone is telling the story, thinking about it, and writing some more description. It’s stilted, yet charming. Despite the question of their authenticity or what sorts of Western influences made their way into the tales, these are how these yokai stories are known in the west.

Japanese Ghost Stories is a really neat edition cover-wise, but the stories are rambly and seemingly interconnected--like the narrator is sitting in a rocking chair telling stories he heard from his adventures in a strange and foreign land (so the reader is presented with stories through the lens of a particular non-Japanese perspective). This makes the stories feel like fairytales meets ghost stories meets autobiography. It really helps to read the introduction, just to know a little about the author before jumping in.

An interesting collection of ghost stories in Japanese settings and lore. I'll definitely recommend this one to our patrons.

The stories in this collection were a bit hit or miss for me but the stories are well-written and the side-notes about cultural information for the reader was very much appreciated. I do think that this would be a good addition to a library's collection.

This is a fast read. Good ghostly Japanese stories, most with a moral ending. Spookie at times. The author often uses Japanese words or phrases which makes this book not only interesting to read but educational too. I read one story each day. Reading all at once would probably be too overwhelming for me. 4 / 5 for me on this one.

I'd actually thought this was an anthology of different authors. I found the information on the one author to be superfluous.

The stories themselves were really difficult to get through. I'm not sure if it's how they were translated or they were written like that. But they were very dry and esoteric.