Kwaidan Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)"Kwaidan" is Hearn's most famous book, and justifiably so. It is the least academic of his works, collecting together some of Japan's core ghost and monster stories into one slim volume. Much like the Brothers Grimm, Hearn did not actually create these stories but rather compiled them and put them into written form for the first time, learning them from folk tales and storytellers.

Along with famous, "Kwaidan" is Hearn's most influential book. "The Story of Mimi-nashi Hoichi" is as well-known in Japan as "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is in the United States. The "Yuki Onna" has made it into a few films, including Kurosawa's "Dreams" and the filmed version of this book, "Kwaidan."

The stories themselves are of excellent quality, ranging from spooky ghost tales to humorous tales of wandering monks encountering monsters. Each story ranges from 5-15 pages long.

Along with the stories are three insect studies, the likes of which can be found in all Hearn books. These are excellent academic studies of insects in traditional Japanese folk lore, including children's songs and haiku poetry involving insects.

Included are:

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-Baba
Hi-Mawari
Horai

Insect Studies -
Butterfiles
Mosquitos
Ants

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Product Description:
KWAIDAN means "weird tales." Lafcadio Hearn has taken KWAIDAN and written some amazing, hair-raising tales of long ago-delicate, transparent, ghostly sketches of a world unreal, but with a haunting sense of spiritual reality. It is a unique collection of haunting Japanese supernatural stories written by a Westerner who adopted Japan as his homeland.
KWAIDAN is full of goblins and ghosts, snowwomen and treewomen, a kingdom of dead warriors, and a kingdom of ants where a man might spend a lifetime in only a few moments. The stories inspired no less a writer than Edgar Allen Poe, and were the basis for the 1965 movie of the same name, which consisted of four ghost stories adapted from Hearn's work.

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