Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

Published in 1904, "Kwaidan" ("weird tales") is a collection of Japanese ghost and supernatural stories by Lafcadio Hearn, an Irish-Greek writer who became a naturalized Japanese citizen under the name Koizumi Yakumo after settling in Japan in 1890 and marrying into a samurai family. Many of the tales — including the story of a blind musician summoned to perform for the dead ("Hoichi the Earless") and accounts of man-eating goblins and shape-shifting spirits — were, per Hearn's own account, told to him by his wife or drawn from older Japanese texts, then reshaped in his own literary style for English-speaking readers. The collection closes with essays on insects viewed through Japanese Buddhist ideas of karma and the soul. Hearn spent his final years teaching English literature at Tokyo Imperial University and became one of the most influential Western interpreters of Japanese culture of his era. The book was adapted into the 1964 Japanese anthology film "Kwaidan," directed by Masaki Kobayashi, which won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.