(06/11/22)
Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, Lafcadio Hearn
I love Japanese culture and therefore may be biased when judging this book. Because even though I enjoyed this collection by Hearn, I can imagine some people being disappointed. The stories are strange indeed, often very short and many of them feel only like a piece of a story or someone telling you a story they had heard a long time ago and parts of it got lost along the way.
For me it was ideal. Cold November nights and strange Japanese beings and spirits for company can create an interesting atmosphere. I enjoyed them especially because they were a little different from the ones we are used to here in the West. They could go from gore to melancholic, from curious to heartbreaking. Through folklore you can always get to know some roots of the culture (here the roots often being chinese) and even in my little country that is far from Japan, while reading, I felt like I'm sitting close to a fire with some wandering monk, telling stories about creatures that lurk around us in the shadows. They were very vivid and alive.
The second part of the book contained three essays on insects and some translated poetry. The part about butterflies was as beautiful as butterflies themselves. Suddenly all these random appearances of butterflies in anime made sense when you knew what they could mean for Japanese people. When it comes to the other two… to be honest, I never thought that I would enjoy reading about ants and mosquitos, but both carried either beautiful or interesting thoughts and were written well.
This book created an atmosphere that I enjoyed and gave me some inspiration. Because of that I liked even those stories that felt only like a part of some bigger one - it made me think and imagine and want to write something inspired by it.
So if you want to transport yourself for a few brief moments into different times, sit in some bamboo grove or visit a monastery and feel the presence of evil goblins, trees with souls or vengeful ghosts, this is your ticket.
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