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KWAIDAN: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

By Lafcadio Hearn



A Note from the Digitizer

On Japanese Pronunciation

Although simplified, the following general rules will help the reader
unfamiliar with Japanese to come close enough to Japanese pronunciation.

There are five vowels: a (as in fAther), i (as in machIne), u (as in
fOOl), e (as in fEllow), and o (as in mOle). Although certain vowels
become nearly "silent" in some environments, this phenomenon can be
safely ignored for the purpose at hand.

Consonants roughly approximate their corresponding sounds in English,
except for r, which is actually somewhere between r and l (this is why
the Japanese have trouble distinguishing between English r and l), and
f, which is much closer to h.

The spelling "KWAIDAN" is based on premodern Japanese pronunciation;
when Hearn came to Japan, the orthography reflecting this pronunciation
was still in use.  In modern Japanese the word is pronounced KAIDAN.

There are many ellipses in the text. Hearn often used them in this
book; they do not represent omissions by the digitizer.

Author's original notes are in brackets, those by the digitizer are in
parentheses. Diacritical marks in the original are absent from this
digitized version.




KWAIDAN: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

By Lafcadio Hearn

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  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-BAKA
  HI-MAWARI
  HORAI


  INSECT STUDIES

  BUTTERFLIES
  MOSQUITOES
  ANTS



INTRODUCTION

The publication of a new volume of Lafcadio Hearn's exquisite studies
of Japan happens, by a delicate irony, to fall in the very month when
the world is waiting with tense expectation for news of the latest
exploits of Japanese battleships. Whatever the outcome of the present
struggle between Russia and Japan, its significance lies in the fact
that a nation of the East, equipped with Western weapons and girding
itself with Western energy of will, is deliberately measuring strength
against one of the great powers of the Occident. No one is wise enough
to forecast the results of such a conflict upon the civilization of the
world. The best one can do is to estimate, as intelligently as
possible, the national characteristics of the peoples engaged, basing
one's hopes and fears upon the psychology of the two races rather than
upon purely political and statistical studies of the complicated
questions involved in the present war. The Russian people have had
literary spokesmen who for more than a generation have fascinated the
European audience. The Japanese, on the other hand, have possessed no
such national and universally recognized figures as Turgenieff or
Tolstoy. They need an interpreter.

It may be doubted whether any oriental race has ever had an interpreter
gifted with more perfect insight and sympathy than Lafcadio Hearn has
brought to the translation of Japan into our occidental speech. His
long residence in that country, his flexibility of mind, poetic
imagination, and wonderfully pellucid style have fitted him for the
most delicate of literary tasks. He has seen marvels, and he has told
of them in a marvelous way. There is scarcely an aspect of contemporary
Japanese life, scarcely an element in the social, political, and
military questions involved in the present conflict with Russia which
is not made clear in one or another of the books with which he has
charmed American readers.

He characterizes Kwaidan as "stories and studies of strange things." A
hundred thoughts suggested by the book might be written down, but most
of them would begin and end with this fact of strangeness. To read the
very names in the table of contents is like listening to a Buddhist
bell, struck somewhere far away. Some of his tales are of the long ago,
and yet they seem to illumine the very souls and minds of the little
men who are at this hour crowding the decks of Japan's armored
cruisers. But many of