Japanese Ghost Stories
Lafcadio Hearn
* * *
JAPANESE GHOST STORIES
Edited by
PAUL MURRAY
Contents
Chronology
A Note on the Text
Further Reading
Introduction
JAPANESE GHOST STORIES
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
About the Author
LAFCADIO HEARN’s colourful life (1850–1904) was matched by the range and variety of his output. Born on the Ionian island of Lefkada, he was abandoned by both his parents in succession, and spent his childhood in the guardianship of his great-aunt in Ireland and England. From 1869 he established himself as a journalist in the USA, first in Cincinnati and then in New Orleans, before moving to the French West Indies in 1887. He spent the last fourteen years of his life in Japan, where he excelled as an early interpreter of a culture that both attracted and baffled Westerners. He is now best remembered for his collection and translation of traditional Japanese ghost stories.
PAUL MURRAY is the author of biographies of Lafcadio Hearn and Bram Stoker, and editor of collections of Hearn’s work. He is a former Irish diplomat whose posting to Japan in the late 1970s ignited his interest in Hearn.
Chronology
Ionian Islands, Ireland and England, 1850–69
1850 27 June: Patrick Lafcadio Hearn born on Lefkada or Lefkas, then part of the United States of the Ionian Islands. He is the first surviving child of Charles Bush Hearn, an Irish officer-surgeon in the British Army, and Rosa Antonia Cassimati, a native of the Greek island of Kythira.
October: Father is posted to the West Indies; Rosa and Hearn remain on Lefkada.
1852 Hearn arrives in Dublin with mother. Father joins them the following year but the marriage falters.
1854 Mother returns to Kythira. Hearn subsequently raised by a great-aunt, Mrs Sarah Brenane, in Dublin.
1857 Father leaves Ireland for a posting in India, following the annulment of his marriage to Rosa and his remarriage; Hearn never sees him again.
1863–7 Educated at Ushaw College, a Roman Catholic boarding school in County Durham, England. Loss of sight in one eye, following an accident at school, results in a lifelong sense of disfigurement.
1867 Sarah Brenane financially ruined; Hearn is withdrawn from school and lives in reduced circumstances in east London for the next two years.
USA and West Indies, 1869–90
1869 Arrives in Cincinnati; embarks on a career in journalism, initially on a freelance basis, and then with the Cincinnati Enquirer. Develops a keen interest in the city’s black culture.
1874 Co-founds the short-lived Ye Giglampz satirical periodical.
14 June: Illegal marriage to black ex-slave, Mattie Foley, which later fails.
1875 August: Employed by the Cincinnati Commercial, having been fired from the Cincinnati Enquirer because of his marriage.
1877 Arrives in New Orleans, where he is introduced to Creole culture.
1878–81 Editorial assistant on the New Orleans Daily City Item newspaper; also writes for the New Orleans Democrat. Development of ‘Fantastics’, a form of creative writing.
1881 Taken on by the Times-Democrat newspaper.
1882 Publishes One of Cleopatra’s Nights and Other Fantastic Romances, translations of the work of the French writer Théophile Gautier.
1884–6 Publication of Stray Leaves from Strange Literature (1884), La Cuisine Creole (1885), Gombo Zhèbes (1885) and Some Chinese Ghosts (1887). Becomes interested in the Orient/Japan, and falls under the influence of the philosophy of Herbert Spencer (1820–1903).
1887–9 Spends two years in the French West Indies following encouragement from the American publisher Harper & Brothers that he could live by writing. Work by now reaching a national audience through publication in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine.
1889–90 Publishes two short novels, Chita: A Memory of Last Island (1889) and Youma: The Story of a West-Indian Slave (1890), as well as Two Years in the French West Indies (1890). Returns briefly to the USA, where he spends time in Philadelphia and New York.
Japan, 1890–1904
1890 Arrives in Yokohama on the basis of a vague understanding that he would provide material to Harper & Brothers but soon breaks with the publisher.
1890–91 Takes up teaching post in Matsue, on the west coast of Japan. Marries a Japanese woman, Setsuko Koizumi.
1891–4 Moves to Kumamoto, in the south of Japan, to take up another teaching post, which proves to be an unhappy experience.
1893 November: Birth of a son, Kazuo; three further children follow.
1894 October–December: Moves to Kobe as editorial writer on the Kobe Chronicle. Illness forces resignation from journalism and leaves him unemployed for over a year. Publication of Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan in late 1894.
1895 Publication of ‘Out of the East’: Reveries and Studies in New Japan.
1896 Adopts Japanese citizenship under the name Koizumi Yakumo. Takes up appointment as a lecturer at Tokyo University.
1896–1904 Eight further books on aspects of Japan completed, including Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life (1896), Gleanings in Buddha-Fields: Studies of Hand and Soul in the Far East (1897), Exotics and Retrospectives (1898), Shadowings (1900), Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1904) and Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation (1904), his most academic work. Becomes increasingly withdrawn and immersed in his writing. Health failing, he considers leaving Japan.
1904 Post at Tokyo University terminated; replaced by the Japanese novelist Natsume Sōseki. Becomes a lecturer at Waseda University. Supports Japan in Russo-Japanese War (1904–5).
26 September: Dies from heart disease.
Posthumous
1906 Bitter posthumous newspaper controversy in the USA over his character.
1908 George Gould’s denunciatory Concerning Lafcadio Hearn published.
1912 Publication of Nina Kennard’s biography, following her visit to Japan with Hearn’s half-sister, Mrs Minnie Atkinson, in 1909.
A Note on the Text
In this anthology, the text, spelling, punctuation and romanization generally follow the first editions of Hearn’s Japanese books. Hearn used the Hepburn system, developed in the late nineteenth century and based on English and Italian pronunciation, for romanizing Japanese words. Although Kunrei-shiki, a rival form of romanization, has been promoted by official Japanese policy for many years, Hepburn romanization remains in widespread use. Diacritics are differently applied in modern romani
zation, however; ‘e’ no longer has an acute accent over it, for example, making old-style romanization more like French than Italian in this respect.
Hearn’s spelling and punctuation mostly followed American usage and that has been retained. Similarly, where he followed English usage, that, too, has been retained. His punctuation, spelling, italicization and romanization could be idiosyncratic – a product of an attempt to reproduce the sound of language on the printed page – and not always consistent. It was an issue on which he felt deeply and over which he had many differences with his publishers. Given his obsessive attention to the detail of language, it has been assumed that the inconsistencies were in general deliberate on Hearn’s part and, for this reason, they have usually been retained; however, some italicization has been made more consistent, especially where Hearn has varied its use within the same story. All square-bracketed interpolations in the text are Hearn’s, rather than editorial insertions, with the exception of two instances where text has been omitted, as are all the footnotes. Editorial comments and explanations take the form of endnotes.
The order in which Japanese names are presented in Hearn’s text adheres to the Japanese style of giving the surname first, followed by the given name. In the editorial matter, the order follows convention rather than consistency. Thus Lafcadio Hearn’s Japanese name is generally rendered Koizumi Yakumo, surname followed by his given name, in both Japanese and English, probably because his Japanese name is seldom used in English. His wife’s name, by contrast, is generally written as Setsuko or Setsu Koizumi, the surname following the given name in the Western style. The name of the Japanese novelist who replaced Hearn as a lecturer at Tokyo University, would be rendered as Sōseki Natsume in Japanese, but in English, including on the title pages of his books, he is Natsume Sōseki.
The stories are presented in the order of publication of the books containing them, as this represents the best way of showing how they evolved throughout Hearn’s Japanese sojourn. Thus Hearn’s presence as a narrator is more evident in the earlier stories, while the later ones seem more directly hewn from their folkloric origins.
The images have been selected from the fifteen volumes of manga by the famous nineteenth-century artist Hokusai. Published between 1814 and 1878, these collections of woodblock prints were huge bestsellers in Japan and many of the sketches were inspired by the fantastical and sometimes grotesque stories of Japanese legend. Although they didn’t appear in Hearn’s books at the time, Hokusai’s manga are close in spirit and sensibility to his ghost stories, and draw on many of the same sources. Among them are famous yūrei (ghosts), tengu (supernatural beings with both human and bird-like characteristics) and rokurokubi (phantoms with impossibly stretching necks, or heads that come off and fly around), all of which appear in various guises in the stories. Hokusai’s illustration of a rabble of demons besetting a Buddhist holy man (p. 2), meanwhile, anticipates one of the main themes of Hearn’s ghost stories: the interaction of the world of demons and Buddhist piety.
Further Reading
The titles in the first two sections are listed chronologically.
Books by Lafcadio Hearn (1890–1905)
Two Years in the French West Indies (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1890)
Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1894)
‘Out of the East’: Reveries and Studies in New Japan (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1895)
Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1896)
Gleanings in Buddha-Fields: Studies of Hand and Soul in the Far East (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1897)
Exotics and Retrospectives (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1898)
In Ghostly Japan (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1899)
Shadowings (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1900)
A Japanese Miscellany (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1901)
Kottō: Being Japanese Curios, With Sundry Cobwebs (New York: Macmillan Company, 1902)
Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1904)
The Romance of the Milky Way (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1905)
Posthumous Collections of Hearn’s Work
The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn, ed. Elizabeth Bisland, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, Riverside Press, 1906)
The Japanese Letters of Lafcadio Hearn, ed. Elizabeth Bisland (Cambridge, MA, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, Riverside Press, 1910)
The Writings of Lafcadio Hearn, 16 vols (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1922)
Some New Letters and Writings of Lafcadio Hearn, ed. Sanki Ichikawa (Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 1925)
Japanese Goblin Poetry: Rendered into English by Lafcadio Hearn, and Illustrated by His Own Drawings, ed. Kazuo Koizumi (Tokyo: Oyama, 1934)
The Selected Writings of Lafcadio Hearn, ed. Malcolm Cowley (New York: Citadel Press, 1949)
The Buddhist Writings of Lafcadio Hearn, ed. Kenneth Roxroth (London: Wildwood House, 1981)
Lafcadio Hearn: Writings from Japan, ed. Francis King (London: Penguin, 1984)
Lafcadio Hearn: Japan’s Great Interpreter: A New Anthology of His Writings, 1894–1904, ed. Louis Allen and Jean Wilson (Folkestone: Japan Library, 1992)
Lafcadio Hearn’s Japan: An Anthology of His Writings on the Country and Its People, ed. Donald Richie (North Clarendon, VT: Tuttle Publishing, 1997)
Nightmare-Touch, ed. Paul Murray (Leyburn: Tartarus Press, 2010; limited edition)
Insect Literature by Lafcadio Hearn (Dublin: Swan River Press, 2015)
Kwaidan: Ghost Stories of Lafcadio Hearn, ed. Paul Murray (Dublin: Little Museum, 2015; limited edition)
Books and Articles on Hearn
Chamberlain, Basil Hall, Letters from Basil Hall Chamberlain to Lafcadio Hearn, ed. Kazuo Koizumi (Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1936)
——, More Letters from Basil Hall Chamberlain to Lafcadio Hearn, ed. Kazuo Koizumi (Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1937)
Cott, Jonathan, Wandering Ghost: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991)
Dawson, Carl, Lafcadio Hearn and the Vision of Japan (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992)
Hasegawa, Yoji (ed.), A Walk in Kumamoto: The Life and Times of Setsu Koizumi, Lafcadio Hearn’s Japanese Wife (Folkestone: Global Oriental, 1997)
Hirakawa, Sukehiro (ed.), Rediscovering Lafcadio Hearn (Folkestone: Global Oriental, 1997)
Kennard, Nina H., Lafcadio Hearn (London: Eveleigh Nash, 1912)
Koizumi, Kazuo, Father and I: Memories of Lafcadio Hearn (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1935)
——, Re-Echo (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1957)
McWilliams, Vera, Lafcadio Hearn (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1946)
Murray, Paul, A Fantastic Journey: The Life and Literature of Lafcadio Hearn (Folkestone: Japan Library, 1993; reprinted London and New York: Routledge, 2005)
——, ‘Lafcadio Hearn, 1850–1904’, in Ian Nish (ed.), Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, vol. 2 (Folkestone: Japan Library, 1997), pp. 137–50
——, ‘Lafcadio Hearn and the Irish Horror Tradition’, in Bruce Stewart (ed.), That Other World: The Supernatural and the Fantastic in Irish Literature and Its Contexts, vol. 2 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1998), pp. 238–54
——, ‘Lafcadio Hearn’s Interpretation of Japan’, Proceedings of the Japan Society London, no. 124 (Autumn 1994), pp. 50–65
Noguchi, Yone, Lafcadio Hearn in Japan, With Mrs Hearn’s Reminiscences (London: Elkin Matthews; Yokohama: Kelly and Walsh, 1910)
Ota, Yuzo, Basil Hall Chamberlain: Portrait of a Japanologist (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press/Japan Library, 1998)
Proceedings: International Symposium on ‘The Open Mind of Lafcadio Hearn’ (Lefkada, Greece, 2014): http://hearn2014.yakumokai.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/hearn2014proceedings.pdf
Ronan
, Sean G. and Toki Koizumi, Lafcadio Hearn (Koizumi Yakumo): His Life, Work and Irish Background (Dublin: Ireland Japan Association, 1991)
Ronan, Sean G. (ed.), Irish Writing on Lafcadio Hearn and Japan (Folkestone: Global Oriental, 1997)
Stevenson, Elizabeth, Lafcadio Hearn (New York: Macmillan Company, 1961)
Thomas, Edward, Lafcadio Hearn (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1912)
Introduction
Whoever pretends not to believe in ghosts of any sort, lies to his own heart. Every man is haunted by ghosts … though most of us (poets excepted) are unwilling to confess the acquaintance.
Lafcadio Hearn, ‘The Eternal Haunter’1
Few writers have been as permeated by horror as (Patrick) Lafcadio Hearn. Successful ghost-story writing probably requires a certain interaction between the writer’s subject and his or her own personality. What makes Hearn particularly interesting is that not only was his mind dominated by horror from an early age but that, to a perhaps unparalleled extent, he laid bare the roots of this phenomenon himself in his later writing. (Freudian analysis is redundant when the subject is so obliging.) It was in Japan, where Hearn lived for the last fourteen years of his life, that this fascination with horror and the ghostly found its fullest artistic expression. In the ghost stories that Hearn published at the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth, he drew on traditional Japanese folklore, infused with memories of his own turbulent childhood, to create narratives of striking and eerie power. These kwaidan – or Japanese ghost stories – are today regarded in Japan as classics in their own right.
Early Life
Hearn’s literary interest in horror and the ghostly was intimately tied up with the strange circumstances of his early life. He was born on 27 June 1850 on the Ionian island of Lefkada or Lefkas, off the west coast of Greece, to Charles Bush Hearn, an Irish officer-surgeon in the British Army, and Rosa Antonia Cassimati, a native of the remote island of Kythira, where his parents had met in the late 1840s. Charles was serving as a surgeon with the army garrison enforcing de facto British control over the nominally independent United States of the Ionian Islands, a protectorate of the United Kingdom from 1815 until their absorption into the Greek state in 1864. Unlike mainland Greece, which had been under Turkish domination for centuries, the Ionian Islands had previously been under Venetian rule and so had felt the influence of Western developments such as the Renaissance and the Reformation more strongly. The upper classes spoke the distinct Venetian language, which Rosa may have spoken, together with Greek.2 She seems to have been illiterate, notwithstanding her upper-class birth and the fact that the British had established an educational system for both girls and boys on the island.3