Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

A small decorative vignette in red ink, featuring a horizontal stylized knot or scroll design.

Most of the following Kwaidan original: Kwaidan (Ghostly or Weird Tales), or Weird Tales, have been taken from old Japanese books—such as the Yasō-Kidan original: Yasō-Kidan (Strange Stories of the Night-Window), Bukkyō-Hyakkwa-Zenshū original: Bukkyō-Hyakkwa-Zenshū (The Complete Encyclopedia of Buddhist Knowledge), Kokon-Chomonshū original: Kokon-Chomonshū (A Collection of Famous Stories from the Past and Present), Tama-Sudaré original: Tama-Sudaré (The Jeweled Bamboo Screen), and Hyaku-Monogatari original: Hyaku-Monogatari (A Collection of One Hundred Tales). Some of the stories may have had a Chinese origin; for example, the very remarkable "Dream of Akinosuké" is certainly from a Chinese source. But in every case, the Japanese storyteller has so recolored and reshaped what he borrowed that he has naturalized it In this context, "naturalized" means the stories were adapted so thoroughly that they seem native to Japanese culture.. . . . One strange original: "queer" tale, "Yuki-Onna" original: "Yuki-Onna" (The Snow Woman), was told to me by a farmer of Chōfu, in the Nishitama district original: "gōri" (district) of Musashi province, as a legend of his native village. I do not know whether it has ever been written down in Japanese, but the extraordinary belief which it records certainly used