NEWS - GEOFF’S RECOMMENDED READING - (OCTOBER)

‘Japanese Ghost Stories’ - Book Cover - published in 2019 by Penguin Classics

This month’s recommendation was a book given to me by my friend and cartoonist, Tony Perrett. Tony and I share a love of J-horror films and hold , on monthly basis, a not-so Secret Cinema.

Japanese Ghost Stories has been on my book list and I’ve been reading the background to its author, Lafcadio Hearn. Lafcadio was a journalist and Editorial Assistant in the US. In 1890 he arrives in Yokohama and an arrangement was made with the New York publishers Harper & Brothers, to provide them with material.

In 1904 published ’Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things’. He died on 26th September, 1904, of heart disease.

Needless to say, he’s a fascinating character and quite different from the horror writers of his day, as this quote proves.

“Victorian ghost and horror stories were mostly the products of the imaginations of writer such as Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Bram Stoker and MR James. They may have had roots in folklore but were essentially literary in nature. Hearn is unique in creating a coherent body of ghost stories based entirely on folk originals translated into English from another language.” [page xxiii]

This collection by Penguin Classics is a goldmine of Hearn’s research, translations and storytelling and it’s a real find for lovers of Japanese horror culture.

The story, ‘The Corpse Rider’ begins like this…

“The body was cold as ice; the heart had long ceased to beat: yet there were no other signs of death. Nobody even spoke of burying the woman. She had died of grief and anger at having been divorced. It would have been useless to bury her - because the last undying wish of a dying person for vengeance can burst asunder any tomb and lift the heaviest graveyard stone. People who lived near the house in which she was lying fled from their homes. They knew that she was only waiting for the return of the man who had divorced her.” [p76]

And so with these words I recommend this book to you. Enjoy!

Geoff Hall