Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    In Ghostly Japan
    In Ghostly Japan
    In Ghostly Japan
    Ebook146 pages1 hour

    In Ghostly Japan

    By Lafcadio Hearn

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Originally published in 1899, this work is a collection of writings by the American author Lafcadio Hearn. Hearn was a scholar of Japanese culture and society, and this book is a collection of essays, observations, and short stories on the darker side of the country. It is beautifully written and a fascinating read for anyone with an interest in philosophical musings inspired by the intriguing culture of Japan. We are also republishing this work with a brand new introductory biography of the author.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWhite Press
    Release dateFeb 10, 2015
    ISBN9781473398955
    Author

    Lafcadio Hearn

    Lafcadio Hearn, also called Koizumi Yakumo, was best known for his books about Japan. He wrote several collections of Japanese legends and ghost stories, including Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things.

    Read more from Lafcadio Hearn

    Related to In Ghostly Japan

    Related ebooks

    Travel For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Orlando Spirit Of The Age

      Jun 11, 2019

      Orlando Spirit Of The Age
      5 min read

    • Article

      Edge Walker

      Feb 20, 2019

      Edge Walker
      19 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Nov 1, 2018

      In a hotel in a small town in Norfolk I am listening to someonethrowing glass bottles into a metal bin: toss-shatter, toss-shatter.There are no other sounds; it’s a quiet afternoonbut the one tossing them has a sense of rhythm and I havea sense that

      5 min read

    • Article

      Jude THE OBSCURE

      Jun 18, 2021

      Jude THE OBSCURE
      5 min read

    • Article

      Flood The World With Beauty

      Nov 1, 2019

      A big literary conference is probably not the best place for a poet dealing with a mental breakdown. But there I was at AWP, skittishly perusing tables at the book fair, under the garish lights of the Minneapolis Convention Center. For two years, par

      8 min read

    • Article

      Spellcheck

      Jan 1, 2019

      Whose history I do not know. I do know I’ve been e-upbraided for my fast and loose spelling of Woden, the god whose last worshipper must have slipped under the sod during the medieval period, somewhere in the 10th century—imagine those bog-soaked des

      5 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Oct 7, 2021

      Nigel Watson reported on the suggestion that the ancient aliens thesis was inherently racist because it refused to acknowledge the ability of people of colour to construct impressive edifices [FT409:32]. Now, while I don’t deny that some aficionados

      9 min read

    • Article

      A Close Encounter With A Lion

      May 25, 2023

      My Dear Baker Mrs Oswell and myself thoroughly enjoyed our stay with you and your charming wife in June. It was a true pleasure for us both to renew old times and friendship. We trust that your trip to India will be a pleasant one, and the ship you a

      6 min read

    • Article

      Solving Riddles, Reading Poems

      Nov 28, 2017

      Solving Riddles, Reading Poems
      6 min read

    • Article

      Worship On High

      Oct 18, 2021

      Worship On High
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Devil’s Taxi

      Oct 6, 2022

      The Devil’s Taxi
      26 min read

    • Article

      Hook, Line And Sinker

      Oct 18, 2018

      Hook, Line And Sinker
      4 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Colvin, Awkward-Rich, Sarginson, Grey, and More

      Dec 10, 2019

      —new titles from the likes of Jeffrey Colvin, Cameron Awkward-Rich, Saskia Sarginson, Iona Grey, and more—t The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Colvin, Awkward-Rich, Sarginson, Grey, and More appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Stop Hating on Adjectives!

      Jun 12, 2019

      A common admonition in creative writing pedagogy is, “Cut as many adjectives as possible.” I propose that this rule springs from mere prejudice. The post Stop Hating on Adjectives! appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      I Used To Be Well Read

      Jun 29, 2022

      I Used To Be Well Read
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for In Ghostly Japan

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      In Ghostly Japan - Lafcadio Hearn

      In Ghostly Japan

      by

      Lafcadio Hearn

      Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

      This book is copyright and may not be

      reproduced or copied in any way without

      the express permission of the publisher in writing

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      Contents

      Lafcadio Hearn

      In Ghostly Japan

      Fragment

      Furisode

      Incense

      A Story of Divination

      Silkworms

      A Passional Karma

      Footprints of the Buddha

      Ululation

      Bits of Poetry

      Japanese Buddhist Proverbs

      Suggestion

      Ingwa-banashi(1)

      Story of a Tengu (1)

      At Yaidzu

      Lafcadio Hearn

      Patrick Lafcadio Hearn was born in Lefkada, Greece in 1850. He was baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church, but in his infancy, his family relocated to Dublin, Ireland, where Hearn attended the Roman Catholic Ushaw College. Neither of these religious faiths stuck, however, and when he was nineteen Hearn went to the United States, where he began to work in journalism. He gained employment as a reporter for the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer in 1872, and became known as an investigative yet sensational journalist.

      In 1877, Hearn left Cincinnati for New Orleans, where he remained for almost a decade. His writings about the city’s unique cultural life, especially its Creole population and distinctive cuisine, were published in magazines such as Harper’s Weekly and Scribner’s Magazine. His best-known New Orleans works are Gombo Zhèbes, Little Dictionary of Creole Proverbs in Six Dialects (1885), La Cuisine Créole (1885), and Chita: A Memory of Last Island, a novella first published in Harper’s Monthly in 1888. Over the decade, Hearn became a much-loved chronicler of the city; today, more books have been written about him than any former resident of New Orleans other than Louis Armstrong.

      Between 1887 and 1890, Hearn worked as a correspondent in the West Indies, before settling in Japan, a country that would provide his greatest inspiration. At a time when Japan was largely unknown to Westerners, Hearn became world-famous for his writings on the country. His book Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894) was hugely popular, and in 1896 he began teaching English literature at Tokyo Imperial University. Hearn penned three more books concerned with Japan and Japanese culture. Amongst the best-remembered of these are his collections of Japanese ghost stories and legends, such as Japanese Fairy Tales (1898) and Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1903). Kearn died in Tokyo, Japan in 1904, aged 54. His grave is at the Zōshigaya Cemetery in Toshima, Tokyo.

      In Ghostly Japan

      Fragment

      And it was at the hour of sunset that they came to the foot of the mountain. There was in that place no sign of life,—neither token of water, nor trace of plant, nor shadow of flying bird,— nothing but desolation rising to desolation. And the summit was lost in heaven.

      Then the Bodhisattva said to his young companion:—What you have asked to see will be shown to you. But the place of the Vision is far; and the way is rude. Follow after me, and do not fear: strength will be given you.

      Twilight gloomed about them as they climbed. There was no beaten path, nor any mark of former human visitation; and the way was over an endless heaping of tumbled fragments that rolled or turned beneath the foot. Sometimes a mass dislodged would clatter down with hollow echoings;—sometimes the substance trodden would burst like an empty shell….Stars pointed and thrilled; and the darkness deepened.

      Do not fear, my son, said the Bodhisattva, guiding: danger there is none, though the way be grim.

      Under the stars they climbed,—fast, fast,—mounting by help of power superhuman. High zones of mist they passed; and they saw below them, ever widening as they climbed, a soundless flood of cloud, like the tide of a milky sea.

      Hour after hour they climbed;—and forms invisible yielded to their tread with dull soft crashings;—and faint cold fires lighted and died at every breaking.

      And once the pilgrim-youth laid hand on a something smooth that was not stone,—and lifted it,—and dimly saw the cheekless gibe of death.

      Linger not thus, my son! urged the voice of the teacher;—the summit that we must gain is very far away!

      On through the dark they climbed,—and felt continually beneath them the soft strange breakings,—and saw the icy fires worm and die,—till the rim of the night turned grey, and the stars began to fail, and the east began to bloom.

      Yet still they climbed,—fast, fast,—mounting by help of power superhuman. About them now was frigidness of death,—and silence tremendous….A gold flame kindled in the east.

      Then first to the pilgrim’s gaze the steeps revealed their nakedness;—and a trembling seized him,—and a ghastly fear. For there was not any ground,—neither beneath him nor about him nor above him,—but a heaping only, monstrous and measureless, of skulls and fragments of skulls and dust of bone,—with a shimmer of shed teeth strown through the drift of it, like the shimmer of scrags of shell in the wrack of a tide.

      Do not fear, my son! cried the voice of the Bodhisattva;—only the strong of heart can win to the place of the Vision!

      Behind them the world had vanished. Nothing remained but the clouds beneath, and the sky above, and the heaping of skulls between,—up-slanting out of sight.

      Then the sun climbed with the climbers; and there was no warmth in the light of him, but coldness sharp as a sword. And the horror of stupendous height, and the nightmare of stupendous depth, and the terror of silence, ever grew and grew, and weighed upon the pilgrim, and held his feet,—so that suddenly all power departed from him, and he moaned like a sleeper in dreams.

      Hasten, hasten, my son! cried the Bodhisattva: the day is brief, and the summit is very far away.

      But the pilgrim shrieked,—I fear! I fear unspeakably!—and the power has departed from me!

      The power will return, my son, made answer the Bodhisattva…. Look now below you and above you and about you, and tell me what you see.

      I cannot, cried the pilgrim, trembling and clinging; I dare not look beneath! Before me and about me there is nothing but skulls of men.

      And yet, my son, said the Bodhisattva, laughing softly,—and yet you do not know of what this mountain is made.

      The other, shuddering, repeated:—"I fear!—unutterably I

       fear!…there is nothing but skulls of men!"

      A mountain of skulls it is, responded the Bodhisattva. But know, my son, that all of them ARE YOUR OWN! Each has at some time been the nest of your dreams and delusions and desires. Not even one of them is the skull of any other being. All,—all without exception,—have been yours, in the billions of your former lives.

      Furisode

      Recently, while passing through a little street tenanted chiefly by dealers in old wares, I noticed a furisode, or long-sleeved robe, of the rich purple tint called murasaki, hanging before one of the shops. It was a robe such as might have been worn by a lady of rank in the time of the Tokugawa. I stopped to look at the five crests upon it; and in the same moment there came to my recollection this legend of a similar robe said to have once caused the destruction of Yedo.

      Nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, the daughter of a rich merchant of the city of the Shoguns, while attending some temple- festival, perceived in the crowd a young samurai of remarkable beauty, and immediately fell in love with him. Unhappily for her, he disappeared in the press before she could learn through her attendants who he was or whence he had come. But his image remained vivid in her memory,—even to the least detail of his costume. The holiday attire then worn by samurai youths was scarcely less brilliant than that of young girls; and the upper dress of this handsome stranger had seemed wonderfully beautiful to the enamoured maiden. She fancied that by wearing a robe of like quality and color, bearing the same crest, she might be able to attract his notice on some future occasion.

      Accordingly she had such a robe made, with very long sleeves, according to the fashion of the period; and she prized it greatly. She wore it whenever she went out; and when at home she would suspend it in her room, and try to imagine the form of her unknown beloved within it. Sometimes she would pass hours before it,—dreaming and weeping by turns. And she would pray to the gods and the Buddhas that she might win the young man’s affection,—often repeating the invocation of the Nichiren sect: Namu myo ho rengé kyo!

      But she never saw the youth again; and she pined with longing for him, and sickened, and died, and was buried. After her burial, the long-sleeved robe that she had so much prized was given to the Buddhist temple of which her family were parishioners. It is an old custom to thus dispose of the garments of the dead.

      The priest was able to sell the robe at a good price; for it was a costly silk, and bore no trace of the tears that had fallen upon it. It was bought by a girl of about the same age as the dead lady. She wore it only one day. Then she fell sick, and began to act strangely,—crying out that she was haunted by the vision of a beautiful young man, and that for love of him she was going to die. And within a little while she died; and the long- sleeved robe was a second time presented to the temple.

      Again the priest sold it; and again it became the property of a young girl, who wore it only once. Then she also sickened, and talked of a beautiful shadow, and died, and was buried. And the robe was given a third time to the temple; and the priest wondered and doubted.

      Nevertheless he ventured to sell the luckless garment once more. Once more it was purchased by a girl and once more worn; and the wearer pined and died. And the robe was given a fourth time to the temple.

      Then the priest felt sure that there was some evil influence at work; and he told his acolytes to make a fire in the temple- court, and to burn the robe.

      So they made a fire, into which the robe was thrown. But as the silk began to burn, there suddenly appeared upon it dazzling characters of flame,—the characters of the invocation, Namu myo ho rengé kyo;—and these, one by one, leaped like great sparks to the temple roof; and the temple took fire.

      Embers from the burning temple presently dropped upon neighbouring roofs; and the whole street was soon ablaze. Then a sea-wind, rising, blew destruction into further streets; and the conflagration spread from street to street, and from district into district, till nearly the whole of the city was consumed. And this calamity, which occurred upon the eighteenth day of the first month of the first year of Meireki (1655), is still remembered in

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1