Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

Synopsis

Most of the following kwaidan, or weird tales, have been taken from old japanese books, —such as the yaso-kidan, bukkyo-hyakkwa-zensho, kokon-chomonshu, tama-sudare, and hyaku-monogatari. Some of the stories may have had a chinese origin: the very remarkable “dream of akinosuke, ” for example, is certainly from a chinese source. But the story-teller, in every case, has so recolored and reshaped his borrowing as to naturalize it. One queer tale, “yuki-onna, ” was told me by a farmer of chofu, nishitama-gori, in musashi province, as a legend of his native village.