The Snow Ghost and Other Tales

Overview

Now in paperback, a spine-tinglingly beautiful collection of some of Japan's scariest yet still compelling classic ghost stories

Enter the haunted world of Ancient Japan in this spine-tingling collection of ghostly tales told and retold across the centuries.

From Goblin infested caves and haunted Tombs, to vengeful spirits and strange, sinister happenings, Ancient Japan was a country and culture that lived with between realms: the world of everyday and the world of supernatural. It was a time and place where men could be brought down by karmic forces or lured into deadly danger by ghostly apparitions, and where the land held sorrowful secrets or stories that long-awaited an opportunity to reveal them and seek reparation.

The Snow Ghost and Other Tales brings together some of the best and scariest tales that endured across centuries of folk lore in one collection. Finally committed to writing during the turn of the twentieth cenutry by a unique set of folklorists, the ghost stories presented in this new anthology will transport readers to a time of magic and mystery, and let them relish in the spine-tingling traditions of Japanese culture largely lost now to modernity.

For readers of Haruki Murakami, David Mitchell and Shirley Jackson.

Author Biography

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) was born in Ireland but spent two decades in the United States, where he worked as a journalist, before travelling and living in Japan, where he married a Japanese woman and wrote about Japanese society and aesthetics for a Western readership. His ghost stories, which were drawn from Japanese folklore and influenced by Buddhist beliefs, appeared in collections throughout the 1890s and 1900s. He is a much celebrated figure in Japan.

Yei Theodora Ozaki (1870-1932) was an early 20th century translator of Japanese short stories and fairy tales. Her translations were fairly liberal but have been popular, and were reprinted several times after her death.

Richard Gordon Smith (1858-1918) was a British traveler, sportsman and naturalist who traveled through many countries in the late nineteenth century and lived in Japan for a number of years.