The exhibition has been going on for a while, but I’ve been: depressed; busy with my forced relocation; depressed; busy with looking for a construction crew that can handle the repairing works in my house; depressed; busy with work; depressed; away on a journey. Said journey helped and I’m not depressed anymore (I know, that’s […]
A cat-witch, or bakeneko, was haunting the grounds of the temple in Okabe, disguised as an old woman. Let’s take a look at her legend today on the Patreon.
Happy Valentine’s Day! Do you remember when we started, before going down the rabbit hole of the Heike Monogatari? I was taking a look at the Japanese Ghost Tales by Lafcadio Hearn, so today let’s take a look at the second tale of the collection, which is perfect because it’s also tragic and romantic. It’s […]
10. Chapter 10 We ended last week with a victory of the Minamoto: Taira no Shigehira was captured and he’s paraded around the Capital – Aida style – alongside the severed head of his warriors. The idea of retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa is to offer him in exchange for the return of the Imperial Regalia, the […]
Last week, I left you with Chapter 5 of the Heike Monogatari, the grand epic our earless monk was singing to the very same ghosts of the disgraced clan. Let’s see how it continues, shall we? 6. Chapter 6 Upon the death of retired Emperor Takakura, it’s time for another general to join forces with […]
Last week we saw one of the stories narrated by Lafcadio Hearn: the story of the earless minstrel. If you recall, the minstrel found himself telling the epic story of a family downfall to the ghostly court of the dead of that very same family. The story is the Heike Monogatari and I promised you […]
As I anticipated, I’m looking into Lafcadio Hearn’s Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. The first story collected in the book revolves around a prominent figure in Japan’s folklore, Hōichi the Earless (耳なし芳一, Mimi-nashi Hōichi), a cursed bard. It is normally considered that Earn wrote his tale after reading Isseki Sanjin (一夕散人), and his 1782 […]
After seeing a beautiful book at a friend’s house, I found myself perusing the work of Patrick Lafcadio Hearn, a Greek journalist born from an Irish surgeon and raised in Dublin after his 6th year. Lafcadio went to Japan for the first time in 1889 and was then known as Koizumi Yakumo. He collected several […]
Well, today we move to Japan and we meet a particular yōkai, the Yuki-onna (雪女) or “snow woman”. I found this particular story in a beautiful collection of Japanese tales illustrated by Kotaro Chiba. This particular story is the one narrated by Patrick Lafcadio Hearn, also known with his Japanese acquired name Koizumi Yakumo, and tells […]