4 h 35 minAudiobook10 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the dead are not distant shadows, but neighbors whose lives still touch your own?
In Shadowings, Lafcadio Hearn brings together short tales of ghosts, spirits and strange fates with studies of the beliefs behind them. His Japan is a place where the dead remain close to daily life. These pieces invite you into old stories that unsettle even as they reveal the traditions that give them meaning.
Beneath the hauntings lie Buddhist ideas about karma, rebirth and a self less fixed than it seems. Hearn explores a moral world in which, according to these beliefs, actions carry consequences across lifetimes. He writes as a guide for unfamiliar readers, offering a Western view of old Japan rather than a scholar's neutral survey.
What you’ll discover
- The dead next door Enter tales where spirits and visitors from another world remain close to everyday life.
- Deeds that reach beyond Explore how Buddhist beliefs about karma give these strange fates their moral weight.
- A less certain self Consider Hearn's interest in rebirth and the unsettling idea that identity is not fixed.
- Stories beside their beliefs Move between old tales and short studies that illuminate the traditions beneath their hauntings.
- A guide with limits Encounter Hearn's vision of Japan while keeping his sometimes romantic view in mind.
Who will love it
Readers who love ghost stories, old legends and folk poetry will find a quiet pleasure here, as will anyone curious about Japanese daily life, nature, names and songs seen through one warm and inquisitive guide.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Strange books open with love and loss
- A picture, a vow, and a patient lover
- Terror and kindness among spirits and gods
- A shark-man repays kindness with tears
- Cicadas, names and songs of Japan
- Dreams, crowds and the memory of the dead
Who’s who
- The samurai of KyotoA man who gave up a faithful wife for advancement and later longs to win her forgiveness.
- Shoku ShoninA learned priest of Harima who prays for years to see the Bodhisattva Fugen as a living presence.
- TokkeiA young Kyoto scholar who falls in love with a painted girl on an old screen and wants her to be real.
- Hanagaki BaishuA poet who falls in love with the unseen writer of a poem slip and begs the goddess Benten to help him.
- Tawaraya TotaroA comfortable man of Omi who wants only a very beautiful wife and takes in a banished shark-man.
- The SamebitoA black shark-man with green eyes, exiled from the Dragon Palace, who repays kindness with tears that harden into jewels.
- The inyoshiA diviner who gives a frightened man a terrible but exact way to escape the vengeance of a dead woman.
Formats and delivery
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 4 h 35 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 10 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Shadowings
by Lafcadio Hearn · 1900
A samurai returns to his first wife, a scholar loves a painted girl, and a sea creature weeps red jewels.
Medium level2–5 hours to read25 languages
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In short
Shadowings is a book by Lafcadio Hearn, who died in 1904 after many years of life in Japan. It gathers tales he found in old Japanese books, then adds studies of singing insects, women's names and folk songs, and ends with dreamlike essays on fear, flight and memory.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Strange books open with love and loss
The book begins with tales drawn from old Japanese writings. The first is The Reconciliation. A young samurai of Kyoto, ruined by his lord's fall, divorces his good wife so that he can marry into a better family and find a post in a distant province. His second wife proves hard and selfish, and he begins to long for the woman he threw away.
Memory works on him for years. He sees her at her loom in his dreams, and he sees her weeping in the bare little room where he left her. When his term of service ends, he sends his second wife home and hurries to Kyoto, still in his travelling clothes. He reaches the old street late on a moonlit night, and the house looks abandoned, with weeds on the roof and bare floors inside.
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What is Shadowings by Lafcadio Hearn about?
It is a collection of retold Japanese tales of ghosts, gods and lovers, followed by studies of cicadas, women's names and folk songs, and a group of dreamlike essays on fear, flight and ancestral memory.
Are the stories in Shadowings true or invented?
The tales come from older Japanese books, and Hearn retells them in English. They are legends and ghost stories, not history. The studies and essays record his own observations, listening and questions from his years in Japan.
What is a tanzaku in Benten's Sympathy?
A tanzaku is a narrow strip of stiff paper used for writing a short poem. In the tale, a poem on such a strip blows to the scholar's feet and sets his love story going.
The author
Lafcadio Hearn
1850–1904 · Greek-Irish writer on Japan
Lafcadio Hearn was a writer, translator, and teacher born on the Greek island of Lefkada in 1850. He lived in Ireland and the United States before moving to Japan in 1890. He wrote Some Chinese Ghosts (1887), Shadowings (1900), and Kwaidan (1904). He died in Tokyo in 1904.
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