Riassunto
Riassunto di Ombre
A chi è rivolto
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.
Che cos’è questo libro
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. You meet ghosts, painted girls, gods who arrange marriages and a shark-man who weeps jewels.
The pieces are short, and each opens a different door. Some are told with the plain calm of a storyteller by a lamp. Others are the notes of a curious teacher who listens hard to what he hears in Izumo and Tokyo. What joins them is a feeling that the unseen presses close to everyday life. The first key point is the group of tales that opens the book, where love refuses to stay inside the limits of one life.
In questo riassunto
- 1Strange books open with love and lossFree
- 2A picture, a vow, and a patient lover
- 3Terror and kindness among spirits and gods
- 4A shark-man repays kindness with tears
- 5Cicadas, names and songs of Japan
- 6Dreams, crowds and the memory of the dead
Punto chiave 1 di 6
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.
Then he sees a light in a small back room and finds his wife sewing there. She greets him with glad surprise, and they talk through the night. The story is told with great tenderness, and the reader should enjoy it without hurrying toward what it means. Hearn leaves the last turn of this tale for its final lines, and so does this summary.
The second tale, A Legend of Fugen-Bosatsu, follows a devout priest named Shoku Shonin in the province of Harima. He prays for years to see the Bodhisattva Fugen as a living presence. A dream sends him to the house of a courtesan in the town of Kanzaki, where she sings to the beat of a small drum. As he listens, he sees her as the holy figure, riding a white elephant with six tusks. The monk who recorded the legend adds that compassion may take even the humblest shapes.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 41,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 2 h 45 min
- Listening time4 h 35 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 10 other languages
Questions about Ombre
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.
What does the cicada section of Shadowings cover?
It compares Greek and Japanese poems about cicadas and crickets, describes eight kinds of semi, and gathers seventeen-syllable poems. Some poets complain of the noise, and others see the shed skin as a picture of rebirth.
Is Shadowings easy to read?
Yes, in the sense that most pieces are short and self-contained. The tales have clear plots, the studies read like friendly lectures, and you can enjoy each part on its own in any order.