4 h 13 minAudiobook9 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
A blind musician plays for an audience that should not exist, and the unseen world draws close.
In Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, Lafcadio Hearn gathers Japanese ghost stories where ordinary lives meet strange forces. Hoichi, a blind musician at a seaside temple, is called away at night. In Yuki-Onna, a spirit enters a hut during a blizzard and decides who will live.
Other tales lead along lonely roads and into dreams. Mujina follows an old merchant on the Akasaka road; The Dream of Akinosuke opens a lifetime within a farmer's sleep. Oshidori explores attachment beyond death. Short studies of small creatures follow the stories, while calm telling and clear detail let unease grow without fast shocks.
What you’ll discover
- An audience beyond life Follow Hoichi as his musical gift draws listeners whose presence turns talent into danger.
- The woman in snow Meet Yuki-Onna, whose arrival in a blizzard binds Minokichi to a life-shaping promise.
- Roads into the unknown Travel with solitary figures whose search for shelter brings them close to the uncanny.
- A lifetime within sleep Enter Akinosuke's dream of a distant kingdom, where one sleep holds a long life.
- Fear in quiet details Discover how simple scenes and restrained telling make the everyday world feel unsettlingly close to ghosts.
Who will love it
For readers who love short, eerie tales, Japanese folklore and quiet supernatural fear. It also rewards anyone curious about how one writer carried a culture into English.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A foreign writer gathers Japan's old tales
- A musician's talent draws the wrong audience
- Strangers on lonely roads are never what they seem
- Love and loyalty reach across death
- Dreams, ants and the thin line of reality
- The calm voice that makes the fear work
Who’s who
- HoichiA blind young musician at a seaside temple who chants the Heike story so well that listeners weep, and who is called away at night.
- MinokichiA young woodcutter caught in a snowstorm with his old companion, who is bound by a promise of silence that shapes his later life.
- Yuki-OnnaThe Woman of the Snow, a spirit who enters a hut in a blizzard and decides who will live.
- KwairyoA former samurai turned wandering priest, whose courage and faith are tested when he shelters for the night in a mountain home.
- Muso KokushiA travelling priest who seeks shelter in the mountains and hears a hermit's strange confession.
- AkinosukeA farmer who falls asleep under a cedar tree and dreams of a distant kingdom and a long life.
- TomotadaA young samurai who falls in love on a winter journey and marries without his lord's permission.
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- Audiobook
- 4 h 13 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 9 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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Kwaidan: storie e studi di cose strane
by Lafcadio Hearn · 1904
A blind musician is called to play for an audience that should not exist, where the living and the dead meet.
Medium level2–5 hours to read25 languages
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In short
Kwaidan is a book of Japanese ghost stories, followed by a few short studies of small creatures. Lafcadio Hearn published it in 1904, the year he died.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A foreign writer gathers Japan's old tales
Lafcadio Hearn arrived in Japan in 1890 as a journalist and soon became a teacher of English. He settled in the old country towns and later in Tokyo. He married a Japanese woman, Koizumi Setsu, and took the Japanese name Koizumi Yakumo. His family and neighbours became his best sources, and he spent years learning what ordinary people believed about spirits, ghosts and the dead.
He did not claim to invent these stories. Many come from old Japanese collections of strange tales, and he says plainly that he found them in books or heard them told. His task was to select, shape and carry them into English. He kept the plain, direct voice of folk telling and avoided the heavy manner of Victorian horror.
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What is Kwaidan about?
Kwaidan is a collection of Japanese ghost stories and folk tales retold by Lafcadio Hearn, plus three short studies of butterflies, mosquitoes and ants. The tales deal with spirits, haunted roads, loyalty, debt and the thin line between the living and the dead.
What does the word Kwaidan mean?
Kwaidan is an older spelling of the Japanese word kaidan, which means a strange or ghostly tale. Hearn used it as the title because the book gathers stories of ghosts, goblins and other uncanny happenings from Japanese tradition.
Are the stories in Kwaidan true or original?
They are retellings. Hearn took most of them from old Japanese books and from tales he heard in Japan, and he shaped them in English. The book was published in 1904, the year he died.
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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