![]() The Kwaidan stories are short and beguiling, stories that include samurai, maidens, priests, goblins, princes, kings, shapes, evil spirits, ghosts, and woodcutters as well as mandarin-ducks, willow trees, ants, and butterflies. Thus, this is not a photobook per se, but a collection of stories that are punctuated by wonderful photographs. Even in Japan it is not well known that Hearn’s original stories were written in English and the underlying reason for Hiroshi Watanabe’s English language edition that he illustrated with his photographs. Hearn’s stories were subsequently translated to Japanese and became very popular to generations of young Japanese children. Hearn died in Japan soon after the publication of Kwaidan. Kwaidan is a collection of those short stories that he wrote in English for western populations. He traveled all around in Japan with his wife and heard many strange traditional folklore stories. He later moved to Japan and married a Japanese woman, had children, and became a professor. ![]() ![]() Hearn was an Irishman who was born in Greece, grew up in Ireland, and emigrated to the US where he became a writer. ![]() Backstory: Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things is a new edition book of classic short, Japanese, horror stories written by Lafcadio Hearn over a century ago. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |