Customer Reviews

Tales of Old Edo - Kaiki: Uncanny Tales from Japan, Vol. 1

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KAIKI: UNCANNY TALES FROM JAPAN Volume 1 - Tales of Old Edo is a wonderful collection of weird and unusual stories written by Japanese authors from the past several hundred years. This book is must reading for anyone interested in the history or development of horror and fantastic literature. Before publication of this book, next to nothing was known about Japanese weird fiction. Because of the difficulty translating stories from Japan, very few supernatural or occult stories were reprinted in the United States. This book, the first of a series of three, will hopefully correct that oversight. For fans of the bizarre and unusual, this book is a rare treat. I was lucky enough to have read this volume before publication and write the introduction to it. Having read thousands and thousands of horror and supernatural stories in my many years of editing, I assumed these stories would be typical weird tales, nothing very unusual. I was utterly amazed at the quality and strangeness of the fiction. The tales in this book are very, very different than British, European, or American horror. I won't spoil any of the stories by describing the plots, but I will mention that my personal favorite was "Where Had She Been" by Kyogoku Natsuhiko. What a wonderfully weird story! This book is a gem and obviously highly recommended.

As someone who is no stranger to Japanese weird tales--I have an MA in Japanese Folklore and run a website where I translate stories based on the hyakumonogatari kaidankai ghost-story game--I found "Kaiki: Uncanny Tales from Japan" to be a unique treat and a wonderful experience. I have a whole library of books in this genre, both in Japanese and in translated English; but this is the only one I have that combines ancient weird tales with modern writers' takes on the classic storytelling style.

The important subtitle of this book is "Tales of Old Edo," not "Tales from Old Edo." Along with stories by the great authors of Edo period weird tales, like Lafcadio Hearn (Kwaidan: Ghost Stories and Strange Tales of Old Japan), Ueda Akinari (Ugetsu Monogatari), and Okamoto Kido ("Strange Tales of Blue Frog Temple"), there are modern masters like Miyabe Miyuki (Crossfire) and Kyogoku Natsuhiko (The Summer of the Ubume). Some of these tales I knew very well, particularly the old classics. Some of these I was reading for the first time. But whether I knew them or not, I found the mix of old and new to be fresh and appealing.

None of the entries here could be mistaken for horror. Although populated with ghosts and monsters, Japan's storytelling tradition lends more towards strange experiences and odd phenomena than chills and thrills. Kurodahan Press was very careful in choosing the term "uncanny tales" for the title. There are nine stories collected in total, along with two essays on Japanese weird fiction, a short manga story, and an introduction by Robert Weinberg. Each of the stories has a different translator, some of whom do a better job than others, and which affects the quality of the stories.

I loved the 1959 story "Through the Wooden Gate," by Yamamoto Shugoroi. There supernatural undertones are subtle, and much of the story must be read between the lines. I also enjoyed the 1938 "Visions of Beyond," by Koda Rohan which takes you through page after page of various fishing techniques before finally getting to the story of the haunted fishing pole. Miyabe Miyuki's 2000 "The Futon Room" was a touching story of sisterly love, and Kyogoku Natsuhiko's "Three Old Tales of Terror" where a perfect recreation of the Edo style hyakumonogatari tales that were designed to be short and told around candlelight. I don't know that I would have chosen Lafcadio Hearn's "In a Cup of Tea" out of all of his available stories, but it is a good one that I hadn't read for awhile. I liked the inclusion of Hearn's essay "The Value of the Supernatural in Literature."

The translations in "Kaiki: Uncanny Tales from Japan" where never bad, although there was variation in quality. Some of the translations seemed stiff and formal; more like an academic exercise than a book designed for pleasure reading. I spotted a few mistakes here and there, worked my way through a few clumsy turns of phrase that must have sounded better in Japanese than in re-worked English. But on the whole the various translators did a good job, and I found myself forgetting I was reading a work in translation and just disappeared into the story.

Kurodahan Press has a series of three books in this series, and I intend to pick them all up. The only disappointment is this is one of those books I would have loved to have participated in the making of not just in the reading of! Great stuff all around.

Little is known in English-speaking countries about the vast riches of Japanese weird fiction; this series allows us a glimpse, if no more than that. Each volume contains a valuable historical essay by editor Higashi Misao, which enables us to put the stories in context, as well as making us painfully aware that we are seeing no more than the tip of the iceberg; many of the most important authors and titles cited have never been translated.

As for the stories themselves: I can't imagine any serious lover of weird fiction wanting to be without them. As Robert Weinberg points out in an astute introduction, the Japanese approach to supernatural horror resembles that of the incomparable M.R. James; there is the same unsettling juxtaposition of the ordinary and the uncanny. There is also an admirable restraint in regard to explanation and exposition; strange things happen, and are all the more disturbing because of their inexplicability. The stores are tight, spare, and truly bizarre.

All the stories in this first volume are excellent, those by Okamoto Kito and Yamamoto Sugoro particularly so. Koda Rohan's story at first overwhelms the reader with an absurd wealth of irrelevant detail, which cleverly set off the extraordinary weird developments which ensue. But Weinberg is right in singling out Kyogoku Natsuhiko's "Where Had She Been?" for special praise. In its horrible, mystifying brevity, it reminds me of Bierce's outrageous classic, "The Spook House". It's criminal that more of Kyugoku's short fiction has not been translated. But perhaps this indispensable series will help change that.