TALES OF THE DARK GOAT O' PENN'S WOODS, NIGHT THREE

8

MIDNIGHT!

(I know it’s early, I stuffed myself at a raw bar and I’m fading fast)

Mitsukuni Defying the Skeleton Spectre Invoked by Princess Takiyasha

Lafcadio Hearn’s life was a story in itself, but more melodrama then horror so never mind. His fame as an explicator of Japanese culture seems to’ve pretty much vanished circa WWII, but I still find his stuff interesting, though a little prolix as is typical of his era. Anyhoo in 1903 he collected and published a selection of Kwaidan, i.e. weird tales, which is an interesting subset of Japanese folklore (there are many other variations of these tales). This particular publication is courtesy of Google’s scanned-books library, which has a number of interesting things (though I’m not crazy about the format):

Lafcadio Hearn

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

https://books.google.com/books/about/Kwaidan.html?id=0L4OAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false

In this case the art is by one of my two favorite Japanese woodblock artists, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, all of whose haunting work is worth seeing.

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