Publisher's Synopsis
Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, is a book by Lafcadio Hearn that features several Japanese ghost stories and a brief non-fiction study on insects.Hearn declares in his, shortly before his death, that most of these stories were translated from old Japanese texts. He also states that one of the stories - Yuki-onna - was told to him by a farmer in Musashi Province, and his was apparently the first record of it, both by his own account and according to the research of modern folklorists. Riki-Baka is based on a personal experience of Hearn's. While he does not declare it in his introduction, Hi Mawari among the final narratives in the volume seems to be a recollection of an experience in his childhood it is, setting itself apart from almost all the others, written in the first person and set in rural Wales.
