Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things lives up to the title. These legends and tales are often so strange that they feel as if they’ve been cut short. Very rarely is there any explanation for what exactly took place, the reader must interpret their own understanding. A few of these stories, such as Of a Mirror and a Bell and Diplomacy end abruptly, which is a technique not very common among western storytelling. In western narrative the reader is typically spoonfed a conclusion. These short stories begin and end with the sole purpose of the tale: a focus on strange encounters.

One common element among most of the stories lies in religious connection. In many of these stories a priest plays a significant role, usually as a guide to resolve. The religious figure usually provides answers or is immune to evil. In one story, Rokuro-Kubi, a goblin even says: “and we cannot touch him so long as he is praying”. To me, it appears there is a common moral that values the importance of religious spirituality over selfish desire. In Jikininki, there is the quote: “I repeated the service and performed the rites only as a matter of business;━ I thought only of the food and the clothes that my sacred profession enabled me to gain. And because of this selfish impiety I was reborn… into the state of a jikininki.” This seems to be a clear message to listeners or readers that in order to avoid consequence one must act selflessly, and act to benefit others without personal gain. This is interesting when compared to our previous topics of the gothic and vampires. Both, in a way, seduce readers with the opposite technique. Gothic horror wraps the reader into the realm of darkness and embraces the unnatural. Vampire fiction- especially modern variation- literally seduces the reader into sympathizing with the monster, exploiting personal gain (such as draining the blood of others for nourishment) as something better than sex, a state of ecstasy. This speaks to a western audience, who seem to crave an explanation of the inexplicable. Western literature tends to expose the unnatural and twist it into something romantic, while these Japanese stories seem to expose the unnatural for the purpose of spiritual guidance.