Phantom Press: Kaidan, Kartoniert / Broschiert

Klappentext

In Japan, ghosts belong to summer - and this book is not a collection. It is a game. Kaidan revives hyakumonogatari kaidankai, the Edo-period gathering of one hundred weird tales, as an illustrated book of 100 Japanese ghost stories that you play by candlelight.

The rules open the book: light one hundred candles, read one story, put out one flame, and let the room grow darker ten stories at a time, until a single candle stands between you and the hundredth tale. Edo tradition holds that when the last flame dies, something arrives. Most players stop at ninety-nine.

Inside are one hundred tales in ten chapters, retold in new words from the classic sources - Lafcadio Hearn's Kwaidan, Ueda Akinari's 1776 Ugetsu Monogatari, A. B. Mitford's Tales of Old Japan, Richard Gordon Smith's folklore notebooks, the kabuki stage - alongside original stories in the traditional voice and modern urban legends retold as the folklore they have become. The famous yurei are here: the faceless mujina of the Akasaka road, Yuki-Onna the Woman of the Snow, Hoichi the Earless, Okiku counting her nine plates, the Peony Lantern, the vampire cat of Nabeshima, the returning bride O-Tei, the Boy Who Drew Cats, Aoyagi of the willows. So are the yokai - kappa, tanuki, tengu, the corpse-eating jikininki, the house-child zashiki-warashi - and their modern heirs: Hanako of the Third Stall, the Slit-Mouthed Woman, Kokkuri-san, and the taxi ghosts of a seaside town whose late-night fares vanish from the back seat.

A visual edition designed as part of the game:

Sixteen full-page ink illustrations in a modern manga style, from the faceless woman by the moat to the last burning candle

Ten framed chapter openers that count the candles down - 100, 90, 80 - to the last ten

A small candle glyph on every story, counting the flames down from 100 to 0 as you read

A closing plate of a hundred lit candles in a temple courtyard, and an afterword naming every source

A How to Play page with the original Edo rules, for reading alone or aloud around a circle of friends

The stories run one to two pages each, plainly told and never explained - weird tales in the old sense, quiet enough for a first-time reader of Japanese folklore, uncanny enough for longtime fans of J-horror and folk horror. For adult and teen readers (14 and up), it is a natural companion for Obon, Japan's festival of the dead in mid-August, and an obvious dare for Halloween night (October 31), when one hundred candles start to sound like a good idea.

Read ninety-nine stories and stop, like everyone else.

Or don't.