BOTM October: KWAIDAN by Lafcadio Hearn

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > BOTM October: KWAIDAN by Lafcadio Hearn

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Welcome goonlings to the Awful Book of the Month!
In this thread, we choose one work of ~~literature~~ absolute crap and read/discuss it over a month. If you have any suggestions of books, choose something that will be appreciated by many people, and has many avenues of discussion. We'd also appreciate if it were a work of ~~literature~~ complete drivel that is easily located from a local library or book shop, as opposed to ordering something second hand off the internet and missing out on a week's worth of reading. Better yet, books available on e-readers.

Resources:

Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org

- A database of over 17000 books available online. If you can suggest books from here, that'd be the best.

SparkNotes - http://www.sparknotes.com/

- A very helpful Cliffnotes-esque site, but much better, in my opinion. If you happen to come in late and need to catch-up, you can get great character/chapter/plot summaries here.

:siren:

For recommendations on future material, suggestions on how to improve the club, or just a general rant, feel free to PM the moderation team. :siren:

Past Books of the Month

[for BOTM before 2018, refer to archives]

2018
January: Njal's Saga [Author Unknown]
February: The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
March: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
April: Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio de Maria
May: Lectures on Literature by Vladimir Nabokov
June: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
July: Warlock by Oakley Hall
August: All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriott
September: The Magus by John Fowles
October: I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara
November: Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
December: Christmas Stories by Charles Dickens

2019:
January: Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
February: BEAR by Marian Engel
March: V. by Thomas Pynchon
April: The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout
May: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
June: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
July: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
August: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay
September: Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
October: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
November: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
December: Moby Dick by Herman Melville

2020:
January: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
February: WE by Yevgeny Zamyatin
March: The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini by Benvenuto Cellini
April: The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
May: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Dame Rebecca West
June: The African Queen by C. S. Forester
July: The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale
August: The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire, by Howard Pyle
September: Strange Hotel, by Eimear McBride

Current: Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (怪談)("Ghost Stories"), by Lafcadio Hearn

Book available here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1210

Audiobook: here.

About the book

quote:

Hearn declares in his introduction to the first edition of the book, which he wrote on January 20, 1904, 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).

quote:

Hearn, even at his most negligent, was consistent in his transcription; his Japanese tales are stark and do not resemble the fairy tales produced by nineteenth-century writers in Europe. Occasionally, for lack of a transition and for touching a chord in his American readers, he invented elements that were closer to the smoky djinnis of the Thousand and One Nights, or the monsters of Greek myths, but he rarely employed the repetitions familiar to European readers; instead, he translated brief jingles or occasional poems that were traditional in Japanese stories.

quote:

What makes these stories, preserved from ancient times, especially readable today is the preternaturally postmodern form they are given in Hearn�s deeply idiosyncratic telling. He inserts himself into them in the most casually disruptive ways: offering interpretations or digressive asides about the person who first told him the tale in question, or saying that there is more to the story but he has forgotten it. He interrupts one tale to complain, Charles Kinbote-like, about the ubiquitous sight of telegraph poles in the hotel where he was staying when he first heard the story he is relating. Elsewhere, he lets us know that he is drawing from someone else�s book (an Englishman�s �Japanese Fairy-Tale Series�)�relaying the story �in my own words,� Hearn assures us, but with the book open beside him as he writes. At the end of �The Corpse-Rider,� he complains that he does not find its conclusion �morally satisfying.� Metafiction goes back hundreds of years before Hearn, but meta-folk feels like an offshoot that one has not previously encountered. As so often with Hearn, there are two ways to feel about this. Unquestionably, it makes for a more interesting and sophisticated reading experience, and yet these authorial intrusions in ancient narratives represent a kind of claim to them, a display of control.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/16/why-lafcadio-hearns-ghost-stories-still-haunt-us

About the Author

quote:

At the end of the nineteenth century, Lafcadio Hearn was one of America�s best-known writers, one of a stellar company that included Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Twain, Poe, and Stevenson have entered the established literary canon and are still read for duty and pleasure. Lafcadio Hearn has been forgotten, with two remarkable exceptions: in Louisiana and in Japan. Yet Hearn�s place in the canon is significant for many reasons, not least of which is how the twentieth century came to view the nineteenth. This view, both academic and popular, reflects the triumph of a certain futuristic Modernism over the mysteries of religion, folklore, and what was once called �folk wisdom.� To witness this phenomenon in time-lapse, sped-up motion, one need only consider Lafcadio Hearn, the Greek-born, Irish-raised, New World immigrant who metamorphosed from a celebrated fin-de-si�cle American writer into the beloved Japanese cultural icon Koizumi Yakumo in less than a decade, in roughly the same time that Japan changed from a millennia-old feudal society into a great industrial power.

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/07/02/the-many-lives-of-lafcadio-hearn/

quote:

One hesitates to say that Hearn is now being �rediscovered� by an English-language readership, because his output was so voluminous and so varied that some corner of it seems to resurface every decade or so. His haiku and tanka translations influenced Pound, Rexroth, and others. His �La Cuisine Creole��the first cookbook of its kind�is historically invaluable. There are Hearn museums virtually everywhere he lived in Japan, and in 2015 the Lafcadio Hearn Japanese Gardens were dedicated, in the seaside town of Tramore, Ireland, near the spot where young Hearn said goodbye to his father for the last time.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/16/why-lafcadio-hearns-ghost-stories-still-haunt-us

quote:

Koizumi Yakumo (小泉八雲, 27 June 1850 � 26 September 1904), born Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (/hɜːrn/; Greek: Πατρίκιος Λευκάδιος Χερν), was a Japanese writer of Greek-Irish descent. He is best remembered for his books about Japanese culture, especially his collections of legends and ghost stories, such as Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. In the United States, he is also known for his writings about New Orleans, based on his decade-long stay there.

Hearn was born on the Greek island of Lefkada to a Greek mother and an Irish father, after which a complex series of conflicts and events led to him being moved to Dublin, where he was abandoned first by his mother, then his father, and finally by his father's aunt (who had been appointed his official guardian). At the age of 19, he was put on a boat to the United States, where he found work as a newspaper reporter, first in Cincinnati and later in New Orleans. From there, he was sent as a correspondent to the French West Indies, where he stayed for two years, and then to Japan, where he would remain for the rest of his life.

In Japan, Hearn married a Japanese woman with whom he had four children. His writings about Japan offered the Western world a glimpse into a largely unknown but fascinating culture at the time.

quote:

In the late 19th century, Japan was still largely unknown and exotic to Westerners. However, with the introduction of Japanese aesthetics, particularly at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900, Japanese styles became fashionable in Western countries. Consequently, Hearn became known to the world by his writings concerning Japan. In later years, some critics would accuse Hearn of exoticizing Japan, but because he offered the West some of its first descriptions of pre-industrial and Meiji Era Japan, his work is generally regarded as having historical value.[21][22][23]

Admirers of Hearn's work have included Ben Hecht,[24] John Erskine, and Malcolm Cowley.[25]

The Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi adapted four Hearn tales into his 1964 film, Kwaidan. Some of his stories have been adapted by Ping Chong into his puppet theatre, including the 1999 Kwaidan and the 2002 OBON: Tales of Moonlight and Rain.

Yone Noguchi is quoted as saying about Hearn, "His Greek temperament and French culture became frost-bitten as a flower in the North."[26]

There is also a cultural center named after Hearn at the University of Durham.

Hearn was a major translator of the short stories of Guy de Maupassant.[27]

The first museum in Europe for Lafcadio Hearn was inaugurated in Lefkada, Greece, his birthplace, on 4 July 2014, as Lefcadio Hearn Historical Center. It contains early editions, rare books and Japanese collectibles. The visitors, through photos, texts and exhibits, can wander in the significant events of Lafcadio Hearn's life, but also in the civilizations of Europe, America and Japan of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries through his lectures, writings and tales. The municipalities of Kumamoto, Matsue, Shinjuku, Yaizu, Toyama University, the Koizumi family and other people from Japan and Greece contributed to the establishment of Lefcadio Hearn Historical Center.[28]

He is also depicted as the main inspiration for Yukari Yakumo and Maribel Hearn in Touhou Project games and audio CDs[29]

quote:

It is odd that he was left out of the surrealist canon by Andr� Breton, who included Hearn�s close kin, Lewis Carroll and Rimbaud. The surrealists did not, most likely, read his work, because it was popular. Obscurity shadows literature, a protective shield that Hearn, who was actually read in his own time, did not possess. Yet, he was obscure in the most fantastic and ghostly way. Like the famous vanishing details of the stolen painting, Hearn was absorbed by the ghost-world and put to work as its mouthpiece.

quote:

What we make of Hearn now depends on how we frame him in the volatility of our own historical moment. Close one eye and he is a unique tragic hero, a victim and an outcast, who consistently championed nondominant cultures and tried to bind his own deep psychological wounds by celebrating in prose the world beyond the white, European society that had tortured and rejected him. Close the other eye and he is just another nineteenth-century white man who appointed himself an expert on places and cultures in which he was a tourist, making a career out of depicting or interpreting these cultures as if they were his to represent or to profit from. The very premise of Truong�s novel makes a salient contemporary point: Hearn�s global search for love and acceptance may have been touching, but even the search was a privilege. The women in his wake�none of them white�suffered gravely as well, and they didn�t have the option of lighting out for the territories.

Pacing

:justpost:

Read as thou wilt is the whole of the law.

Please post after you read!

Please bookmark the thread to encourage discussion.

References and Further Materials

quote:

Kwaidan (怪談, Kaidan, literally "ghost stories") is a 1965 Japanese anthology horror film directed by Masaki Kobayashi. It is based on stories from Lafcadio Hearn's collections of Japanese folk tales, mainly Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1904) , for which it is named. The film consists of four separate and unrelated stories. Kwaidan is an archaic transliteration of the term kaidan, meaning "ghost story". The film won the Special Jury Prize at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival,[2] and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.[3]

Film is online here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cKcGOm3INs

The film was based not only on Kwaidan, but also on two other collections of Hearn's Japanese folk tales, Kottō : being Japanese curios, with sundry cobwebs, and Shadowings, which can be found here: https://archive.org/details/kottbeingjapane00presgoog and here, respectively.

Suggestions for Future Months

These threads aren't just for discussing the current BOTM; If you have a suggestion for next month's book, please feel free to post it in the thread below also. Generally what we're looking for in a BotM are works that have

1) accessibility -- either easy to read or easy to download a free copy of, ideally both

2) novelty -- something a significant fraction of the forum hasn't already read

3) discussability -- intellectual merit, controversiality, insight -- a book people will be able to talk about.

Final Note:

Thanks, and we hope everyone enjoys the book!

Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Oct 3, 2020

# ? Oct 3, 2020 00:30

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 07:44

Grizzled Patriarch: Mar 27, 2014; These dentures won't stop me from tearing out jugulars in Thunderdome.

The movie is excellent and I had no idea it was an adaptation! Definitely gonna check this out.

# ? Oct 3, 2020 01:19

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Starting this tonight. Spooky reads for spooky times!

# ? Oct 5, 2020 03:54

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Not sure if I'd classify it as spooky but it's a fascinating book.

# ? Oct 5, 2020 11:06

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

anilEhilated posted:

Not sure if I'd classify it as spooky but it's a fascinating book.

I'm loving how . . . consciously unstructured it is. "Sorry, I can't tell you the ending of this story". "There was more to this story but I forgot the middle part." "Now, let's have four chapters about butterflies."

# ? Oct 5, 2020 14:54

Macdeo Lurjtux: Jul 5, 2011; BRRREADSTOOORRM!

I guess that answers main question. I was curious if Hearn's stories have held up as authentic. I know a few ethnologists of the time, like Frobenius, have been accused of just making up myths and legends whole sale and claiming them to be ancient myths of the culture they write about.

# ? Oct 6, 2020 03:58

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Macdeo Lurjtux posted:

I guess that answers main question. I was curious if Hearn's stories have held up as authentic. I know a few ethnologists of the time, like Frobenius, have been accused of just making up myths and legends whole sale and claiming them to be ancient myths of the culture they write about.

I found an article that reports his "method" for writing this and his other books of tales:

quote:

And here we touch on the interesting question of how he was exposed to many of these ghost stories in the first place. His second wife, Setsu, knowing his love for folk literature in general and ghost stories in particular, scoured secondhand bookstores for such stories, read them, committed them to memory, and then recited them in English to Hearn in their bedroom, late at night, �having lowered the wick of the lamp on purpose,� as she put it. Listening to her, he became so childishly terrified that his reaction sometimes scared Setsu, who would worry that she had gone too far. Then he would take notes.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/16/why-lafcadio-hearns-ghost-stories-still-haunt-us

That said,

quote:

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).

So it seems like on the whole his work has held up as "authentic," for a given value of authentic -- he was living in Japan and genuinely gathering stories, albeit by a rather idiosyncratic process.

# ? Oct 6, 2020 05:16

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

this is pretty great so far

# ? Oct 6, 2020 15:23

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

This discussion happened on Discord but I didn't want it lost to the sands of time:

Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Oct 6, 2020

# ? Oct 6, 2020 18:32

doctorfrog: Mar 14, 2007; Great.

That jar in the one ghost story about the lady and her mirror, I assume it was full to the brim with feces, blood, or spoiled guts, yeah?

# ? Oct 6, 2020 20:31

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

doctorfrog posted:

That jar in the one ghost story about the lady and her mirror, I assume it was full to the brim with feces, blood, or spoiled guts, yeah?

I mean, we assume, but we can't say!

Everyone does seem to assume it's poop.

I found an interesting Let's Read Blog that did Kwaidan and has some good posts:

quote:

And on a completely different note:

These strange Pok�mon, Bronzor and Bronzong, are 100% inspired by this story! We�ve got a bronze mirror (Bronze + Mirror = Bronzor) evolving into a bronze bell (Bronze + Gong / Bianzhong= Bronzong)!! But wait, there�s more! One of Bronzor�s potential abilities is called Heatproof, which reduces the damage it receives from Fire-Type moves. It�s an exclusive ability (well, up until the most recent games in which little Rolycoly has it too), and seems very clearly a reference to the story mirror�s refusal to melt. It�s a very thoughtful origin that makes up for the fact that the Pok�mon�s other potential ability is typically way, way better. We can go even deeper and look at Bronzor�s back, which is engraved like the bronze mirrors of yore.

https://transmissionsfromshw.com/2020/02/01/lets-read-kwaidan-stories-and-studies-of-strange-things-part-2/

Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Oct 7, 2020

# ? Oct 7, 2020 16:49

Mokelumne Trekka: Nov 22, 2015; Soon.

Linking the Wikipedia article on Orthogenesis which should give more context on the author's philosophical rambling at the end:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogenesis

To me this concept seems to be an almost mystical belief in Progress with a capital 'P', particularly Hebert Spencer's take, as though evolution is guided by a mysterious force. (I am rusty on philosophy in case I am off the mark here). Evolution and progress are frequently confused with each other. I'm sure the subsequent Great Wars knocked some sense into people.

Of course, like anything with philosophy, it's kind of complicated:

quote:

Numerous versions of orthogenesis (see table) have been proposed. Debate centred on whether such theories were scientific, or whether orthogenesis was inherently vitalistic or essentially theological

# ? Oct 7, 2020 17:17

AngusPodgorny: Jun 3, 2004; Please to be restful, it is only a puffin that has from the puffin place outbroken.

This is a fun read so far. It's like reading Grimms' fairy tales, except the brothers are really drunk and sometimes lose track of where the story is going. Also, there are a suitable number of ghosts for October.

AngusPodgorny fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Oct 8, 2020

# ? Oct 8, 2020 00:22

derp: Jan 21, 2010; when i get up all i want to do is go to bed again; Lipstick Apathy

These are great, having a lot of fun so far. I love that a guy was haunted by ducks in one, lol. The bell story is my favorite so far, so interesting and also funny. the idea of priests going nuts from the non stop ringing by crazed villagers got genuine laughs out of me. Worth the read already for that story alone.

# ? Oct 9, 2020 02:54

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

derp posted:

These are great, having a lot of fun so far. I love that a guy was haunted by ducks in one, lol. The bell story is my favorite so far, so interesting and also funny. the idea of priests going nuts from the non stop ringing by crazed villagers got genuine laughs out of me. Worth the read already for that story alone.

re: the duck one:

quote:

Not good! That could mean anything! I was inclined to believe Sonjo invited misfortune or a curse into his life, but the truth seems way simpler. Apparently, in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean folklore, mandarin ducks are a symbol of everlasting love because they were thought to mate for life (similar to the perception of swans in Europe.)

. . .

Alas, poor Sonjo would have been fine if he killed like a mallard or something, because gently caress those loveless monsters.

https://transmissionsfromshw.com/2019/11/07/lets-read-kwaidan-stories-and-studies-of-strange-things-part-1/

# ? Oct 9, 2020 03:38

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

these stories are so good, excellent choice for BotM

# ? Oct 9, 2020 05:34

Take the plunge! Okay!: Feb 24, 2007

I really appreciate the funny moments. The story in which the disembodied heads attack the fat priest is a brilliant piece of humor. Probably my favorite of the part I've read until now, although I immediately knew that the kind man inviting the priest to shelter in his house was HAUNTED or something.

# ? Oct 9, 2020 08:10

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

One bit of trivia I really liked is the off-hand yet somewhat haunting mention of crabs with human faces. Turns out they exist:

# ? Oct 9, 2020 11:29

Take the plunge! Okay!: Feb 24, 2007

anilEhilated posted:

One bit of trivia I really liked is the off-hand yet somewhat haunting mention of crabs with human faces. Turns out they exist:

I learned about those in Carl Sagan's Cosmos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIeYPHCJ1B8

# ? Oct 9, 2020 12:20

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

I branched out to reading some of his other collections and Kotto: being Japanese curios, with sundry cobwebs is much like this except even weirder. One story just flat out doesn't have an ending at all. Another entry is just him copying out a japanese woman's diary from the turn of the century, nonfiction, and it's one of the most terrifying things I've read.

# ? Oct 10, 2020 16:42

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

I branched out to reading some of his other collections and Kotto: being Japanese curios, with sundry cobwebs is much like this except even weirder. One story just flat out doesn't have an ending at all. Another entry is just him copying out a japanese woman's diary from the turn of the century, nonfiction, and it's one of the most terrifying things I've read.

how so?

# ? Oct 10, 2020 16:54

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Bilirubin posted:

how so?

I'll quote Hearn's postscript:

quote:

I doubt if any one not really familiar with the life of Japan can fully understand this simple history. But to imagine the merely material conditions of the existence here recorded should not be difficult:�the couple occupying a tiny house of two rooms�one room of six mats and one of three;�the husband earning barely per month;�the wife sewing, washing, cooking (outside the house, of course);�no comfort of fire, even during the period of greatest cold. I estimate that the pair must have lived at an average cost of about seven pence a day, not including house-rent. Their pleasures were indeed very cheap: a payment of twopence admitted them to theatres or to gidayū-recitations; and their sight-seeing was done on foot. Yet even these diversions were luxuries for them. Expenses represented by the necessary purchase of clothing, or by the obligation of making presents to kindred upon the occasion of a marriage or a birth or a death, could only have been met by heroic economy. Now it is true that thousands of poor folk in Tōkyō live still more cheaply than this,�live upon a much smaller income than �1 per month,�and nevertheless remain always clean, neat, and cheerful. But only a very strong woman can easily bear and bring up children under such conditions,�conditions much more hazardous than those of the harder but healthier peasant-life of the interior. And, as might be supposed, the weakly fail and perish in multitude.

*

Readers of the diary may have wondered at the eagerness shown by so shy and gentle a woman to become thus suddenly the wife of a total stranger, about whose character she knew absolutely nothing. A majority of Japanese marriages, indeed, are arranged for in the matter-of-fact way here described, and with the aid of a nakōdo; but the circumstances, in this particular case, were exceptionally discomforting. The explanation is pathetically simple. All good girls are expected to marry; and to remain unmarried after a certain age is a shame and a reproach. The dread of such reproach, doubtless, impelled the writer of the diary to snatch at the first chance of fulfilling her natural destiny. She was already twenty-nine years old;�another such chance might never have offered itself.

*

To me the chief significance of this humble confession of struggle and failure is not in the utterance of anything exceptional, but in the expression of something as common to Japanese life as blue air and sunshine. The brave resolve of the woman to win affection by docility and by faultless performance of duty, her gratitude for every small kindness, her childlike piety, her supreme unselfishness, her Buddhist interpretation of suffering as the penalty for some fault committed in a previous life, her attempts to write poetry when her heart was breaking,�all this, indeed, I find touching, and more than touching. But I do not find it exceptional. The traits revealed are typical,�typical of the moral nature of the woman of the people. Perhaps there are not many Japanese women of the same humble class who could express their personal joy and pain in a record at once so artless and pathetic; but there are millions of such women inheriting�from ages and ages of unquestioning faith�a like conception of life as duty, and an equal capacity of unselfish attachment.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/55473/55473-h/55473-h.htm#A_Womans_Diary

# ? Oct 10, 2020 17:03

derp: Jan 21, 2010; when i get up all i want to do is go to bed again; Lipstick Apathy

Finished this today and was really delightfully surprised by the sudden shift to insects at the end. I loved the butterfly haikus and have always been fascinated by ants. However i never would have guessed that the essay about ants would be about the morality of ants, wtf haha.

extremely enjoyable read all around, good pick, ty.

# ? Oct 12, 2020 03:25

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Into the butterfly studies now

# ? Oct 13, 2020 00:20

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

derp posted:

Finished this today and was really delightfully surprised by the sudden shift to insects at the end. I loved the butterfly haikus and have always been fascinated by ants. However i never would have guessed that the essay about ants would be about the morality of ants, wtf haha.

extremely enjoyable read all around, good pick, ty.

Agreed, was really great and enjoyable.

I really liked the story of the guy who fell asleep beneath a tree and then lived 23 years apparently in an underground mirror Japan

# ? Oct 13, 2020 04:07

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Nowadays you have to get hit by a truck to become nobility in an alternate universe version of pre-modern Japan.

# ? Oct 14, 2020 06:01

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Leaning really strongly towards this as the BOTM for November:

https://twitter.com/newrepublic/status/1316144221401812995?s=20

# ? Oct 15, 2020 22:21

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

any other nominees for next month? let me know by tomorrow

# ? Oct 29, 2020 04:38

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 07:44

graventy: Jul 28, 2006; Fun Shoe

I finished this last night instead of watching a car crash, and it was really great! The ghost stories are wonderful, the butterfly section was pretty, and the ant section was...something.

But I really liked the first part of the book, and I though the discord comments above were very insightful.

# ? Nov 4, 2020 19:05

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > BOTM October: KWAIDAN by Lafcadio Hearn