by Lafcadio Hearn · 1904
Fantasy · Horror · Classics
Lafcadio Hearn's retellings of Japanese ghost stories and folk tales, including the haunted musician Hoichi, followed by short essays on insects. Hearn lived in Japan and wrote for English readers.
Content note: Contains ghost stories with death and violence.
Would that I could hope for the luck of that Chinese scholar known to Japanese literature as “Rōsan”! For he was beloved by two spirit-maidens, celestial sisters, who every ten days came to visit him and to tell him stories about butterflies. Now there are marvelous Chinese stories about butterflies—ghostly stories; and I want to know them. But never shall I be able to read Chinese, nor even Japanese; and the little Japanese poetry that I manage, with exceeding difficulty, to translate, contains so many allusions to Chinese stories of butterflies that I am tormented with the torment of Tantalus... And, of course, no spirit-maidens will even deign to visit so skeptical a person as myself.
I want to know, for example, the whole story of that Chinese maiden whom the butterflies took to be a flower, and followed in multitude,—so fragrant and so fair was she. Also I should like to know something more concerning the butterflies of the Emperor Gensō, or Ming Hwang, who made them choose his loves for him... He used to hold wine-parties in his amazing garden; and ladies of exceeding beauty were in attendance; and caged butterflies, set free among them, would fly to the fairest; and then, upon that fairest the Imperial favor was bestowed.
