The Project Gutenberg EBook of Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange
Things, by Lafcadio Hearn

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Title: Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

Author: Lafcadio Hearn

Posting Date: February 18, 2010 [EBook #1210]
Release Date: February, 1998

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KWAIDAN: STORIES AND STUDIES ***

Produced by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer.

KWAIDAN: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

By Lafcadio Hearn

A Note from the Digitizer

On Japanese Pronunciation

Although simplified, the following general rules will help the reader
unfamiliar with Japanese to come close enough to Japanese pronunciation.

There are five vowels: a (as in fAther), i (as in machIne), u (as in
fOOl), e (as in fEllow), and o (as in mOle). Although certain vowels
become nearly "silent" in some environments, this phenomenon can be
safely ignored for the purpose at hand.

Consonants roughly approximate their corresponding sounds in English,
except for r, which is actually somewhere between r and l (this is why
the Japanese have trouble distinguishing between English r and l), and
f, which is much closer to h.

The spelling "KWAIDAN" is based on premodern Japanese pronunciation;
when Hearn came to Japan, the orthography reflecting this pronunciation
was still in use. In modern Japanese the word is pronounced KAIDAN.

There are many ellipses in the text. Hearn often used them in this
book; they do not represent omissions by the digitizer.

Author's original notes are in brackets, those by the digitizer are in
parentheses. Diacritical marks in the original are absent from this
digitized version.

KWAIDAN: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

By Lafcadio Hearn

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE STORY OF MIMI-NASHI-HOICHI
OSHIDORI
THE STORY OF O-TEI
UBAZAKURA
DIPLOMACY
OF A MIRROR AND A BELL
JIKININKI
MUJINA
ROKURO-KUBI
A DEAD SECRET
YUKI-ONNA
THE STORY OF AOYAGI
JIU-ROKU-ZAKURA
THE DREAM OF AKINOSUKE
RIKI-BAKA
HI-MAWARI
HORAI

INSECT STUDIES

BUTTERFLIES
MOSQUITOES
ANTS

INTRODUCTION

The publicatio