Kwaidan

The first edition of this book was published five months before the writer, Lafcadio Hearn’s, death in September 1904. Kwaidan was part of a group of publications about the culture of Japan that began to appear in the West in the late 19th century. These publications helped to introduce the riches of Japanese aesthetic and artistic heritage to artists and designers in the United States and Europe and fueled public interest in all things Japanese.

Kwaidan, or Weird Tales, in the words of its author, “… have been taken from old Japanese books – such as Yasō-Kidan, Bukkyō-Hyakkwa-Zenshō … One queer tale, 'Yuki_Onna,' was told to me by a farmer in Chōfu, Nishitama-gōri, in Musashi province, as a legend of his native village.” Hearn’s rendering of these Japanese folktales helped make him internationally famous in his lifetime. Today he has largely disappeared from the ranks of Twain, Poe, and Stevenson, but the culture and aesthetics of Japan that his books helped import to the West live on in art and architecture.

This 1932 edition in the Freer | Sackler Library is no. 418 of 1500. The book is signed by the artist, Yasumasa Fujita.