Lafcadio Hearn

Kwaidan Lafcadio Hearn

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, is a book by Lafcadio Hearn that features several Japanese ghost stories and a brief non-fiction study on insects. Hearn declares in his, 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.