Hyakumonogatari: Tales of Japanese Horror - Book One

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by Richard Freeman | Horror |
ISBN: 9781909488014 Global Overview for this book
Registered by wingGoryDetailswing of Nashua, New Hampshire USA on 9/30/2021
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Journal Entry 1 by wingGoryDetailswing from Nashua, New Hampshire USA on Thursday, September 30, 2021
I got this softcover from an online seller. It's a collection of stories inspired by the Edo-era Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai, "A Gathering of One Hundred Supernatural Tales". This volume has 25, and is supposedly the first of four volumes, so the author's going for the full set of stories!

And the collection's a good one - a bit uneven, but with some really creepy tales in the mix. And with loads of references to Japanese ghosts and other yokai, including some very unusual ones. Among my favorite stories here:

"Some Words With A Kappa": the kappa tend to seem relatively tame compared to other yokai, with their humorous "ninja-turtle" appearance - but this story shows how dangerous they can be.

"The Critic", in which an overly-vicious restaurant critic takes pleasure in giving nasty reviews - even to places where he enjoyed the food - gets suitable revenge when he's turned into a hungry ghost, doomed to eat endlessly without enjoyment or satiety...

"Yanari" is a very dark tale indeed, of a woman so terrified of rumors of a local yokai that she reacts to a shadow entering her room at night with violence - only to realize too late what it was. {shudder}

"Sea Beef" introduces the Bake-kujira yokai - a kind of zombie whale, huge, exuding corruption, and bent on avenging itself on whaling ships. [Gotta root for the whale, there.] Nicely grisly vengeance-of-nature story.

"Flutter" has the ronin Ryuu battling a mysterious killer at an inn. The killer turns out to be an Ittan Momen yokai - a bolt of cotton cloth that attacks and kills people. Sounds a bit silly written out like that, but in practice it was effective and terrifying. And I have to wonder if it helped inspire M. R. James' story "Oh Whistle and I'll Come To You My Lad," in which a ghost uses sheets to take physical form...

"A Damp Patch on the Ceiling" starts out with the unsettling appearance of the titular damp patch on the ceiling of a family's new home. There are no problems with the plumbing, roofing, or other surfaces, but the patch keeps reappearing. The family sets watch, sees a bizarre-looking creature with a long neck and longer tongue licking at the spot, and then have a priest exorcize it - only to find that it's a Tenjōname, a benign spirit that protects from fire. The ending is... not pleasant.

"Juggernaut of Hunger" is among my favorites here, for its sheer scale. It's about a guy who wants to create a purely-Japanese theme park, using yokai as inspiration for characters, rides, even foods and souvenirs. And it sounds quite entertaining - I'd love to go to a place like that! But the man also designs a very special attraction, a "life-size" Gashadokuro - a 90-foot-tall moving metal skeleton, with an AI brain based on a kind of slime-mold. The illustrations I've seen of the Gashadokuro are very unnerving - a humongous skeleton looming over its victims - and in this story, the cyborg version sounds just as impressive. But (after all, this is a scary-story collection) something goes wrong; despite being programmed to go through a limited cycle of movements, the creature once activated begins to act like a real Gashadokuro would - snatching park patrons from the roller coaster and the Ferris wheel, stomping cars and people into the ground, running rampage... The park manager has an idea on how to stop it, but the damage is escalating; will the plan work? This one's very cinematic in tone, and I would love to see a movie based on the idea; modern special effects could handle it nicely.

And "The Art of Monsters," in which an artist has taken various animals - road-kill or other "found" remains - to concoct realistic-looking figures based on yokai. A kappa made from loggerhead-turtle shell and monkey head and limbs, that kind of thing. The artist is visited by a strange man - tall, with a very long nose, making me think he's a tengu in disguise - who asks where she gets the animals, and she reassures him that she doesn't cause the deaths of any creatures for her work. Ah, but she's lying: she has a very hefty commission from someone she believes to be high-ranked yakuza (gangster), involving a creature constructed from the body parts of endangered animals, and she's pretty sure the animal bodies she receives were NOT accidental road-kill. She gets her comeuppance - as do those who commissioned her - so it's a grisly but satisfying tale.

"Fruits of the Forest" is set in Aokigahara, the beautiful but eerie forest known as the "suicide forest" for the people who go there to end their lives in isolation. This is actually a fairly upbeat story, all things considered, with the protagonist - intending to die there - finding that there's more to the forest than he could have imagined.

Some of the stories are more light-hearted, with a few having happy endings, but overall it's a nice mix of creepy and gruesome, with great variety in the yokai featured here.

Journal Entry 2 by wingGoryDetailswing at LFL [OBCZ] - New Searles Rd, #46 in Nashua, New Hampshire USA on Sunday, October 31, 2021

Released 2 yrs ago (10/31/2021 UTC) at LFL [OBCZ] - New Searles Rd, #46 in Nashua, New Hampshire USA

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

Guidelines for safely visiting and stocking Little Free Libraries during the COVID-19 pandemic, from the LFL site here.

I left this book in my Little Free Library/Official BookCrossing Zone on this lovely Halloween day; hope someone enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in NH here.]

*** Released for the 2021 Spook-tacular challenge. ***

Journal Entry 3 by wingGoryDetailswing at Nashua, New Hampshire USA on Saturday, January 15, 2022
I'm reclaiming this from my Little Free Library, as it's gone unchosen for some months now. Will release it elsewhere.

Journal Entry 4 by wingGoryDetailswing at Little Free Library, Ledge Rd in Haverhill, Massachusetts USA on Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Released 2 yrs ago (1/18/2022 UTC) at Little Free Library, Ledge Rd in Haverhill, Massachusetts USA

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

Guidelines for safely visiting and stocking Little Free Libraries during the COVID-19 pandemic, from the LFL site here.

I left this book in the Little Free Library; hope someone enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in MA here.]

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