Many of the ghost stories of Japan came to the fore during the Edo period with its famous woodblocks of ukiyo-e, the floating world.
With a new introduction, this collection of Japanese ghost stories brings together fantastic tales of vengeful spirits, mountain-dwelling phantoms, man-eating oni, haunted trees, and child-rearing ghosts, with stories such as “Yuki-Onna”, “Hoichi the Earless”, “The Ghost of O-Kiku from The Bancho Sarayashiki”, the sorry tale of “O-Iwa from the Yotsuya Kaidan”, “The Peony Lantern” and “The Ghost Who Bought Candy”. Japan has a long and ancient custom of sharing stories of the supernatural, brought to fashionable prominence in the Kaidan literature of the Edo period, now presented here for the modern reader.