Why am I passionate about this?
I am an Anglo-Irish writer who has lived in Japan for eighteen years. During that time, my interest in the Japanese supernatural has deepened to the point where it is now the main focus of my writing. In my free time, I enjoy traveling around Japan collecting local ghost stories and folk tales. This, along with my extensive reading of both fiction and non-fiction on the topic, has provided a rich source of inspiration for my writing. I am also a keen observer of people, daily life, and the environment in which I live, which helps me to colour and add realism to my stories.
Andi's book list on Japanese yurei and yokai
Why did Andi love this book?
This book has a special place in my heart because the author was recommended to me by my son, also a confirmed fan of horror and the supernatural. Growing up in Japan, like most school children, he had read some of Edogawa Rampo’s many books of child detectives before graduating to his much darker adult stories of horror. While my son had read the original Japanese, at that time Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination was the only volume of English translations of Edogawa Rampo’s stories that I could find. It is, however, a masterly introduction to the dark, and at times perverse, world of the author. Whereas Edgar Allan Poe, from whom the writer Hirai Tarō derived the pen name, had fueled my teenage fancy for shadow-filled gothic tales, Edogawa Rampo made me view my adopted homeland with a more wary eye.
1 author picked Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
This collection of mystery and horror stories is regarded as Japan's answer to Edgar Allan Poe.
Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination, the first volume of its kind translated into English, is written with the quick tempo of the West but rich with the fantasy of the East. These nine bloodcurdling, chilling tales present a genre of literature largely unknown to readers outside Japan, including the strange story of a quadruple amputee and his perverse wife; the record of a man who creates a mysterious chamber of mirrors and discovers hidden pleasures within; the morbid confession of a maniac who…