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He gives us several essays upon matters Japanesque, which obviously involve no small amount of erudition and patient research. Such are his papers upon the various species of _Sémi_, or Japanese singing-locusts, and on the complicated etiquette of Japanese female names. But the distinctive feature of this volume is the first half, which is given up to a collection of curious tales by native writers, weird, uncanny, little stories, most of them, of ghouls and wraiths, and vampires, or at least the nearest Japanese equivalents for such Occidental spectres.
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Shadowings equal to the volume
human
Exotics. It thinks that Hearn is
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The stories with which the present volume opens have no particular merit: they have lost their chief and real advantage--their local colour--in Hearnesque translation, and seem to be little more than suggestions or drafts of 'nouvelles,' out of which skilful hands might perhaps have made something much better. A good example is the story of the Screen Maiden, which is a most lame presentment of a charming motif. The chapters on female names, on _sémi_, couplets and 'Old Japanese Songs' are more interesting, but only to those who possess a considerable knowledge of old Japanese life and literature.... Of the 'Old Japanese Songs'--where is the proof of their antiquity?--much the best is the dance-ballad of the dragon-maid, who bewitched a _yamabushi_, and chased him over moor and hill and river, until the temple of Dojo was reached, under the great bell of which the trembling hill-warrior or outlaw (_yamabushi_ were such originally in all probability) hid himself, whereupon the dragon-maid wrapped her body round the bell once and again and the third time the bell melted and flowed away like boiling water. And with it, according to the legend, flowed away the ashes of the unwilling object of the dragon-maid's affections, consumed not through love, but through disdain.