Page:Kwaidan; Stories and Studies of Strange Things - Hearn - 1904.djvu/19



of the following Kwaidan, or Weird Tales, have been taken from old Japanese books,—such as the Yasō-Kidan, Bukkyō-Hyakkwa-Zenshō, Kokon-Chomonshū, Tama-Sudaré, and Hyaku-Monogatari. Some of the stories may have had a Chinese origin: the very remarkable “Dream of Akinosuké,” for example, is certainly from a Chinese source. But the Japanese story-teller, in every case, has so recolored and reshaped his borrowing as to naturalize it. . . . One queer tale, “Yuki-Onna,” was told me by a farmer of Chōfu, Nishitamagōri, in Musashi province, as a legend of his native village. Whether it has ever been written in Japanese I do not know; but the extra-ordinary belief which it records used certainly iii