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Kwaidan

by Lafcadio Hearn

Lafcadio Hearn’s Japanese ghost stories, starting with Earless Hoichi.

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Original language: EnglishLevel: Intermediate2,733 characters · ≈ 4 minSource: Project Gutenberg
Books behind this year’s screen adaptations

NHK's morning drama Bakebake (Sep 2025–Mar 2026) follows Lafcadio Hearn (Koizumi Yakumo) and his wife Setsu; Kwaidan is his best-known book.

Opening lines

More than seven hundred years ago, at Dan-no-ura, in the Straits of Shimonoséki, was fought the last battle of the long contest between the Heiké, or Taira clan, and the Genji, or Minamoto clan. There the Heiké perished utterly, with their women and children, and their infant emperor likewise—now remembered as Antoku Tennō. And that sea and shore have been haunted for seven hundred years... Elsewhere I told you about the strange crabs found there, called Heiké crabs, which have human faces on their backs, and are said to be the spirits of the Heiké warriors. But there are many strange things to be seen and heard along that coast. On dark nights thousands of ghostly fires hover about the…

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About the book

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things is a 1904 book by Lafcadio Hearn (Koizumi Yakumo), collecting several Japanese ghost stories along with a brief non-fiction study on insects. It includes the story of Hoichi the Earless, a biwa player. The book later served as the basis for Masaki Kobayashi's 1964 film Kwaidan.

About the author

Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (27 June 1850 – 26 September 1904) was a Greek and Irish writer, translator, and teacher whose work played a significant role in introducing Japanese culture and literature to the Western mainstream. He is best known for collections of legends and ghost stories such as Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, and after moving to Japan in 1890 he became a Japanese citizen under the name Yakumo Koizumi.

Summary prepared with AI from Wikipedia: Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (CC BY-SA)

How the glosses are made

Word glosses and sentence translations are generated in context by AI models (DeepSeek and Zhipu GLM), and every word is checked to have a gloss. AI can make mistakes; you can report problems from the book page.

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