/lit/ - Literature

This is just the rest of the stories in the collection - "The Holy Man of Mt. Koya" was already freely available online. summary taken from a review on Amazon.

>Japanese Gothic Tales by Kyoka Izumi

""Japanese Gothic Tales" might be a slightly misleading title for this collection of four of Izumi Kyoka's short stories. While they are gothic in the sense of being somewhat in the style of gothic literature, they are not really gothic in the modern sense of the word. In other words, this is not a straight forward collection of horror stories. Kyoka may very well be Japan's Edgar Allen Poe, as has been maintained before, but if so it is because of his effective use of atmosphere and the short story, rather than his themes. Instead of horror, it is a sampling of Kyoka's unique and somewhat complicated style of storytelling. His use of layers and misdirection, of drifting back and forth in time and story without offering life-lines to the readers creates an atmosphere of disquiet far more than any ghosts of monsters. Kyoka is particularly difficult to read even for native Japanese speakers, and he is incredibly difficult to translate.

"The Surgery Room" offers a traditional Japanese tale of impossible love and the consequences it leads to. More than anything, it reminds me of one of Road Dahl's adult short stories. Sharp and cutting like a scalpel. "One Day in Spring" is a complicated tangle, drifting back and forth between characters, stories and life-times. It revisits the familiar thread of love outside your caste, and the only possible solution. A very sad story, with subtle Buddhist undertones. It is the longest story in the book. "Osen and Soichi" is a tale of maternal infatuation that is often found in Japanese literature. The character of the prostitute/surrogate mother who suffers for her charge."

>https://anonfiles.com/file/4dd11e501a03b7647e47036c7d8c8a5d

>>2884381
If you're still around and did want to read the stories, I've finished the shorter two, The Surgery Room and Osen and Sokichi:

>http://www.mediafire.com/?2gludrqn34q3d90
>http://www.mediafire.com/?99zyuwlm67qu1yd

And here's The Holy Man of Mt. Koya, if you didn't already have it:

>http://www.mediafire.com/?rv8eva1ogi4a3vh

>>1552728
Ah! Well if you've read Botchan, maybe a little more obscure-ish Japanese author?

There are two translated volumes available in English of short stories by Kyoka Izumi, who wrote around the turn of the 19th century. The first one is called Japanese Gothic Tales, second is In Light of Shadows. His work contains a lot of supernatural elements and he kind of hearkens back to earlier periods of Japanese literature with his stories/themes, but he infuses something special into them. Other writers such as Tanizaki and Mishima praised his work highly. Also, his story "The Holy Man of Mt. Koya" is easy/free to find online, so you could try that out before buying the collections or something!