Read # 145 a ghost collection with uneven quality-the mysterious story of Koizumi Yakumo every week.

Friends who are familiar with Japanese horror movies must have seen or heard the film Curse. The first time I watched the curse series was one night in high school, surrounded by DVD players in the dormitory with my classmates. After watching it, we all have to queue up in the bathroom to decide who will turn off the lights last. Since then, my impression of "Japanese horror movies" is the extreme of terror, with not only sudden fright, but also deep-rooted chill.

There are many famous ghost legends in Japan, not only in horror movies, but also in various cultural works such as animation and literature. For example, Doraemon mentioned the ghost "faceless monster" (ノッペラボー) in many stories. "The Sun of Slink" directly put all the "nocturnal ghosts" in it. Just like China's Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio, some Japanese have collected all kinds of folk legends of ghosts and gods and compiled them into a book. Today we are going to talk about the mysterious story, which is a collection of folk ghost stories written by Koizumi Yakumo.

The text quoted at the beginning comes from the story "Qiansha": Chubee, the owner of the timber yard, married Qian Sha, a beautiful young woman, but soon died of illness. So Qian Sha and Matsuno Jie, Chubee's right-hand man, fell in love quickly, but they were opposed by their families. Finally, they committed suicide by cutting their throats in the attic of the shop, and their death was very tragic. The quoted passage is a scene: one night, when the guy in the shop had to go to the double-hearted attic to get tools, he met a double-hearted ghost. This description reminds me of the picture in Curse in which the limbs are folded into strange postures and slowly climb down the stairs with strange clucking.

At the end of the story, Buddy Niu Song died of illness, and the guys in the shop resigned, and finally the boss left.

There are many such stories in Mystery Story, which come from folklore. They don't have a theme, they don't preach, they just create a horrible atmosphere and tell a ghost story. Just like the urban legend that has been circulating on the Internet for many years today. Stories like Qiansha are rich in plots in Mystery Story, and many stories are not only unclear in theme, but also very strange in logic.

For example, the story "Girl in the Screen". At the beginning, it was mentioned that "painting is the externalization of human mind". The protagonist of the story bought a beautiful girl painting and was attracted by the people in it. At the end of the story, the beautiful women in the painting were moved out and they lived a happy life.

I am confused to see such a story. No turning point, no theme, three strange logics. What does the story itself want to say? How did a story like this become a legend? How can such a boring story be legendary?

Because the work published in 1904 has a long history, the author Koizumi Yakumo's life experience is also quite special. His father was Irish, and when Britain occupied ionian islands, he married a Greek woman on the island, so he was born in Greece, and his original name was Patrick Lafcadio Hearn. 1890, the author went to Japan to marry Koizumi, an English teacher at Songjiang Middle School in Shimane Prefecture, and changed her nationality to Koizumi Yakumo. Mystery stories are folk stories he heard from his wife and friends.

I read the version published by Tianjin People's Publishing House and translated by Yu Min, with 43 sentences (it is said that there are nearly 60 sentences in the complete works). Many stories included in the book are familiar, such as Snow Girl, such as the origin of faceless monster, Jingjing and so on. Maybe it was a long time ago, or cultural differences. Quite a few stories are neither scary nor logical, and they are different from today's world in terms of values and moral judgments. Like "The Man Riding on the Corpse", it tells the story that the wife of the heartbroken person died in grief and indignation, and the body was filled with resentment, waiting for the heartbroken person to come back for revenge. So a Taoist priest helped the man ride on the dead body and grabbed the dead body's hair for a night. And then it's safe. Bad guys like this have not been punished, nor have the injured women. In fact, it is a challenge to the modern concept of "good is rewarded with good, and evil with evil". Another example is "keeping an appointment". A pair of sworn brothers meet at the Double Ninth Festival because their brother is leaving. On the appointed day, my brother was placed under house arrest by his master and could not keep the appointment, so he committed suicide by caesarean section. The so-called "people can't travel thousands of miles a day, but the soul can reach it", which is really amazing after reading it.

Generally speaking, the story of Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio has a high value of folk information, which is where Koizumi Yakumo's fame lies. Masaki Kobayashi, a famous Japanese director, once collaborated with Akira Kurosawa to adapt a mysterious story into a movie at 1965. The film won the special prize of Cannes Film Festival with 1965, and was shortlisted as the best foreign language film at the Oscar that year, becoming one of Masaki Kobayashi's representative works. But for readers who want to read this book as a novel story, I'm afraid they will be disappointed.

For me, I know the name comes from the game "Fang Jian". Although the evaluation of the game is not high, it makes me interested in this book. So when I saw Koizumi Yakumo's name in the bookstore, I decisively bought it. There are some stories in Mystery Tale with good horror atmosphere and strong readability, and some stories are the sources of famous legends, both of which are very valuable materials for me. The rest of the story is neither logical nor instructive, neither technical nor interesting, just to "read this book before reading it."

17. 12.07/ noon

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