Japanese Plays: Versified

<b>A haunting gathering of classic Japanese tales of monsters and demons, <i>yōkai </i>and <i>oni </i>and <i>yūrei</i>, that live on in popular manga, anime, J-horror films, and video games <p/>A Penguin Classic</b> <p/>Flesh-eating <i>oni </i>demons, <i>kappa</i> water sprites, shapeshifting <i>kitsune</i> foxes, vengeful <i>yūrei</i> ghosts, and other monsters and magical creatures have long lurked in the shadows of Japanese culture, appearing as divine beings in eighth-century myths, dangerous demons in medieval literature, troublesome tricksters in local legends, and sinister predators in modern fiction. With dozens of stories, including twenty-four that have never been published in English, this volume showcases an incomparable range of the supernatural--from the beautiful ghost that seduces a widowed samurai, to the <i>jor<i>ō</i>gumo</i> spiders that transform into women to ensnare their human prey, to the sentient reflection that unnerves a night watchman in Haruki Murakami's "The Mirror"--inviting you into a realm of frightening otherness from a rich, thousand-year tradition.

Karatani, Kojin

Dudney, Arthur

Solovieva, Olga V

Felt, Matthieu

Tonna