Manga Review: Manga Yokai Stories adapted by Sean Michael Wilson, illustrated by Inko Ai Takita, from material collected by Lafcadio Hearn
Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) was an Irish-Greek journalist and writer who’d spent time in the UK and US before emigrating to Japan. These days he’s best remembered for his work collecting and translating Japanese stories, particular tales of the supernatural. Thus this “Original English Language manga” adaptation of some of those stories. There’s an introduction by Mr. Wilson that talks about Hearn’s legacy and how he feels connected to it.
“A Dead Secret” starts us off with a bit more about Mr. Hearn before going into the tale of O-Sono, a woman who died young, but haunted her old room. There was one secret that she wanted taken care of before she could rest.
“The Screen Maiden” has a young man fall in love with the woman painted on a screen, to the point of obsession. He’s advised how to manifest her in the real world. A happier ending than many tales of this type.
“Nuke-Kubi” is a longer story about a monk encountering the title flying head goblins. Notable for its extended coda dealing with a grisly souvenir of the battle.
“The Corpse Rider” features a man who has divorced his wife. She reacted by dying of grief and fury. The other villagers refuse to dispose of the corpse as they can sense the grudge rolling off of her, and are afraid of being cursed. The ex-husband realizes that he would be the primary target of her undead wrath, and consults an exorcist. The only way to get free, it turns out, is to ride the corpse all night….
“Riki-Baka” is the tale of a developmentally disabled young man who means well, but is troublesome, especially since he cannot be trusted around fire. Eventually he dies, and his mother performs a ritual to have him reincarnated in a better life. It seems to work, but the new parents aren’t too thrilled about it.
“Before the Supreme Court” has two girls named Kinume. When one Kinume falls ill, the parents pray to the pestilence god to spare her. The pest-god arranged for the other Kinume to die again. However, this interference with fate does not sit well with Enma-Dai-O, the judge of the dead. He sends the spirit of the Kinume who should not have died to inhabit the body of the living Kinume while dragging the spirit of the Kinume who should have died back to the afterlife. The families have to deal with the consequences.
“Reconciliation” is about an impoverished samurai who divorces his equally poor but devoted wife so he can marry a woman from a higher-status clan and get a good job in a distant province. His second marriage is unhappy, and the samurai eventually returns to see if he can reconcile with his first wife. It may already be too late. This story, juiced up some, was used in the movie Kwaidan as “Black Hair.”
While some of these stories are horrific, it’s more of a collection of “that was a thing that happened” tales. The art is good, and the adaptation works pretty well.
Recommended for ghost story fans, and might do especially well as a present for teenagers who are getting into manga and want to know more about traditional Japanese folklore.
