This week I chose to read the short stories from Kwaidan from the assigned readings. I found them very entertaining and enjoyed the fact that they were a series of short stories as apposed to long novel forms--I've always fund media to be more digestible and to the point in shorter formats. These in particular kept me reading, the same way you could easily binge watch a tv series on Netflix but not necessarily watch 4 feature films back-to-back. I liked the way some of the stories had abrupt endings, reflective of how the real world situations of the tales would have a surprising end as well.
Another thing I noticed was that, while they were written down by Lafcadio Hearn in 1907, the language is very simple to reflect the translations of the original stories. I wonder if some elements of the fiction were lost in translation, especially when considering the traditional embellished nature of Victorian English contrasted against the straightforward plain interpretations of the tales in Kwaidan.
One of the stories from the Kwaidan I read was The Story of Mimi-Nashi-Hoychi. It was more like stories I’m used to than others with a distinct beginning, middle, and end as well as being longer. The creepy supernatural elements kept things interesting, I suspected that there was something going on that more than meets the eye. Well, mostly because Hoychi is blind, he couldn’t see if something was afoot. I definitely didn’t expect his ears to get ripped off though and him to keep completely still.
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