![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() He learned about the headless `rokuro-kubi’, the monstrous goblins 'jikiniki’ and the faceless ‘mujina’ who stalk lonely neighbourhoods and he sued them in his tales which he wrote in English. Throughout his fourteen years in Japan, Hearn, who grew up in Ireland, learned to accommodate into his stories traits and tropes in story-telling which he came across in his adopted land. These he learned to adapt for his own purposes and he was conscious of the differing traditions, the Western and the Eastern, a contrast alluded to in A Passional Karma, which is included in the stories from the new Penguin Classics edition. The indelible effect of ghost stories heard by Hearn during his boyhood in Ireland, along with the tales from the Fianna cycle which he also heard made the writer receptive to the spirit of the Japanese folk sagas. Master of the supernatural, the magical and the ghoulish, the work of Patrick, or Paddy Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) is enjoying a revival not least with this new edition of Japanese Ghost Stories, just reissued by Penguin. ![]()
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