Strange Tales from Japan: 99 Chilling Stories of Yokai, Ghosts, Demons and the Supernatural

by Keisuke Nishimoto (Adapter)

Prepare to be spooked by these chilling Japanese short stories!

Strange Tales from Japan presents 99 spine-tingling tales of ghosts, yokai, demons, shapeshifters and trickster animals who inhabit remote reaches of the Japanese countryside. 32 pages of traditional full-color images of these creatures, who have inhabited the Japanese imagination for centuries, bring the stories to life.

The captivating tales in this volume include:

The Vengeance of Oiwa--The terrifying spirit of a woman murdered by her husband who seeks retribution from beyond the grave

The Curse of Okiku--A servant girl is murdered by her master and curses his family, with gruesome results

The Snow Woman--A man is saved by a mysterious woman who swears him to secrecy

Tales of the Kappa--Strange human-like sprites with green, scaly skin who live in water and are known to pull children and animals to their deaths
And many, many more!

Renowned translator William Scott Wilson explains the role these stories play in local Japanese culture and folklore, and their importance to understanding the Japanese psyche. Readers will learn which particular region, city, mountain or temple the stories originate from--in case you're brave enough to visit these haunts yourself!

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Japan, Fantasy, Mythology, Paranormal, Fiction

322 pages, Paperback

First published August 10, 2021

Reviews

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great book and there are some great stories here. I liked the cat and fox stories the most. Probably the biggest lessons here are:

If you say you won't talk about it, DON'T talk about it. It could get you killed.
If you are told not to look into something, DON'T look into it. It could get you killed.

[Sarah🥀⛓️ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wouldn’t necessarily call these tales ‘strange’, but still thoroughly enjoyed a great portion of these! I really enjoyed the artwork, & the drawings accompanied with some of the stories. Definitely an interesting read that I’d recommend to anybody that’s a huge fan of short stories, folklore, or horror!

Some of my favorite sections:
* Rivers & Lakes
*Unfortunate People
*Shape Shifting Cats
*Ghost’s Requests (but honestly I enjoyed all of the ghost segments- there’s several)

Favorite Tales:

Traditional Tales-
* The Talking Futon - campy, but eerie & nostalgic to ghost stories growing up.
* Ghost Cart- Thoroughly enjoyed this one, wasn’t sure where it was going at 1st- eerie!
*Earless Hoichi- The title kinda gives this one away, but was a great read!

Rivers & Lakes-
*Otawa Pond - enjoyed most of these from this section actually! Found these really interesting
*Lake Otane
*The Catfish at Uso Ga Fuchi
*Gonzaburo the Flute Player - Neat little short ghost story!
*Joren Falls - Interesting tale of a nushi silk spider!

Miraculous Strength-
*The Reincarnation of Sakata - Interesting tale of a man that sought out Buddha.

Unfortunate People-
*The Mirror of Matsuyama - Tale of how Mirror Pond came to be.
*The Motoshichi-kuroschichi Bird - Eerie tale that leaves you wondering!
*Anju and Chushiou - Tale of a family’s journey with being sold into slavery.
*Chujo-hime - Tale of a Minister & his daughter, & the lovely evil stepmother.
*The Stone That Cried at Night - Tale of a Haunted Stone.

People who were Cursed-
*O-iwa’s Curse- One of the headling ghost stories from this book! Really enjoyed
*Long Black Hair- Loved this Short eerie ghost tale!

Ghost’s Requests-
(Enjoyed this section overall, so not listing any in particular)

Shape Shifting Cats-
All of these tales were so fun! Enjoyed all of them

Friendly Ghosts-
*The Clog Ghost - Stood out to me the most from this section! Such a fun campy ghost story!
But would recommend checking out all of these!

Overall was relatively pleased with the stories from the book! Was expecting more supernatural, but the folklore aspects took over majority of the book! Still was a really interesting read!

[Kathleen]

DNF @ 10%. This is on me for not looking into the book. This is more of a collection of classic Japanese folk tales rather than a more modern curated collection of spooky stories. Would work great for campfire stories to share... less of a solo journey on this one.

[Molly Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I went into this book expecting a little spookiness in each story I read. Instead I was met with more or less folktales that would be told perhaps by family or friends to scare them into behaving. That being said, as a history buff I thoroughly enjoyed this novel as each section provided new insights into Japanese history and symbols for me. For the future readers: I would go into this expecting to learn more about Japanese culture than get a scare.

[Danielle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ahhhhh, the disappointment! I love fairy tales, myths and legends. I love spooky tales. I didn’t love this collection. I even have the advantage of a detailed understanding of the Japanese language, culture and history, and I still wasn’t impressed!

The tales were “strange,” but only because most of them went nowhere, hitting dead ends after a promising lead up. Maybe some of them just didn’t translate well into English? (I don’t have the original on hand to check.) However, I did expect a lot more from a book with “chilling” featured in large print directly underneath the title on the front cover! I reckon I only really enjoyed 4 or 5 tales overall. A few I have a vague recollection of hearing or reading before.

The typos really began to annoy me after a while. So many times a word was missed out completely or a similarly spelled word used in its place. It kind of felt like the publisher hadn’t bothered getting anyone to edit the translated version before printing it, so I did knock off one star for that. Translated work deserves just as much attention as the original.

[dolly · Rating 3 out of 5]

beautiful illustrations and a lot of topics covered, but the stories themselves were very dry. read more like a textbook than a compilation of ghost/scary stories.

[Allie Vanden Heuvel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I underestimated what reading 99 short stories would be like. the last third DRAGGED on and on and on. but I still had fun and enjoyed learning about japanese folklore (especially the ones that tied to landmarks that are still standing and animals being lucky/unlucky/signs of something etc)

[Maria Perdana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a reference book, so I treated it as such. There were a lot of stories that I found silly, but also amusing because I get a peek on aspects of Japanese horror culture that were not in the movies. The one that struck me the most was Messengers from Enma, King of Hell ... how insane can you be, to bargain with demons? And yet the Japanese thought it was possible, and this is new knowledge for me.
There are a lot of tales that was somehow confusing because there were no actual point to it, however I think with proper research, those tales can be expanded to be one heck of a horror story.

[J.D. Estrada · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some time ago, I read a book for research on Egyptian mythology and it was a copy and paste extravaganza that left me quite underwhelmed. THIS collection of Strange Tales from Japan is actually MUCH more aligned with what I wanted to read. It is curious, random, and like Aesop Fables, some are a bit half cooked, but many are extremely memorable and introduced me to all sorts of creatures in Japanese folklore which I found fascinating. A couple of the tales are properly creepy and unsettling though nothing is TOO bad. If you're in the mood for something plenty random yet memorable, check this collection out. Most stories are 2-3 pages long so you can chip away at it comfortably too.

[❤️My Dog is my Best Friend❤️ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was honestly just a fun collection because a lot of it tied to traditions that people practice--and why they practice it. There were only a few stories that were "freaky" but the artwork was great and I appreciated the footnotes that explained what certain words meant.

Highly recommend if you are into some creepy folklore. (Also having reread The Girl from the Well a little bit ago it was fun to read the actual legend)

Content: violence

[LX · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you for Edelweiss and Tuttle Publishing for providing me with an ARC for a review.


This was an interesting read. It was great to read traditional stories that also help readers learn more about Japanese culture and tales.

My favourite stories were definitely about Kappa and the Demons. Great stories and really recommend this to people that want to read more traditional tales with spooky characters.

[Marina · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great collection of Japanese ghost stories, most with no particular meaning, but are almost all interesting, and some even quite chilling. My favourites were definitely the Curses.

[C.M. Chafin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m kind of pissed. I must’ve drunkenly changed this from Read to Want to Read back in November when I read it 🙄 oh well. I forget what my entire review was, but I very much enjoyed the history behind each type of horror story before each section. Some of the stories, specifically dealing with shadows, really got to me. I will look back at my updates and see if I can’t find the original and copypasta.

[Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Strange Tales from Japan, American translator William Scott Wilson combines two collections of Japanese folklore compiled in the 1970s by folklorist Nishimoto Keisuke, traditional stories (densetsu) and strange tales (kaidan). Beginning with a slightly questionable introduction by Wilson discussing how such tales serve as a way to see the “real Japan” and what is meant by the terms kaidan and densetsu in Japanese folklore, Nishimoto’s collection includes a wide variety of tales, from the grim and disturbing to the comic, often both in the same story. As a whole, these tales are a little rawer than the more picturesque tales often retold in English collections of Japanese legends.

Whether devious kitsune and mujina, self-defeating kappa, or how one can use profanity to save your baby from being devoured by a floating head, the 99 stories chosen by Nishimoto depict the uncertain but lively experiences of common people. Aside from the stories, the collection includes woodcut prints from artists like Yoshitoshi expressing various themes included in them, though aside from a few footnotes and the specific source for each story, there is little context provided.

I discuss other works recently published in English on Japanese folklore at Harris’ Tome Corner- Narrating the Strange: Kaidan of Yokai and Yurei in Japanese Folklore.

[S.E. Martens · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting collection of folk tales and traditional ghost stories from Japan. The tales are all quite short and snappy. Would be fun for a night of telling ghost stories by the fire.

Foxes figure so predominately as shapeshifting troublemakers that sometimes the people in the story even dismiss a ghostly or demonic apparition as "probably just a fox messing with you!" Which is neat.

Anyway, stand-outs for me include:

- Messengers from Enma, the King of Hell for its take on demons and how to get out of going to Hell.

- The Ninety-Ninth Pass for learning that kappas really love harvesting human anuses and keeping them in jars (!)

-Ikoma-Hime of Saku for the horse falling in love with the princess.

-The Land of the One-eyes for having the most fitting comeuppance.

-The Man Who Changed into a Corpse - for the following exchange:

"We'll have to spend the night in that temple."
"But what about the flesh-eating demon that lives there?"
"I didn't come here to be eaten."
. . .
". . . A human being is eventually going to die. What difference does it make if you die by being eaten by a demon or by getting sick?" (p. 296)

And of course The Cat Monster Mansion because that title is perfect and give me all the magic monster cats!

[Gin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice collection of stories, it was exactly what I was looking for when I bought this book. Each story is short, the longest no more than 3 pages. Not exactly great works of literature, most of them seem to impart some sort of moral values behind the stories, which I imagine are what folk tales and the like are meant to do in those times, and perhaps even today.

The stories are grouped by themes, so you can have a section consisting only of cat spirit stories for instance. Each section is also marked by illustrations that reflects the theme. The illustrations accompanying the stories are nothing spectacular though they do give a nice flavour to the stories where they do appear.

Strangely, there are also several colour plates of paintings of demons and spirits by famous Japanese masters. However as far as I can tell, most do not have any connection to any of the stories save the rendering of spirits and demons - they seem to be there to liven up the collection, as far as I can tell.

It’s a nice and easy read, but I still find it somewhat wanting, probably because the tales are so short. I supposed I am the type that prefer something more substantial than what was offered.

[Kenneth DiFilippo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an interesting concept. Stories collected from various sources across Japan, attempting to highlight local legends and tales across the region. However, the book struggles to hook the reader, leading to various stories which, despite being only 1-5 pages, become a slog to read through. Furthermore, the book missed the opportunity to include various information regarding the stories, choosing instead to retell the tales with little or no context. Despite this, I did enjoy a number of these stories and find them to be very informative as to how morals and lessons were taught in pre-modern Japan. Furthermore, it’s hard to fault a translated book for subpar dialogue, as much is likely lost in translation. Overall, the book has some good stories and some bad, choosing only to retell them while avoiding a more in-depth dive into the historical and sociological contexts of their creation.

[Kacey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book for my birthday and finally got around to finishing it. I've always been fascinated by ghost stories, and I also love learning about other cultures. This seemed like the perfect mash-up of both those things. And yeah, the stories are all very interesting. Some of them were much funnier than I was expecting, some were indeed chilling and horrifying, some with satisfying pay-offs, and some I had to re-read because I was a little confused on what happened. I do want to read this again much slower to absorb each of the stories, but on the whole I really enjoyed it!

Aside from the stories themselves, this book comes with illustrations of the various ghosts and supernatural beings that feature in Japanese stories. I loved looking at them and seeing how people imagined such beings. I also just really like the style of Japanese art.

Really interesting stories plus really good artwork combined into a great read that I'll be going back to in the future!

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐️ 3.5/5

this book is a literary gem that transports readers to a world of wonder, where the supernatural seamlessly intertwines with the everyday. it is a testament to the enduring power of storytelling and a splendid tribute to the rich cultural heritage of japan. this book is not only a captivating read but also a valuable resource for those seeking to understand the enchanting world of japanese myths and legends. a must-read for anyone with an interest in folklore, mythology, or japanese culture and a compelling addition to the bookshelves of both newcomers and enthusiasts of this extraordinary genre!! also, the art and interior illustrations deserve a special mention for their evocative and visually stunning representation of the tales. they complement the text beautifully and add an extra layer of depth to the storytelling, further immersing the reader in the world of japanese folklore.

[Kaela Noel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this collection of traditional folk tales, folkloric anecdotes, and some fairy tale-type stories from rural Japan. I'm sorry it got such a blockbuster Hollywood horror-film cover, as it really doesn't do service to the quirkiness, detail, authenticity, and richness of the stories within. Fortunately the publisher included some more folk art style interior illustrations (maybe original?) which better capture the atmosphere and style of the book.

But back to the book itself—it's a real winner. I am so, so happy it managed to get translated and published in English in the US. It is exactly the kind of folklore collection I look for—offbeat, authentic, with all of the original strange surreal details conserved, and not cleaned-up/flattened/stylized for a Western or general audience. When you read the collection in full, really fascinating folk belief patterns start to emerge. Also, many of the stories are gripping, even in their brevity! Highly recommended.

[Patricia De Boer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book full of strange stories, written down and bundled.
It concerns old folk tales, sagas and legends from ancient Japan.
Divided into different chapters, it tells about ghosts and spirits, possessed animals and people and flesh-eating demons.
A well-known water demon is Kappa, a creature that is the size of a toddler and has half-human, half-fish-like external features.
This also appears regularly in the first part of the book.
But also many demons, disguised as beautiful women, who seduce men to then be swallowed by them.
They are somewhat reminiscent of our gruesome fairy tales such as King Bluebeard.

I thought it was an interesting book and enjoyed the exciting, sometimes scary stories.
Each story is also a maximum of 4 pages, so it is easy to read.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fun book on Japanese folklore. Don't let the book cover art fool you. It's not a very scary book. It does have some creepy stories, but they're not nightmare fuel. Japanese culture has strong beliefs in spirits, demons, and ghosts. Other stories are wholesome and some are very strange. All are fun to read and are very short. Think of it like Japanese Grimm's Fairy Tales.

These tales aren't like traditional fairy tales, which are written to be fiction. Some of the tales in this book were probably considered true in the old days of Japan. So, this book is educational to their historic culture. The bonus to this book is it features classic Japanese artwork.

[Unholy Meat Obelisk · Rating 2 out of 5]

Entertaining handbook on supernatural Japanese folklore.
My biggest problem is the writing style, which is so simple it reads like children's literature. There are, for example, lots of rhetorical questions for the reader ("Now, what do you think happened next?") and just plain cheesy dialogue. I suppose it may be a translation issue. Some of the stories, as well, seem to go nowhere and end in very underwhelming notes.

It's more appropriate to read in small bites, perhaps only a few stories a day. Otherwise, it gets really repetitive—my mind was wandering often, especially since the prose is the least engaging I've experienced in quite a while.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

These were definitely “strange tales” but probably the strangest thing for me was, as a North American of British descent, I’m used to old stories where there is a moral to them. While some of these may have had lessons many didn’t and the ones that did had no consistency. I have to expect that this is due to the significantly different culture. Obviously with 99 stories there were some winners & some losers (and a lot that were just strange - truth in advertising, I guess). As I recall, there was only 1 that really creeped me out.

[Ella · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writing is very dry, and a lot of the stories were those that I was already at least sort of familiar with (a couple of them are well-known enough that they form the basis of a couple of the sections of Kwaidan, and if you’re at all into mid-20th century Japanese horror, you will recognise some of these as the basis for other various famous films) The translation of the folksy cadence of the stories also doesn’t really work and just comes off as clunky. Which is a pity, because I love traditional Japanese ghost and yokai stories.

[Jillian · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of creepy and spooky Japanese folktales sounded like something I would love, but unfortunately it fell flat for me. Maybe it’s because it’s translated, but the writing was so flat and almost clinical, it was hard to find it entertaining.

The art inside was great, and it was a vast collection of stories, but with the writing being as clunky and just bad, it was hard to enjoy. I wish the translator would’ve taken some creative liberties to create something with more grit, not translate it literally.

[Rebecca Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love paranormal and ghostly lore, but I had never read any from Japan. The lore and ghost stories from this country are beyond anything I have ever read before!
Get lost in the ancient world of Japan, and these ghostly tales of terror - and maybe have a nightmare or two!

Absolutely one of the best books I have read this year! I would love to find more from Japan and their paranormal/ghostly haunts!

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Less of a "sit down and read cover to cover book" and more of a delight to pick through and read what catches your interest. The stories are a mix of folklore and myth, and written in that clinical, campfire story type way.

The real gem here is the collection of art and illustrations. Some fantastic paintings and drawings fill this book with so much life and color that it's a joy to thumb through.

[Matt Barker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting book. I always love hearing about different folk tales from different regions, so this was a good book for me to pick up. And I really enjoyed all of the little annotations that helped with context (and some of which were surprisingly kind of humorous).

The art pages were also a really nice touch. A lot of the traditional Japanese art included is so beautiful but equally haunting.

Anyways, I really liked this one. I think I will come back to it a lot.

[Dyah · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK curation, can use more editing. Some of the stories would undoubtedly be familiar to fans of Japanese supernatural folk tales. Miminashi Hoichi, O-iwa, O-kiku to mention a few. The O-iwa version that the compiler decided to go ahead with is, I have to say, one of the tamest one.

The book has some Japanese paintings in full color depicting some of the stories in the book and other Japanese ghosts and supernatural beings.