Japanese Myths & Legends: Tales of Heroes, Gods & Monsters

Flame Tree Collector's Editions Mythology

by J.K. Jackson (Editor), Jun'ichi Isomae (Introduction), Hiroshi Araki (Introduction)

Beautiful edition with a new introduction to the heroes and bittersweet romances of ancient Japanese tales, highlighting the origins of modern fiction in myth and fable.

Gorgeous Collector's Edition. Legends of the Sea, Bells, Mirrors and Tea, Japanese mythology is delightful and enigmatic, full of spirits, gods and legendary creatures. It draws on Buddhist and Shinto traditions to explain the nature of the world of the island of Japan, the mystical Mount Fuji and the heavenly status of the long line of emperors. The warrior class of the imperial court, and the natural spirits of the countryside represent parallel and interdependent aspects of Japanese society, explored through ancient legend and folklore.

Flame Tree Collector's Editions present the foundations of speculative fiction, authors, myths and tales without which the imaginative literature of the twentieth century would not exist, bringing the best, most influential and most fascinating works into a striking and collectable library. Each book features a new introduction and a Glossary of Terms.

Genres: Mythology, Japan, Nonfiction, History, Classics, Folklore

416 pages, Hardcover

Published February 21, 2023

About the author

The fantasy and mythology anthology editor J.K. Jackson is on Goodreads as Jake Jackson.

Reviews

[Cara · Rating 1 out of 5]

While this is a really nice edition (I love me some gilt edging), I would not recommend this book for the content. In fact, it made me angry.

This is a reworked publication of the 2019 release Epic Tales: Japanese Myths & Tales from the same publisher. I recommend the previous release over this one if you are simply looking for a collection of these stories. That being said, the bulk of the text is lifted from early twentieth century texts that are freely available in the public domain, so you can save yourself some money there.

These sources are:

Myths & Legends of Japan by Frederick Hadland Davis makes up the majority of the text and is available for free here at Project Gutenberg.
Tales of Old Japan by A.B. Mitford
Japanese Fairy World by William Elliot Griffis
Japanese Fairy Tales by Yei Theodora Ozaki

While in the 2019 version you will find two pages at the back with short biographies on these authors and recognition of the sources from which the stories are lifted, in this version there are no such acknowledgements beyond a list in miniscule font on the copyright page that lists the contributors to the entire series of books, not just this one.

The "Key Themes & Beings" chapter is an edited version of the introductory chapter to the 2019 book. One of the major changes I spotted was the removal of references to Japanese culture being homogenous and "monolithic"; recent scholarship tends to focus on Japan's cultural diversity. Overall this chapter is rather fragmentary and unfocused,; on top of that, some of the names and terms used do not align with the following stories, which will leave readers who aren't already familiar with classical Japanese mythos and naming conventions confused.

The worst part of the book is the "mythological glossary of terms" at the back, which takes up 65 pages and is unrelated to Japanese mythology. It starts with "Aaru: Heavenly paradise where the blessed went after death" with no prior indication that we're leaving Japanese mythology behind other than the title "A general glossary of mythological terms." This glossary is beyond useless. Take the following examples picked from the first few pages:

"Augsburg; Tyr's city." Who or what is Tyr? From what culture or country?
"Ba: Dead person or soul. Also known as ka." In what language or mythos?

What is the point of this other than to pad out the page count?!

The only part to buy this book for would be the new introduction by Jun'ichi Isomae and Hiroshi Araki, professors at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, translated by Gouranga Charan Pradhan, a scholar of Japanese literature. It is a short but scholarly introduction that is, in my opinion, unsuited to people just dipping their toes into Japanese culture or mythology. I picked up some interesting ideas and recommendations for supplemental reading, but it does not really tie in to the stories presented later on.

Honestly this book is a case of a pretty cover hiding a mess that's not worth your money. If you want to read the stories contained within it, you can already do that for free via Project Gutenberg or the Internet Archive. If you want a good introduction to Japanese mythology, I would recommend The Japanese Myths by Joshua Frydman or the Handbook of Japanese mythology by Michael Ashkenazi (reviews coming soon). Another fun option is Tales of Japan: Traditional Stories of Monsters and Magic which reprints 15 of the freely available stories but pairs them with beautiful artwork by Kotaro Chiba.

[Allie Baker · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a little confused at first, since myths referenced in the introduction didn’t quite match up with the myths when they were told (introduction referenced peaches for example and the myth in its section said grapes) and there were a few typos.

However, due to the further reading selections included and the seemingly wide variety of myths. I think this is a good starting point for those who aren’t familiar.

[Afrodite Kyhn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I give up

[Meredith Hooten · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read but not what I was expecting. The stories are not told as they were originally (ie this book is not stories translated word for word to English) but rather an abridged version of each story that gets across the spirit of the tale. Like others have said, the intro isn't focused nor well edited. Overall I enjoyed understanding better the stories and values that shaped Japanese culture, but it wasn't the most effecting thing I've ever read. I would probably buy the others in the collection, though.

[Shirin Chawla · Rating 5 out of 5]

The myths and tales presented in this beautifully bound and published edition are very interesting, even fascinating. I love that the myths presented are separated into sections denoting animal related myths and tea related myths and myths from the sea and so on. One of the best books on Japanese myths I’ve ever been able to read, with a wide variety of stories. The beginning of the book was a little dry and there are a few editing mistakes with misspellings and missing spaces, but the fascinating stories (for instance, my favourite, the story of the firefly princess for whom night insects keep trying to steal the flash of flame and burning up, until the firefly prince from a far away land hears tell of this betrothal quest and enters with his battalion the castle of the firefly princess and wins her hand, and till today all night flying insects burn up in pursuit of flame for firefly princesses), which are told well and presented again, in a beautiful edition, make up for the few minor errors. The glossary at the back is also really cool, as it’s a general glossary for the collections myths and presents facts and information for myths from Africa, Mesopotamia, India, Egypt and so on as well as for the Japanese myths and folklore presented here. This edition was so intriguing a read that I can’t wait to get my hands on more of these editions.

[Helena · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm giving this book 3 stars as my husband and I are enjoying reading out the stories to each other and finding it rather funny that they end abruptly or are not really explained.

Others have referred to this as "a mess inside a pretty cover" and I can't disagree, however we have found the mess to be enjoyable as we have made up our own interpretations for what is going on in the book.

If you want some actually well written Japanese myths then look elsewhere, if you want something chaotic then read this book

[Dimitriy Yaroshchuk · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m sorry; but this thing is littered with spelling and grammatical errors, strange sentence structures and poor editing. The introduction felt all over the place. I really do not understand what happened during the editing process of this book.

[jamie-ashton fabian · Rating 1 out of 5]

I truly cannot get through more than 20 pages of this book. Instead of telling these amazing stories as folk tales and wonder, it reads like an encyclopedia. There isn’t a drop of interest or love in the witting, only point to point storytelling which is so so so boring to read. So disappointing.

[Jasmine Banasik · Rating 3 out of 5]

As many other reviews have said: this is a messy book bound in a beautiful package.

If you're like me and just looking for a VERY basic overview of the different myths so you could catch different allusions in media, it mostly works fine. Some of the legends definitely need more space and stories end so abruptly but if you are using it more as a starting point than an end-all be-all, it works. I think the section that works the best is the animal tales section, since in those cases - the simplicity works with the whimsy or the fable aspect of it. The organization of the actual myths (not including the glossary, foreword, etc) is done well enough, especially considering the overlap some stories have.

The issue really comes down to: This book feels like it's been cobbled together from a few different texts. You have an section by the editor that feels vaguely racist, a very academic foreword by Japanese scholars which isn't matched in analysis by the actual text, very brief synopses of the myths and legends, and then a glossary that covers multiple cultures and religions, but doesn't specify which culture they came from for 90% of the entries. I'm pretty sure they just add to the same glossary with each new myth collection, which at first seemed cool but really just created a mess. Also, very few entries seemed to have actually been added for the Japanese myths. I understand they couldn't do every single character but they still were missing some entries that seemed like they might be needed.

[Avril Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would skip the introduction and get straight into the legends. I found the introduction basically started telling the stories which made it confusing when I got into the actual legend telling. These aren't Disney fairy tales - more like Grimm's fairy tales - lot's of death.

[Debbie Hazeleger · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fine primer about Japanese Mythology centered around various themes. However, the storytelling is a tad lacking and it is missing a lot of connective tissue and explanation.

[bettina · Rating 3 out of 5]

- amaterasu, sun goddess
- amaterasu and susanoo
- the star lovers
- the vampire cat

[Zoë Grech · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting, however the wording is quite awkward at parts, not ideal if you have dyslexia like me.