"Kwaidan" Reading Assignment

For this week's reading assignment, I chose to write about Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things.

There, I was able to examine different supernatural stories involving several different individuals, some from legend, and some not. This was very much more of an anthology based story them a straight horror story. This gives the book these different approaches to horror storytelling in an interesting manner. What I liked most about these stories was where it goes from showcasing stories of legend, tortoise of themes tat we are familiar, from sacrifice, to broken promises, such as in Yuki-Onna.

I found them all different and each of them had a certain quality that made them stand out, whether it’s Hoichi, which was about a man who gets involved with a spirit, to O-Tei, a story about about resurrection and promising to a loved one, to Jikininki, about human flesh and a priest who used to be a creature. Each story had their own kind of supernatural storytelling. 

I can see this being different from western horror and gothic storytelling. This is mainly due because of the place where it originates, which is Japan in the book. Horror can have so many different meanings, depending on the origin. Western gothic, and horror is mainly from grotesque, dread, and and darkly moody atmosphere and characters. In a Japanese based horror, it placed more to the culture, since culture is incredible important to Japanese. This gives horror tone of new perspectives, and can help the genre of storytelling evolve.

The book also shows assumptions of what good and evil is, and how it is presented. It can even reflect here on cultural  orientation. In Kwaidan, some stories depict different myths and legend, such as a samurai and heaven, and shows how it with relates to the culture, religious backgrounds, and/ or philosophy. This, again is very different from many western horror stories, whether it's in literature form on on the big screen. We always associate western horror and gothic with atmosphere, where in Japan, it's more in civilizations, and showcases several figures of legends and myths. These assumptions and aspects in the stories may not be exactly like many other gothic stories that we know, but they both have these unsettling stories with realist undertones. May not be as scary, but the tragic aspect in the stories, such as the spirits in the O-Tei story, have at least some similarities to gothic fiction storytelling. 

Overall, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things tells several different anthology supernatural stories that all aligns with culture, which is different from how we are camera with horror and gothic literature and storytelling. they both have the effectiveness of delivery griping narrative that deal with the supernatural and horror, but in two different methods, whole both being successful at what they aim to do.