Kotto

from cover

Japanese curios, with sundry cobwebs, excite the curiosity and imagination of a master spinner of tales, and the result is Kotto, another Lafcadio Hearn classic about old Japan.
Here Hearn spins tales from old Japanes books to illsutrate some strange beliefs. They are only curios, he says laconilally, but some of these legends will make your spine tingle and your heart trip faster, like the one about a waterfall called Yurei-Daki, or the cascade of Ghosts. The ghosts were as real as their warnings, but a bold woman failed to heed them-a horrible mistake.

Hearn could also find in the commonplace the stuff of which imperishable literature is spun. A drop of dew hangs quivering on teh bamboo lattice of his study windo. Its tiny show more sphere repeats the colors of the morning-of sky and field and far-off treas, of a cottacge with children at play.

Bkut much more than the visible world is imaged by that dewdrop: the world inisible, of infinite mystery, is likewise repeated. Bkuddhism dfinds in such a dew drop the symbol of that other micorcoosm called the Soul. 'Soon that tiny globe of light, with all its fairy tints and topsy-turvy picturings, will have vanished away....Between the vanishing of the drop and the vanishing of the man, what difference?'

And what becomes of the dewdrop? 'By the great sun its atoms are separated and lifted and scattered. To cloud and earth, to river and sea they go; and out of land and stream and sea again they will be updrawn, only to fall and to scatter anew. they will creap in opalescent mists, they will whiten in frost and hail and snow, they will reflect again the forms and colors of the macrocosm....For each one of them must combine again with countless kindred atoms for the making of other drops, drops of dew and rain and sap, of blood and sweat and tears.' Almost half a century later Sir Winston Churchill used a similar expression.

In 'The Eater of Dreams' there is a long list of evil Wonders, and the signs of their presence. But 'Fireflies' produces a warm glow in the hearts of its reader. These friendly little insects have been celebrated in Japanese poetry from ancient times; and, as Hearn points out, frequent mention is made of them in early classical prose. A chapter of the famous novel Genji Monogatari is entitled 'Fireflies.' The author tells how a certan noble person was enabled to obtain one glimpse of a lady's face in the dark by the device of catching and suddenly liberating a number of fireflies. This glowing Hearn gem is certain to attract many readers.

Contents

Publisher's Foreword
Old Stroies:
I. The Legend of Yurei-Daki
II. In a Cup of Tea
III. Comon Sense
IV. Ikiryo
V. Shiryo
VI. The Story of O-Kame
VII. Story of a Fly
VIII. Story of a Pheasant
IX. The Story of Chugoro
A Woman's Diary
Heike-Gani
Fireflies
A Drop of Dew
Gaki
A Matter of Custom
Revery
Pathological
In the Dead of teh Night
Kusa-Hibari
The Eater of Dreams show less