"Prepare for a sampling of Japanese ghosts and spirits, from sources that include the worlds oldest novel, the urban legends of contemporary Japanese schoolchildren, movies both classic and modern, anime, manga, and more." For hundreds of years Japan has lived in a reality consisting of the real world and the spirit world; sometimes the wall between the two worlds gets thin enough for spirits to cross over. In such a reality, ghost stories have been popular for centuries. Patrick Drazen, author of "Anime Explosion", looks at these stories: old and new, scary or funny or sad, looking at common themes and the reasons for their popularity. This book uses one Japanese ghost story tradition: the "hyaku monogatari" (hundred stories). In the old tradition, people tell each other one hundred ghost stories in one sitting. These hundred tales run from folklore to cartoons, but all are designed to send chills up the spine ...

"Prepare for a sampling of Japanese ghosts and spirits, from sources that include the world's oldest novel, The urban legends of contemporary Japanese schoolchildren, movies both classic and modern, anime, manga, and more." for hundreds of years Japan has lived in a reality consisting of the real world And The spirit world; sometimes the wall between the two worlds gets thin enough for spirits to cross over. In such a reality, ghost stories have been popular for centuries. Patrick Drazen, author of "Anime Explosion", looks at these stories: old and new, scary or funny or sad, looking at common themes And The reasons for their popularity. This book uses one Japanese ghost story tradition: The "hyaku monogatari" (hundred stories). In the old tradition, people tell each other one hundred ghost stories in one sitting. These hundred tales run from folklore to cartoons, but all are designed to send chills up the spine ...

This book is a fascinating collection of various neuroscience terms coined over the last centuries. Each of the 45 chapters in this book dives deep into the etymologies, vernacular subtleties and historical anecdotes relating to these terms. The book illustrates the rich and diverse history of neuroscience, which has borrowed and continues to borrow terms and concepts from across cultures, literature and languages. The ever-increasing number of terms that needed to be coined with the mushrooming of the field required neuroscientists to show astonishing imagination and creativity, leading them to draw inspiration from Graeco-Roman mythology (Elpenor’s syndrome), literature (Lasthenie de Ferjol’s syndrome), theatre (Ondine’s curse), Japanese folklore (Kanashibari), and even the Bible (Matthew effect). This book will of be immense interest to scholars and researchers studying neuroscience, history of science, anatomy, psychology and linguistics. It will also appeal to any reader interested in learning more about neuroscience and its history. All the chapters included in this book were originally published in a column that appeared from 1997 to 2020 in the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences.

"A Best Book of 2009" --The Japan Times Japanese Ghost Stories, formerly published under the title Supernatural and Mysterious Japan, is a collection of the eerie and terrifying from around Japan. This book opens a window into the hidden aspects of the Japanese world of the paranormal, a place where trees grow human hair, rocks weep and there's even a graveyard where Jesus is reputed to have been buried. Covering ancient and modern times, Japanese Ghost Stories offers not only good, old-fashioned scary stories, but some special insights into Japanese culture and psychology. Japanese ghost stories include: In Search of the Supernatural Psychic Stirrings New Forays into the Mystic Strange but True Modern-Day Hauntings Scenes of Ghosts and Demons Edo-Era Tales

Christianity has been in Japan for five centuries, but embraced by less than one percent of the population. It’s a complicated relationship, given the sudden appearance in Japan of Renaissance Catholicism which was utterly unlike the historic faiths of Shinto and Buddhism; Japan had to invent a word for “religion” since Japan did not share the west’s reliance on faith in a personal God. Japan’s views of this “outsider” religion resemble America’s view of the “outsider” Islamic faith. Understanding this through the book Orientalism by Edward Said, Patrick Drazen samples depictions of Christianity in the popular Japanese media of comics and cartoons. The book begins with the work of postwar comics master Tezuka Osamu, with results that range from the comic to the revisionist to the blasphemous and obscene.

"I lived in a haunted apartment." Zack Davisson opens this definitive work on Japan's ghosts, or yurei, with a personal tale about the spirit world. Eerie red marks on the apartment's ceiling kept Zack and his wife on edge. The landlord warned them not to open a door in the apartment that led to nowhere. "Our Japanese visitors had no problem putting a name to it . . . they would sense the vibes of the place, look around a bit and inevitably say 'Ahhh . . . yurei ga deteru.' There is a yurei here." Combining his lifelong interest in Japanese tradition and his personal experiences with these vengeful spirits, Davisson launches an investigation into the origin, popularization, and continued existence of yurei in Japan. Juxtaposing historical documents and legends against contemporary yurei-based horror films such as The Ring, Davisson explores the persistence of this paranormal phenomenon in modern day Japan and its continued spread throughout the West. Zack Davisson is a translator, writer, and scholar of Japanese folklore and ghosts. He is the translator of Mizuki Shigeru's Showa 1926–1939: A History of Japan and a translator and contributor to Kitaro. He also worked as a researcher and on-screen talent for National Geographic's TV special Japan: Lost Souls of Okinawa. He writes extensively about Japanese ghost stories at his website, hyakumonogatari.com.

The dead wreak revenge on the living, paintings come alive, spectral brides possess mortal men and a priest devours human flesh in these chilling Japanese ghost stories retold by a master of the supernatural. Lafcadio Hearn drew on the phantoms and ghouls of traditional Japanese folklore - including the headless 'rokuro-kubi', the monstrous goblins 'jikininki' or the faceless 'mujina' who stalk lonely neighbourhoods - and infused them with his own memories of his haunted childhood in nineteenth-century Ireland to create these terrifying tales of striking and eerie power. Today they are regarded in Japan as classics in their own right. Edited with an introduction by Paul Murray