This week’s free book is Yurei Attack!, A Survivor’s Guide to Japanese Ghosts by Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt. Japanese yuurei are ghosts or phantoms, whose gruesomely fun folklore have scared Japanese children for centuries. In this manga-style “survivor’s guide”, Hiroko and Matt introduce you to 39 of Japan’s scariest legends.
Take for example Taira no Masakado, one of Tokyo’s most famous ghost legends. A 10th century samurai, he set himself up in what would become Tokyo as a rival to the emperor in Kyoto. The emperor sent out an army. They killed Masakado, cut off his head, and carried it back to Kyoto as a trophy. That wasn’t the end of him, however. Masakado’s head wouldn’t die. Instead, it flew back east, where terrified villagers washed and buried it. As a sort of Japanese “headless horseman”, his head has guarded its resting place in Chiyoda Ward by foiling all attempts by the US Occupation and later Japanese governments to redevelop the hill.
Full of such spooky stories and some bilingual content, Yurei Attack! is a great way to pick up some Japanese (after reading about Hoichi, you’ll always remember that mimi-nashi means “earless”) while you read about an off-beat part of traditional Japanese folklore. Many of these stories also appear in our edition of Lafcadio Hearn’s Kwaidan as well as the 1964 film of the same name.
Thanks for visiting Language Omnivore today! To enter my weekly raffle to win Yurei Attack!, click here to email me and put Free Book Friday in the subject line.