Ghostly Tales of Japan provide supernatural bedtime stories

Review and interview by Doug Gibson

Andi Brooks, who lives in Japan with his wife and son, is the co-author of "Vampire of London: Bela Lugosi in Britain," a book we’vereviewed in this blog. He also oversees the superb, The Bela Lugosi Blog. Andi has also been writing fiction for more than a generation and recently published “Ghostly Tales of  Japan,” (Kikui Press, 2020) an anthology of supernatural stories. (Purchase it here) He dedicates the book to his son, Yuine, which is appropriate because Andi created these stories as bedtime stories for Yuine.

The stories are anchored in Japanese culture and tradition. Most range between a couple to four minutes of reading time, perhaps a tad long in audio. The longest is about a 10-minute read. I am captivated by these tales, which from revenge horror to ghostly reunions that tug at your heart to moral tales, with abrupt, pithy endings in which an unforgiving or unpleasant protagonist gets his or her due.

The first story, “The Hunter’s Wife,” tells of a hunter lucky enough to kill a stag with his arrow. The doe with the stag escapes, but not before providing a piercing stare at her adversary. The hunter marries and has children before the doe reappears in his life in an ending so shocking it kept me awake the night I read it.

An interesting tale, almost fable- or parable-length, very short, “The Kindly Old Woman Who Wasn’t,” provides a very succinct commentary on how society offers prefer to remain away from truth so long as they are satisfied.

“The Ginkgo Tree and the Drunken House” is a captivating story of love surviving a mortal tragedy and the loved one’s unconventional resurrection.

My favorite story, the longest, is “The Homecoming,” a tale of an adult somehow finding his way back home to his long-dead parents to receive assurances and renewals of love he has long sought. One knows at the end that this visit will impact his remaining years

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“The Story of Matsudo Hideyuki” had a Twilight Zone-type eeriness. It involves a man, out of place in the modern world, finally solidifying an existence in the past he craves to  be in.

As mentioned, the stories, there are 30, are steeped in Japanese history, traditions, religion and culture. Below this review is an interview with the author. The stories are very well-crafted and possess lyrical prose blessed with the author’s gentle intellect and knowledge. In spirit, if not necessarily style or subject matter, they remind me of “The Harafish,” by Naguib Mahfouz. Enjoy the interview with Brooks, who lives in Tokyo with his family, below.

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Interview with Andi Brooks, author of Ghostly Tales of Japan

1) How long have you been writing short fiction? Was your interest sparked by Japanese life, history and culture, or was there an earlier genesis?

Brooks: I first attempted to write short fiction in 1992. I was laid off work with a very handsome payoff, which included six months paid leave and a contractual clause prohibiting me from taking another job during that period. With all of that time on my hands, I decided that I would try my hand at writing. The first story I wrote was an ecological sci-fi tale called The Visitor, which was miraculously published in an anthology. Although I remember the thrill of seeing the book on the shelves of a local bookstore at the time, I haven’t got the courage to reread the story now!

After this unexpected initial “success,” I threw myself into writing. The short stories I wrote at that time were all heavily derivative of 1950s sci-fi and were, probably quite rightly, all met with scathing rejections. My other rejections from this period included a radio play featuring a life-size cardboard cutout of Vincent Price as one of the main characters and a grade Z trashy sci-fi horror film script called The Butcher Girls, which got as far as scouting locations and actors before ending up on the scrapheap.

After that I restricted my writing to non-fiction. I contributed articles of varying merit on vintage films to various magazines in the UK and the U.S., which culminated in the Bela Lugosi biography “Vampire Over London: Bela Lugosi in Britain,” with Frank Dello Stritto.

I didn’t do any further writing until moving to Japan in 2006. At a creative loose end, I tried to fill the void by writing an unpublished volume of humorous poetry and some darkly humorous short stories heavily influenced by Vivian Stanshall’s “Rawlinson End” for my short-lived first blog.

I finally threw all of my energy into putting together The Bela Lugosi Blog for a few years until returning to my main passion of music. I reactivated my 1980s record label, promoted a monthly live event in Tokyo and produced my own music.

As recounted in the introduction to "Ghostly Tales of Japan," I started writing Japanese ghost stories completely by accident. My son and I had been really captivated by the world of the Japanese supernatural since catching an episode of the long-running supernatural animation series Ge! Ge! Ge! No Kitaro on TV shortly after arriving in Japan when he was three-years-old. Bedtime reading sessions alternated between Dr. Suess and the world of yūrei (Japanese ghosts) and yōkai (Japanese supernatural creatures). One night when he was around six, we read a story from Lafcadio Hearn’s “Kwaidan.” When he learned that it was the last one in the book, he asked me to tell him another story, so I made up what was to become the first story in “Ghostly Tales of Japan,” "The Hunter’s Wife." I made up more for him until he stopped requesting them.

I completely forgot about the stories until about three years ago when I visited a small historic pond in Tokyo called Muchi no Ike (commonly translated as the Pond of the Whip), which, legend has it, is inhabited by kappa, an amphibious supernatural creature of Japanese folklore. I didn’t see any of them, but the atmosphere inspired me to write a story, which in turn reignited my interest in the old stories I’d written for my son. When I reread them, I liked them sufficiently to decide to try to write enough stories for a collection. There were lots of stops and starts until last year when I threw all of my energy into the project.

2) You have a tremendous knowledge of the land you live in? How was this interest sparked? What resources did you utilize to learn this much?

Brooks: Most things in my life just seem to come out of the blue. Whenever someone hollers “Hey, let’s put on a show!” I always seem to be at the front of the queue. If I remember rightly, that’s how the Bela Lugosi biography came about. Frank phoned me up from America and said, ”Hey, lets write a book!” The thought had never occurred to me, but of course, I just said okay.

That same attitude led me to Japan. Until 1998, my knowledge of the country was pretty much restricted to Godzilla and documentaries about World War II. It was a place which didn’t really register in my consciousness.

That changed when I reluctantly went to a party in 1998. I started to chat with a stranger who was living in Japan at the time. The alcohol had clearly been flowing rather generously as she said, “Hey, why don’t you come over for a visit?” One month later I arrived in Japan for a month-long stay. Even though I thought it would be a one-off trip, when I returned home I began to study Japanese and to read classical Japanese literature, which often has a healthy dose of the supernatural, and histories of the country.

To be truthful, I would describe my knowledge of Japan, its culture and its history as selective, but I have always been fascinated by history and enjoyed research. Whenever I come across an interesting snippet or someone tells me something interesting, I jot it down in a notebook for possible use in a story. I often visit local museums and places of historical interest. Japan has lost an awful lot of its historical structures due to wars, natural disasters and the relentless march of progress, but everywhere there are signs and markers on the streets relating the history of the place. The ghosts of the past are on almost every street corner. My own garden has a statue of Jizō (the Japanese incarnation of the Buddhist deity Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva) which has supposedly been standing there for at least 400 years.

To be truthful, I often feel like the character in my story “The Story of Matsuda Hideyuki,” a man who lives in the present, but has one foot firmly planted in the past.

One thing which was very important to me when writing the stories was that they were all historically and culturally accurate. They may be works of fiction, but I tried to make the background settings and details as real as possible. I want to eventually have the book translated into Japanese, so I don’t want a Japanese reader to feel that they are not natural or to think that some aspect is impossible. I basically write two kinds of stories. They are either directly inspired by a place I have actually visited, such as Muchi no Ike in Tokyo or Nijo Castle in Kyoto, or inspired by historical or cultural knowledge I already have.

For the latter, I write the story first and then check that that it fits the historical and geographical context I have given it. For that, I consult either my own library or the Internet. Quite often the information I need exists only in Japanese, so my Japanese wife is very helpful in helping me to research sources which are beyond my ability to read or understand. One of the most difficult stories to square with reality was “A Pilgrim’s Tale.” I already knew about the ancient pilgrimage route upon which I set the story, but the lake by which the main events take place was of my own creation. I suppose it would have been okay to have a fictitious lake as the average reader would have no idea of the geography of the pilgrimage route, but it went against my desire to have each story 100 percent believable. It took quite a bit of searching before I could find a real lake which fit my own.

3) What is your son's favorite story/ies?

Brooks: Funnily, although the book is dedicated to him and without him it wouldn’t exist, he hasn’t read it yet! Some stories he remembers from when I read them to him when he was younger and others he knows because I discussed them with him. So, he feels as if he has already read it.

His feedback was very helpful during the writing process, especially for “The Story of Matsuda Hideyuki.” I was very unsure about the ending and actually had two versions. When I asked for his opinion, he choose the one which is in the book. I discussed the possibility of using the alternative, perhaps more subtle, ending in the forthcoming paperback version, but he was adamant that I shouldn’t change it.

4) Anything else you want to add? I am impressed with your pacing, the abrupt endings, either terror or moral story ending. The first story really grabbed me. It stays with me, the ending.

Brooks: I have very little faith in my ability as a writer. I know the story ideas are good, but writing does not come naturally to me. It’s an often painful process. All of the stories have undergone countless revisions. Whenever I thought they were finished, I would reread them and find so many flaws. I was never happy, but in the end I had to tell myself that enough was enough. I could have gone on revising them forever. Despite that, even when the proofreading was completed I found myself doing some tweaking. I suspect that I would still want to revise them if I sat down and reread them now.

The Japanese have a particular knack for reinvention. When Buddhism was introduced to Japan, the deities were given Japanese incarnations. Many Japanese legends and myths have a Chinese origin. You can find the same folktales retold throughout Japan with regional flavours added. There is a tradition of writers of each age rewriting and adapting stories for their own times. Popular kabuki plays were rewritten by subsequent generations of writers to keep them relevant for current audiences. Even a startlingly original story such as “Ring,” by Koji Suzuki follows the tradition of incorporating and updating already very well-known elements of folklore.

Anyone familiar with Japanese ghost stories will recognise the well, the long black hair and the white funeral garb as centuries-old staples of Japanese horror. To some extent, I have tried to do the same with my stories, to connect them both directly or indirectly to a recognised tradition to make them acceptable to a Japanese audience. To do this, I totally absorbed myself in written, pictorial and filmed adaptations of Japanese ghostly stories.

The abrupt moral story endings you mentioned were influenced by medieval Buddhist setsuwa, a teaching tool used by itinerant monks to illustrate the laws of karmic causality. The abrupt horrific endings are more akin to the sensational horror stories of the Edo era (1603-1868) a period when the telling of ghost stories as a popular entertainment came into its own. It is an effective format still popular in modern short storytelling. We will have to wait for the Japanese translation is completed to discover how successful, or not, I have been.