Apparitions: Ghosts of Old Edo
3.0 Stars
1-1-2015
A collection of Japanese "ghost" stories. The stories were written in the modern age, but are set back in the 1700's-1800's amongst a collection of laborers, craftspeople, and house hold servants. The stories are OK? They tend to be quietly enjoyable and well written, and don't really have any fast paced action, or over arching themes, or really scary moments. It's just kind of oh, there's this rainy workshop and its various characters and its calm routine, and then this one room is haunted, and eventually they find out the backstory to the apparition, and then deal with it, or not. I think my favorite short story was the one where an oni was haunting a particular room at night. To deal with it, the household hid in various nooks of the room. When the oni arrived, they jumped out, threw a blanket over the oni, and then bludgeoned it to death. It was a very sensible response. :)