J-Horror

For this week's reading, I chose the short stories from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn. All of the stories that I read had different life lessons that I wouldn't really consider to be scary in any way. Each story also had their own reflection of a "good" and an "evil." However, I feel like the goods and evils can be interpreted to be different elements of the story. For example, the Story of the Mimi-Nashi-Hōychi could have two evils. The first evil could be the more obvious one being the spirits of Heiké or the Antoku Tennō because they were... well, warriors, but also because they summoned Hōychi basically without his knowledge and approval and then ripped off his ears. The second one, and the one that I would consider to be the actual evil in this story is Hōychi's friend that he was staying with, the priest. He forced Hōychi to stay home and wrote religious texts all over his body, except for his ears, and when the warrior came to summon him that night all he saw were ears and ripped them off. If the priest had just let Hōychi go, he would probably still have his ears. Life lesson: your friends may think they know what's best for you but always follow your own instincts. 

There is definitely a cultural separation if these are to be considered ghost/scary stories. I suppose it's because I've seen and read so many things classified in the "horror" genre of movies and books that these types of stories just don't scare me. All I see are the life lessons that are between the lines and I can't get passed that. Yes they are scary, but they're scary in a sense of 'If you don't get your life together, bad things will happen.' These stories are more or less just vessels to convey values and morals like don't be selfish (Of A Mirror and A Bell), don't always believe everything that someone tells you (Diplomacy), and always give someone the benefit of the doubt regardless of what other people say about them (Jikininki). Overall, these stories were very good, I did actually enjoy them. I just hoped they'd be a little scarier than they were but they had lessons and that's probably worth more than just a quick thrill.