The Romance of the Milky Way, and Other Studies & Stories

Japanese lore in three parts: the Milky Way as the Tanabata legend tells it, a study of goblin poetry, and stories of the fox-fire, the snow-woman and the long-necked woman. Lafcadio Hearn was born in the Ionian Islands, came to Japan as a journalist and stayed as a citizen named Koizumi Yakumo. He translates the poems as well as the tales, which is why the ghosts here sound Japanese rather than Gothic. Sixty plates of moonlit travel, bamboo and plum, and rush gatherers by Utamaro and Harunobu carry the same floating world of night and season that Hearn's tales inhabit.