Kwaidanote
IKIRYŌ
Japanese Horror Folktales Collection — No. 7

IKIRYŌ

Tales of the Living Ghost

Eighteen Japanese tales of the ikiryō — the ghost of a person still alive.

A living spirit is the soul of someone who is not dead. That is the whole of the definition, and it is where the agreement stops. In these records the dead are not the danger. The danger is someone asleep in her own bed, or at her own work, in the place she is every day — while her soul is somewhere else, being seen, plainly and in daylight, by people who know the face.

Not all of it is frightening. Some of it is sad, and some is gentle, and the gentleness is its own kind of trouble. In more than one account nobody is punished, no priest is called, and the entry simply ends.

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Ikiryō

18 tales in this volume

  1. The Road to the Minister's Gate
  2. The Mark Below the Ear
  3. The Hand at the Throat
  4. The Three Papers
  5. The Wrong Room
  6. The Lantern in the Road
  7. The Woman who Asked for Iori
  8. The Light in the Thicket
  9. The Two Voices at the Matsutōya
  10. The Man who Came in the Rain
  11. The Yakushi at Inowaki
  12. Two Tooth Marks
  13. The Girl on the Onari Road
  14. The Crossing at Katsura
  15. One Hundred and Twenty Candles
  16. What She Brought Home
  17. The Lady of the Sixth Ward
  18. No Grudge at All

The first of them is here in full.

Notes on this volume