Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, credited to Lafcadio Hearn, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

Librivox recording of Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things by Lafcadio Hearn. Read by LibriVox Volunteers. Most of the following Kwaidan, or Weird Tales, have been taken from old Japanese books,— such as the Yaso-Kidan, Bukkyo-Hyakkwa-Zensho, Kokon-Chomonshu, Tama-Sudare, and Hyaku-Monogatari. Some of the stories may have had a Chinese origin: the very remarkable "Dream of Akinosuke," for example. But the story-teller, in every case, has so recolored and reshaped his borrowing as to naturalize it… One queer tale, "Yuki-Onna," was told me by a farmer of Chofu, Nishitama-gori, in Musashi province, as a legend of his native village. Whether it has ever been written in Japanese I do not know; but the extraordinary belief which it records used certainly to exist in most parts of Japan, and in many curious forms… The incident of "Riki-Baka" was a personal experience; and I wrote it down almost exactly as it happened, changing only a family-name mentioned by the Japanese narrator. (Summary by L. Hearn, from the Introduction to the book and Ava)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things
• Author credits: Lafcadio Hearn
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 21
• Listed recording duration: 3:51:40

Catalogue topics

• Japanese tales
• short stories
• ghost stories

Track guide

1. 00 Introduction — 6:50
2. 01 The Story of Mimi-Nashi-Hoichi — 23:17
3. 02 Oshidori — 3:31
4. 03 The Story of O-Tei — 8:13
5. 04 Ubazakura — 3:39
6. 05 Diplomacy — 5:38
7. 06 Of a Mirror and a Bell — 8:59
8. 07 Jikininki — 9:29
9. 08 Mujina — 5:13
10. 09 Rokuro-Kubi — 19:11
11. 10 A Dead Secret — 5:39
12. 11 Yuki-Onna — 10:15
13. 12 The Story of Aoyagi — 19:44
14. 13 Jiu-Roku-Zakura — 3:11
15. 14 The Dream of Akinosuke — 12:00
16. 15 Riki-Baka — 4:31
17. 16 Hi-Mawari — 5:30
18. 17 Horai — 12:05
19. 18 Insect Studies - Butterflies — 27:16
20. 19 Insect Studies - Mosquitoes — 7:26
21. 20 Insect Studies - Ants — 30:12

Listen to this recording

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.