Japanese Ghost Stories cover art

Japanese Ghost Stories

Penguin Classics

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

This Penguin Classic is performed by Eleanor Matsuura, known for AMC's The Walking Dead and Spooks. This definitive recording includes an Introduction by Paul Murray.

In this collection of classic ghost stories from Japan, beautiful princesses turn out to be frogs, paintings come alive, deadly spectral brides haunt the living and a samurai delivers the baby of a Shinto goddess with mystical help. Here are all the phantoms and ghouls of Japanese folklore: 'rokuro-kubi', whose heads separate from their bodies at night; 'jikininki', or flesh-eating goblins; and terrifying faceless 'mujina' who haunt lonely neighbourhoods. Lafcadio Hearn, a master storyteller, drew on traditional Japanese folklore, infused with memories of his own haunted childhood in Ireland, to create these chilling tales. They are today regarded in Japan as classics in their own right.

 Anthologies & Short Stories Classics Fantasy Ghosts Horror Short Stories Haunted Scary Paranormal Japanese Mythology
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I liked many of the tales very much. Overall the narration was fine, but as usual with audible, we have to endure mispronounced words. On this occasion it was the word august, not to be confused with the month of the year, August. Unfortunately, the narrator did exactly that. August in the context of these stories has the emphasis on the second syllable - Au-GUST. There’s always a lot of incorrect pronunciations with audible, and I find that not only strange, but demoralising… Surely it’s not hard to check with someone who knows how to speak reasonable English how words in that language are pronounced?

Some of the stories

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The scripting jarringly throws titles and footnotes into the middle of speech: there's more to an audiobook than just reading everything on the page. Ms. Matsuura's voice performance is decent, but edits are needed when adapting from the book to audio.

Good book, awful script

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