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keld1602's review
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
thearbiter89's review
3.0
Old Edo ghosts sure all take after one another.
Miyuki Manabe’s Ghosts of Old Edo is a collection of short Edo-era historical fiction with one thing in common – they feature ghosts and spirits that seem drawn from folklore and legend, but also with a kind of fable-esque undertone that depicts these ghosts as the supernatural shepherds of our time on earth. Ghosts are vengeful spirits out for revenge against a slight they received in life, real or assumed, or oni whose appearance to a person serves as a barometer of their own virtue or lack thereof. There are monsters clothed in the flesh of women that stink of iron, children protected by benign pumpkin-patch spirits against evil, and immortals beings that walk amongst us.
All these mysterious happenings occur in the same milieu – old Edo, a bustling city whose size and age have made it grow layer upon layer of history and legacy, whose hoary and dark interstices can hide all manner of the supernatural. In the daylight, however, our characters are so-and-so of this shop or other, selling oddly specific merchandise (like tea towels or blue ink). There is a real specificity of place that comes out from Manabe’s translated writing, although a lot of it feels artificial, because of the way in which she often provides a surfeit of such details in the writing of the stories; the details, to be honest, blend in together after a while and with that of other stories, and the end result is that if one is not too sensitive to the subtleties of Edo-era life it becomes hard to distinguish one story from another based on their setting and characters. And so, the stories were, by and large, unmemorable to me (with the possible exception of A Woman’s Head, which featured a sympathetic young child and which ended happily, in the style of fairy tales).
Ultimately, these are simple, straightforward tales, meant to evoke a sense of atmosphere and emotion rather than to impress by the density or wit of the plotting, or the earnestness of its characterization. They are classic ghost stories that are meant, when properly read, to make you feel a chill down your back and feel, just for a moment, that perhaps, beyond the bright daylight, things from our cultural unconsciousness lurk in the dark – but in a way, they also belong to the culture and heritage of the societies that they haunt.
I give this: 3.5 out of 5 haunted braziers
Miyuki Manabe’s Ghosts of Old Edo is a collection of short Edo-era historical fiction with one thing in common – they feature ghosts and spirits that seem drawn from folklore and legend, but also with a kind of fable-esque undertone that depicts these ghosts as the supernatural shepherds of our time on earth. Ghosts are vengeful spirits out for revenge against a slight they received in life, real or assumed, or oni whose appearance to a person serves as a barometer of their own virtue or lack thereof. There are monsters clothed in the flesh of women that stink of iron, children protected by benign pumpkin-patch spirits against evil, and immortals beings that walk amongst us.
All these mysterious happenings occur in the same milieu – old Edo, a bustling city whose size and age have made it grow layer upon layer of history and legacy, whose hoary and dark interstices can hide all manner of the supernatural. In the daylight, however, our characters are so-and-so of this shop or other, selling oddly specific merchandise (like tea towels or blue ink). There is a real specificity of place that comes out from Manabe’s translated writing, although a lot of it feels artificial, because of the way in which she often provides a surfeit of such details in the writing of the stories; the details, to be honest, blend in together after a while and with that of other stories, and the end result is that if one is not too sensitive to the subtleties of Edo-era life it becomes hard to distinguish one story from another based on their setting and characters. And so, the stories were, by and large, unmemorable to me (with the possible exception of A Woman’s Head, which featured a sympathetic young child and which ended happily, in the style of fairy tales).
Ultimately, these are simple, straightforward tales, meant to evoke a sense of atmosphere and emotion rather than to impress by the density or wit of the plotting, or the earnestness of its characterization. They are classic ghost stories that are meant, when properly read, to make you feel a chill down your back and feel, just for a moment, that perhaps, beyond the bright daylight, things from our cultural unconsciousness lurk in the dark – but in a way, they also belong to the culture and heritage of the societies that they haunt.
I give this: 3.5 out of 5 haunted braziers
happycupcake666's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
bowman's review
2.0
Some solid storytelling on the part of Miyabe, though I did not like it as much as her other works I've read. The stories were quite similar to one another, and although two or three were quite interesting, mostly the Oni of Adachi House, I felt like some of these would've been more enjoyable had they been fleshed out, given more time to settle and grow into novellas or even novels.
xochisui's review
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.0
myxomycetes's review
5.0
A collection of Japanese ghost stories that are firmly grounded in the mundane world of the marketplace. I quite liked all these stories because of how they depicted the supernatural beside the everyday.
Definitely check them out.
Definitely check them out.
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