Download or read book The Peony Lantern written by Frances Watts and published by HarperCollins Australia. This book was released on 2015-08-01 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The spellbinding new historical novel from multi-award-winning Australian author Frances Watts Ages 12+ When Kasumi leaves her remote village for the teeming city of Edo, her life is transformed. As a lady-in-waiting in a samurai mansion she discovers a rare talent for art and falls in love with a young samurai. How could she ever return to the life of a simple mountain girl? But Kasumi must set aside her own concerns. Her country is on the brink of change and Edo is simmering with tension. And her mistress has a dangerous secret--a secret that Kasumi is gradually drawn into... Set against the vivid backdrop of nineteenth-century Japan, THE PEONY LANTERN is a powerful story of art, love and friendship, and finding your own path. Ages 12+ PRAISE and ACCLAIM ***Shortlisted in the 2016 NSW Premier's Literary Awards*** 'This masterfully written and lyrical novel challenges the tenets of the times and a woman's role in it...an enlightening and thoroughly satisfying read.' Judges' comments, 2016 NSW Premier's Literary Awards 'Lyrical, fascinating and evocative, Frances Watts' work is always extraordinary' Jackie French, bestselling author of TO LOVE A SUNBURNT COUNTRY 'The beauty of Watts' writing leads us through an exciting narrative, the mystery's solution only revealed at the end ... Destined to be enjoyed by anyone over the age of 12 and bound to be a favourite to be shared within a class, an added advantage is its 'usefulness' as a text aptly aligned to the new English curriculum. Captivating.' BUZZWORDS BOOKS 'Watts writes with sympathy and appreciation of Japan and the Japanese people. Her strongly delineated characters and lyrical descriptions of place inform a book which will engage the thoughtful reader.' READING TIME

Download or read book Haunted Japan written by Catrien Ross and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A delightfully creepy telling of Japanese ghost stories. Japanese folklore is abundant with tales of ghostly creatures and the supernatural. In Haunted Japan, author Catrien Ross reveals the legends that have been passed down for generations and continue to terrify us today. To research this book on the country's ghosts, demons and paranormal phenomena, Ross collected accounts from across Japan including: Sacred Mount Osore, a Japanese gateway to the land of the dead, where people gather to contact those who have passed on The Tokyo grave of the samurai Taira no Masakado, where passersby regularly witnessed his ghost until prayers finally laid him to rest The mummified remains of the monk Tetsumonkai at the Churenji Temple on Mount Yudono--a place where bizarre happenings are common The ruins of Hachioji Castle in Tokyo, which was abandoned for many years because of its many hauntings The result is an unparalleled insight into the dark corners of the Japanese psyche--a world filled with horrifying creatures including Oni (demons with fierce and ghastly appearances), Yurei (Japanese ghosts who inhabit the world of the living), and Yokai (supernatural monsters). The book also includes several traditional Japanese legends, concluding with two of the most famous ghost stories--that of the wronged wife Oiwa and the tale of the Peony Lantern. This book is richly illustrated with 32 pages of full-color prints of frightening ghosts and legendary creatures from Japan's shadowy past. Haunted Japan is the ideal book for anyone interested in exploring the darker side of Japanese history.

Download or read book The Peony Lantern written by Ruth Manley and published by Hachette Children's Books Australia. This book was released on 1987 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A chronicle of old Japan in keeping with The Plum Rain Scroll etc.

Download or read book Yurei written by Zack Davisson and published by Chin Music Press Inc.. This book was released on 2015-07-13 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I lived in a haunted apartment." Zack Davisson opens this definitive work on Japan's ghosts, or yurei, with a personal tale about the spirit world. Eerie red marks on the apartment's ceiling kept Zack and his wife on edge. The landlord warned them not to open a door in the apartment that led to nowhere. "Our Japanese visitors had no problem putting a name to it . . . they would sense the vibes of the place, look around a bit and inevitably say 'Ahhh . . . yurei ga deteru.' There is a yurei here." Combining his lifelong interest in Japanese tradition and his personal experiences with these vengeful spirits, Davisson launches an investigation into the origin, popularization, and continued existence of yurei in Japan. Juxtaposing historical documents and legends against contemporary yurei-based horror films such as The Ring, Davisson explores the persistence of this paranormal phenomenon in modern day Japan and its continued spread throughout the West. Zack Davisson is a translator, writer, and scholar of Japanese folklore and ghosts. He is the translator of Mizuki Shigeru's Showa 1926–1939: A History of Japan and a translator and contributor to Kitaro. He also worked as a researcher and on-screen talent for National Geographic's TV special Japan: Lost Souls of Okinawa. He writes extensively about Japanese ghost stories at his website, hyakumonogatari.com.

Download or read book The Plum Rain Scroll written by Ruth Manley and published by Univ. of Queensland Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fantastic tale of peril and heroic deeds set in Idzumo, the old Japan of legend and living folklore. Marishoten, the evil Black Iris Lord, seeks to overtrhow the Mikado and usurp the Chrysanthemum throne. First he must find the plum roll scroll, which holds the three secrets that will help him to achieve his victory.

Download or read book Japanese Fairy Tales written by Yei Theodora Ozaki and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2017-07-12 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of Japanese fairy tales is the outcome of a suggestion made to me indirectly through a friend by Mr. Andrew Lang. They have been translated from the modern version written by Sadanami Sanjin. These stories are not literal translations, and though the Japanese story and all quaint Japanese expressions have been faithfully preserved, they have been told more with the view to interest young readers of the West than the technical student of folk-lore.... In telling these stories in English I have followed my fancy in adding such touches of local color or description as they seemed to need or as pleased me, and in one or two instances I have gathered in an incident from another version. At all times, among my friends, both young and old, English or American, I have always found eager listeners to the beautiful legends and fairy tales of Japan, and in telling them I have also found that they were still unknown to the vast majority...

Download or read book Where the Wild Ladies Are written by Aoko Matsuda and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2020-10-20 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this "delightfully uncanny" collection of feminist retellings of traditional Japanese folktales (The New York Times Book Review), humans live side by side with spirits who provide a variety of useful services—from truth-telling to babysitting, from protecting castles to fighting crime. A busybody aunt who disapproves of hair removal; a pair of door-to-door saleswomen hawking portable lanterns; a cheerful lover who visits every night to take a luxurious bath; a silent house-caller who babysits and cleans while a single mother is out working. Where the Wild Ladies Are is populated by these and many other spirited women—who also happen to be ghosts. This is a realm in which jealousy, stubbornness, and other excessive “feminine” passions are not to be feared or suppressed, but rather cultivated; and, chances are, a man named Mr. Tei will notice your talents and recruit you, dead or alive (preferably dead), to join his mysterious company. With Where the Wild Ladies Are, Aoko Matsuda takes the rich, millenia-old tradition of Japanese folktales—shapeshifting wives and foxes, magical trees and wells—and wholly reinvents them, presenting a world in which humans are consoled, guided, challenged, and transformed by the only sometimes visible forces that surround them.

Download or read book Yoshitoshi s Thirty six Ghosts written by John Stevenson and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Japanese Fairy Tales written by Lafcadio Hearn and published by . This book was released on 1918 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of 20 fairy tales from Japan including "Chin-Chin Kobakama," "The Serpent with Eight Heads," and "The Tea-Kettle."

Download or read book In Ghostly Japan written by Lafcadio Hearn and published by . This book was released on 1903 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Green Willow written by Grace James and published by . This book was released on 1912 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Myths and Legends of Japan written by Frederick Hadland Davis and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pierre Loti in Madame Chrysanthème, Gilbert and Sullivan in The Mikado, and Sir Edwin Arnold in Seas and Lands, gave us the impression that Japan was a real fairyland in the Far East. We were delighted with the prettiness and quaintness of that country, and still more with the prettiness and quaintness of the Japanese people. We laughed at their topsy-turvy ways, regarded the Japanese woman, in her rich-coloured kimono, as altogether charming and fascinating, and had a vague notion that the principal features of Nippon were the tea-houses, cherry-blossom, and geisha. Twenty years ago we did not take Japan very seriously. We still listen to the melodious music of The Mikado, but now we no longer regard Japan as a sort of glorified willow-pattern plate. The Land of the Rising Sun has become the Land of the Risen Sun, for we have learnt that her quaintness and prettiness, her fairy-like manners and customs, were but the outer signs of a great and progressive nation. To-day we recognise Japan as a power in the East, and her victory over the Russian has made her army and navy famous throughout the world. The Japanese have always been an imitative nation, quick to absorb and utilise the religion, art, and social life of China, and, having set their own national seal upon what they have borrowed from the Celestial Kingdom, to look elsewhere for material that should strengthen and advance their position. This imitative quality is one of Japan's most marked characteristics. She has ever been loath to impart information to others, but ready at all times to gain access to any form of knowledge likely to make for her advancement. In the fourteenth century Kenkō wrote in his Tsure-dzure-gusa: "Nothing opens one's eyes so much as travel, no matter where," and the twentieth-century Japanese has put this excellent advice into practice. He has travelled far and wide, and has made good use of his varied observations. Japan's power of imitation amounts to genius. East and West have contributed to her greatness, and it is a matter of surprise to many of us that a country so long isolated and for so many years bound by feudalism should, within a comparatively short space of time, master our Western system of warfare, as well as many of our ethical and social ideas, and become a great world-power. But Japan's success has not been due entirely to clever imitation, neither has her place among the foremost nations been accomplished with such meteor-like rapidity as some would have us suppose. We hear a good deal about the New Japan to-day, and are too prone to forget the significance of the Old upon which the present régime has been founded. Japan learnt from England, Germany and America all the tactics of modern warfare. She established an efficient army and navy on Western lines; but it must be remembered that Japan's great heroes of to-day, Togo and Oyama, still have in their veins something of the old samurai spirit, still reflect through their modernity something of the meaning of Bushido. The Japanese character is still Japanese and not Western. Her greatness is to be found in her patriotism, in her loyalty and whole-hearted love of her country. Shintōism has taught her to revere the mighty dead; Buddhism, besides adding to her religious ideals, has contributed to her literature and art, and Christianity has had its effect in introducing all manner of beneficent social reforms. There are many conflicting theories in regard to the racial origin of the Japanese people, and we have no definite knowledge on the subject. The first inhabitants of Japan were probably the Ainu, an Aryan people who possibly came from North-Eastern Asia at a time when the distance separating the Islands from the mainland was not so great as it is to-day. The Ainu were followed by two distinct Mongol invasions, and these invaders had no difficulty in subduing their predecessors; but in course of time the Mongols were driven northward by Malays from the Philippines. "By the year A.D. 500 the Ainu, the Mongol, and the Malay elements in the population had become one nation by much the same process as took place in England after the Norman Conquest. To the national characteristics it may be inferred that the Ainu contributed the power of resistance, the Mongol the intellectual qualities, and the Malay that handiness and adaptability which are the heritage of sailor-men." Such authorities as Baelz and Rein are of the opinion that the Japanese are Mongols, and although they have intermarried with the Ainu, "the two nations," writes Professor B. H. Chamberlain, "are as distinct as the whites and reds in North America." In spite of the fact that the Ainu is looked down upon in Japan, and regarded as a hairy aboriginal of interest to the anthropologist and the showman, a poor despised creature, who worships the bear as the emblem of strength and fierceness, he has, nevertheless, left his mark upon Japan. Fuji was possibly a corruption of Huchi, or Fuchi, the Ainu Goddess of Fire, and there is no doubt that these aborigines originated a vast number of geographical names, particularly in the north of the main island, that are recognisable to this day. We can also trace Ainu influence in regard to certain Japanese superstitions, such as the belief in the Kappa, or river monster.

Download or read book Yurei Attack written by Hiroko Yoda and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 2012-12-10 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yurei Attack! is a nightmare-inducing one-stop guide to Japan's traditional ghosts and spirits. Surviving encounters with angry ghosts and sexy spectres. Haunted places. Dangerous games and how to play them. And more importantly, a guided tour of what awaits in the world of the dead. Yurei is the Japanese word for "ghost." It's as simple as that. They are the souls of dead people, unable--or unwilling--to shuffle off this mortal coil. Yurei are many things, but "friendly" isn't the first word that comes to mind. Not every yurei is dangerous, but they are all driven by emotions so uncontrollably powerful that they have taken on a life of their own: rage, sadness, devotion, a desire for revenge, or even the firm belief that they are still alive. This book, the third in the authors' bestselling Attack! series, after Yokai Attack! and Ninja Attack! gives detailed information on 39 of the creepiest yurei stalking Japan, along with detailed histories and defensive tactics should you have the misfortune to encounter one. Japanese ghosts include: Oiwa, The Horror of Yotsuya Otsuyu, The Tale of the Peony Lantern The Lady Rokujo, The Tale of Genji Isora, Tales of Moonlight and Rain Orui, The Depths of Kasane Book 3 of 3 in the Yokai Attack! series. Others include Ninja Attack! and Yokai Attack!.

Download or read book Beyond Heart Mountain written by Lee Ann Roripaugh and published by Penguin (Non-Classics). This book was released on 1999 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lee Ann Roripaugh has been hailed by Ishmael Reed as "one of the brightest talents" writing poetry today. In this collection, she gives voice to the Japanese immigrants of the American West. In an unforgiving land of dirt and sagebrush, mothers labor to teach their children of the ocean, old men are displaced by geography and language, and the ghosts of Hiroshima clamor for peace. Lee Ann Roripaugh's exquisitely crafted poems rise from the pages of Beyond Heart Mountain burdened with memory and pain, yet converting these to powerful art--art that is like "the pattern of kimono found burned into a woman after Hiroshima . . . almost too beautiful, too horrible . . . to bear." Remember to raise bright orbs of rice-paper lanterns by the goldfish pond, so they can watch for me with the yellow, unblinking gaze of nocturnal things . . . --from "Peony Lantern"

Download or read book Folktales of Japan written by Elena N. Grand and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-06-08 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These tales and legends have been collected from many sources, which contains the mythology of Japan. Many are told from memory, being relics of childish days, originally heard from the lips of a school-fellow or a nurse. Certain of them, again, form favourite subjects for representation upon the Japanese stage. A number of the stories now gathered together have been translated into English long ere this, and have appeared in this country in one form or another, others are probably new to an English public. This book includes such stories as: Green Willow The Flute The Tea-Kettle The Peony Lantern The Sea King and the Magic Jewel The Good Thunder The Black Bowl The Star Lovers Horaizan Reflections The Story of Susa The Impetuous The Wind in the Pine Tree Flower of the Peony The Mallet The Bell of Dojoji The Maiden of Unai The Robe of Feathers The Singing Bird of Heaven The Cold Lady The Fire Quest A Legend of Kwannon The Espousal of the Rat's Daughter The Land of Yomi The Spring Lover and the Autumn Lover The Strange Story of the Golden Comb The Jelly-Fish takes a Journey Urashima Tamamo The Fox Maiden Momotaro The Matsuyama Mirror Broken Images The Tongue-cut Sparrow The Nurse The Beautiful Dancer of Yedo Hana-Saka-Jiji The Moon Maiden Karma The Sad Story of the Yaoya's Daughter

Download or read book 20th Century Asia written by John Udell Michaelis and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Goodnight Mice written by Frances Watts and published by . This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's time to say goodnight - but the four cheeky mice skittering scampering and scurrying to bed dont seem very sleepy!