A review by theesotericcamel
Japanese Gothic Tales by Kyoka Izumi

5.0

There is truly something rather unique about Izumi Kyoka's literary style, and Gothic is not necessarily the best way to describe it, although I can understand why it was chosen for the title of this anthology. The problem with Gothic as a word is that it is a very European-centric word, referring to a particular period and/or aesthetic from Western culture. Where the aesthetic intersects with Kyoka's work is in their morbid and antiquarian imagery. As with Western Gothic Literature, the inspiration comes from folktales and legends, and both have a pessimistic view of love intertwined with death. Both deal with emotionally overwrought melodrama. But the main difference is the cultural source of the folktales and legends... With Buddhism and Japanese folktales becoming the main source for Kyoka's stories, they might seem a little alien to Western readers. That being said, there is still a lot of beauty to be appreciated from the prose itself. I would argue that the difficulty that a lot of the other reviewers describe is not so much from the source of the writing, but rather the form. The editor and translator of this edition, Charles Shiro Inouye, refers to Kyoka's writing style as Pictographic. He argues that Kyoka borrows a lot of his tropes from Kusazoushi, illustrated novels that were popular in the Meiji era of Japan and consisted of popular folk stories with characteristic illustrations. One must also keep in mind that the written Japanese language uses Kanji, Chinese pictographic characters that can have multiple meanings depending on the context. This results in a writing style that consists of a series of vignettes that are intricately described but loosely connected together. This is not a common Japanese style at all and is one of the idiosyncratic features of Kyoka in particular. That being said, Inouye makes his translations accessible, and anyone can still enjoy these stories without prior knowledge to any of this. Personally, I did not have much difficulty getting into any of the stories and found myself engaged from the get-go. But then again I like listening to stories. And given the fact that a common reoccurring trope in all the stories is stories within stories, I was smitten. Although the introduction compares Kyoka to Edgar Allen Poe, I would argue that Arthur Machen is a better Western counterpart. Arthur Machen was a closer contemporary of Kyoka, and both had a stronger visual and experimental edge in their writing while referring to local myths and legends for their source material. I feel that Kyoka is more of a Weird Fiction prototype than Gothic fiction, if only because Gothic doesn't really fit in the Eastern milieu.