For Wednesday: Hearn, Japanese Ghost Stories (pp.3-68)

NOTE: Read as many as you can between pages 3-68, and feel free to skip one or two if they don't grab you. But most of them are very addictive and fun--you'll want to read most of them. But if you don't finish, no big deal, since you can easily answer the questions below. 

Answer TWO of the following: 

Q1: How do any of these stories seem to relate to concepts we’ve read in the Tao te Ching and Gibran’s poems?  Do we still find ‘Eastern’ values expressed within the ghost stories and legends of the book?  Are people punished for their failure to follow something tantamount to the “Way” or for being attached to selfish desires and passions? 

Q2: What is unusual about the narrative style? Who seems to be telling these stories? Why aren't these stories more typically third-person omniscient narrators, and could this make the stories seem scarier or more unusual? 

Q3: Throughout the stories, Hearn (an American by way of England) struggles to translate the culture and customs of Japan through these colorful, exotic stories. But as in the Tao te Ching, some terms and ideas don't translate. What story had an untranslatable concept or idea? What seems to make it so foreign to Western readers? 

Q4: Do you feel these stories were meant to be read literally, similar to our own horror movies, which are supposedly “based on a true story?”  Or are these metaphorical stories, like The Prophet, which are meant to be enjoyed and then puzzled over to catch its true meaning?  Which story best illustrates either approach?