Sunday, May 22, 2011

Oriental fantastical fiction available in english

I'm not sure how Kobo Abe and Pu Songling and other chinese fantasy writers would fit into this picture as I have not read any of this stuff, but I've been interested in picking this stuff up because they will tend to pick up the best of the best at this point. I often wonder if there is a history of this stuff in africa and india aside from a few breakouts. There are also a large number of oriental bestiary books coming out.
Scotland and Ireland has always been the region that excites me most in terms of the visuals, feelings and myths of the places, I dont think it is just because I'm from Scotland(maybe it is), but there is a lot of collections dedicated to celtic stories, some good ones from Wordsworth Editions, who also recently put out a collection of old Australian horror, I cant even imagine what that might be like.

Kurodahan publish a lot of this stuff, they are an interesting publisher and here is their catalog

Ryunosuke Akutagawa- Hell Screen
This story can be found in numerous collections like Rashomon And Seventeen Other Stories


Ueda Akinari- Tales Of Moonlight And Rain


Kaiki: Uncanny Tales From Japan
The third book is coming soon




Lafcadio Hearn- Kwaidan, In Ghostly Japan



Toyohashi Collection Of Ancient Japanese Ghost stories
A kindle-only book that is supposed to be from a decades out of print book.


Japanese Tales
I think this is more fantasy focused.


Oriental Tales Of Terror


Izumi Kyoka- Japanese Gothic Tales, In Light Of Shadows
Amano cover on the second volume.



Edogawa Rampo- Japanese Tales Of Mystery & Imagination, Moju: The Blind Beast, Edogawa Rampo Reader, Black Lizard/ Beast In The Shadows





Best Japanese Science Fiction Stories
Notice how different the cover might be today.


Speculative Japan
Two volumes of this so far.


Lairs Of The Hidden Gods
Four volumes so far of lovecraftian stories by japanese writers.


Asamatsu Ken- Queen Of K'n-Yan
A cover by Castlevania artist Ayami Kojima.


Yoo
Seemingly a Weird Tales style magazine


Does anyone know anything about that singing style in ghostly/monster and samurai movies and games where there is ghostly voices going "YOOOOOOOOOOO! YOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOO!" ?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ayami Kojima is one of my 'favorite' artists, I really wish she would compile a book of her works.

Robert Adam Gilmour said...

There is a full version of the artwork on the website of the publisher I linked to above
...
http://www.kurodahan.com/mt/img/big.illos/j0018l18.gif

She did a nice painting for this website too...
http://www.yamanemichiru.com/

I like her a lot too, but I think sometimes the faces she does are sometimes too empty, it makes sense for some pictures, but she does it a bit too often. The characters that look like they have a real living person behind their eyes are usually women.

Anonymous said...

I admit can see what you're talking about. It honestly never really bothered me that much because of the mask-like look those empty, emotionless faces held.

Another very talented artist named Suehiro Maruo has been illustrating a lot of Edogawa Rampo's work as of late. Perhaps I should post some of these as they very impressive.