Hearn was Greek-Irish, went to Japan in 1890 as a newspaper correspondent, married into a samurai family, took the name Koizumi Yakumo, and spent the rest of his life there. This is the collection he’s known for — Japanese ghost stories he heard or found in old texts, retold in spare English. The blind musician whose body is covered in protective sutras except his ears. The woman of the snow who spares a young man on the condition that he never speak of her. A man who drinks a soul from a cup of water. Then an odd tail of essays on insects. Kobayashi made four of them into a film in 1964.
Kwaidan: Ghost Stories and Strange Tales of Old Japan