Hearn retells strange Japanese tales of reunited ghosts, a dreamer's vision of Fugen-Bosatsu and a painted girl who steps from her picture, then turns to essays on the shrilling of cicadas, girls' names and old street ballads. The book closes with reveries on nightmares and a mysterious dream-book that rewrites itself.
Books mentioned in Shadowings (6)
Konjaku Monogatari: “The original story is to be found in the curious volume entitled Konseki-Monogatari”
Jikkinshō: “From the old story-book, Jikkun-sho THERE was once a very pious and learned priest, called Shoku Shonin, who lived in the province of Harima.”
Otogi Hyaku Monogatari by Aoki Rosui: “Related in the Otogi-Hyaku-Monogatari SAYS the old Japanese author, Hakubai-En Rosui:-- "In Chinese and in Japanese books there are related many stories,--both of ancient and of modern times,--about pictures that were so beautiful as to exercise a magical influence upon the beholder.”
Lotus Sutra: “For many years he meditated daily upon the chapter of Fugen-Bosatsu [the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra] in the Sutra of the Lotos of the Good Law; and he used to pray, every morning and evening, that he might at some time be permitted to behold Fugen-Bosatsu as a living presence, and in the form described in the holy text.”
Madame Chrysanthème by Pierre Loti: “Lovers of Pierre Loti (the world's greatest prose-writer) may remember in Madame Chrysantheme a delightful passage about a Japanese house,--describing the old dry woodwork as impregnated with sonority by the shrilling crickets of a hundred summers.”
Greek Anthology: “It is especially in their poems upon the cicada that we find the old Greeks confessing their love of insect-melody: witness the lines in the Anthology about the tettix caught in a spider's snare, and "making lament in the thin fetters" until freed by the poet;”