Okay, now I understand.

Thank you for taking my suggestion and please let me know what you think after finishing The Summer of Ubume. ^-^

ayame:

I think human nature is just too broad for one to define what is weird in human nature and what is not.

I ordered the Summer of Ubume just the other day, so it should arrive this week. I’m now eager to get started since you list this as your favorite. ^^

The whole series is difficult to read by nature of all the difficult kanji, choice of words, occult terms and archaic passages here and there. But I am glad it is the way it is and is not at all dumbed down. The language is difficult because it meant to reflect the appropriate era. In “The Summer of Ubume”, for example, there are excerpts of a doctor’s personal diary and it is written very much in the style befitting an educated man of good family who was schooled in the pre-WWII era, before the sweeping linguistic reform in Japan came about after the war. It really does give the feeling of traumatic break with the past. I wonder how they are ever going to convey the same feeling in the English translation.

I have never read the manga of “Mouryou no Hako”.

Yes, “Mononoke” is the best thing that has ever happened to the anime scene in a long time. Stylish and profound.

Massacadot Tyler:

First of all, many thanks for your kind words and hope you enjoy this blog.

I think the archaic form you meant is this?

http://alphads10-2.hkbu.edu.hk/~lcprichi/search/show_word.php?id=602

I believe the word next to “女 (woman)” is not “笑 (laugh)” but “芺”. The upper part of that word is not 竹 but 艸. I looked it out in my huge Chinese dictionary at home and apparently it is the word for a plant known as “cirsium ovalifolium”.

I am happy with the modern form “妖” as it is. Six out of ten kaidan stories have a woman who bears a grudge and dies prematurely with that grudge.

On a side note, I am amused that this whole kaidan genre is so centered on women who bear a grudge in that I cannot seem to think of any western equivalent. There is Anna Karenina who throws herself off into the railway track but that’s the end of it. For some reason, western writers just don’t seem to be as interested in women (dead or alive) who bear a grudge.

This is my firt posting. Very intersting insight. I believe that the archaic form (small seal script) of the character 妖 is written as 女 (woman) and 笑 (laugh).

See
http://www.zdic.net/zd/zi/ZdicE5ZdicA6Zdic96.htm

I recently finished watching Mononoke. I felt the artistic style was very beautiful, while the stories contributed the creepy aspect of ayashii.

I never knew that those novels were to be translated into English, so many thanks for letting me know. “The Summer of Ubume” is my favorite by far. In terms of length, it is actually the shortest of them all. The Japanese edition I have is only a little over 600 pages, whereas the typical Kyougoku novel average out to around 1000 pages.

Pardon me but I read your last sentence several times and am not too sure that I understand. ^-^ Please feel free to elaborate.

susperia:

Yes, I vaguely remember something along those lines in “X” and “Tokyo Babylon”.

That is an interesting insight into cherry trees I am vaguely aware of a loose association it had with spirits and the dead, but not the pervasiveness of that motif through different media. I don’t think of cherry blossoms as ayashii personally, but in the sense that ayashii has connotations of alluring and bewitching, I can see how that would translate to sakura.