Kyogoku

Having Requiem from the Darkness (巷説百物語) of Kyogoku Natsuhiko (京極夏彦) as my bedtime reading recently.

Honestly, the book does not live up to my expectation. In the middle of the first chapter, when that handful of (apparently) unrelated people gathered in the little house for a torrential rain, and each told their own thrilling story, I was about to believe the book was a variant of The Decameron (十日談) by Giovanni Boccaccio.

But it was not. As the stories unfolded themselves, the book turned out to be a collection of (somewhat clumsily told) detective plots - topped with a dressing of ghost and mystery.

Ironically, there was nothing supernatural in the stories - but everything appears unreal (alas, unrealistic). The characters, the happenings, and the sequence of events all seem inhuman. In fact, it is the perfect opposite of Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (聊齋誌異) by Pu Songling (蒲松齡) - which is full of monsters and fairies, but all characters are thoroughly human in their personality, so much so I am inclined to believe these strange stories are more likely than the Japanese ones to happen in real world.

Well, even for a collection of short detective stories with a similar layout, I am sure The Thirteen Problems of Agatha Christie is way better.

PS. Of note, the most interesting part of this book is the cartoon The Nine Phases of Death (九相詩繪卷) on its inside cover. We should really use it for teaching our students forensic pathology.