Supernatural Japan examines the role of Japanese writer Izumi Kyoka (1873–1939) in the formation of modern literature of the fantastic in Japan as a global literary genre. Kyoka wrote some of the most famous stories of ghosts, monsters, and the supernatural in modern Japanese literature, including The Holy Man of Mt. Koya, The Grass Labyrinth, and The Castle Tower. Despite the clearly modernist elements and global influences of Kyoka’s fiction, his work has often been characterized as relying on traditional Japanese genres as inspiration for its themes and literary form. Pedro Bassoe considers how Kyoka’s stories have been produced by a meeting of global influences—including Apuleius, The Arabian Nights, Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, Prosper Mérimée, Guy de Maupassant, Gerhart Hauptmann, and Jules Verne—combined with traditional Japanese genres. Bassoe develops the notion of “the scholarly fantastic” to describe how a set of realistic epistemologies reinforce the fantastic in Kyoka’s writings. Supernatural Japan offers an up-to-date introduction to Izumi Kyoka and his writing for students, scholars, or fans of Japanese fantasy literature and media.
