GLOSSARY
A pocketglossary for summer kaidan
Terms that recur throughout this feature, organized with reading, origin, and cross-reference. Use it as a small dictionary you can keep open beside the page.
A general term for the strange tales told on summer nights. Fixed as a late-summer season word in the late-Edo saijiki.
Lafcadio Hearn[19]'s
Kwaidan (1904)[61] carried the name to an international audience.
A ghost — a spirit attached to this world that cannot pass on, and that haunts a specific person. Unlike a yokai, it has a 'past life' attached to it. A summer season word.
A gathering held at night in which participants take turns telling kaidan, extinguishing one of a hundred candles after each tale. The moment all are out, a real apparition is said to appear.
Asai Ryōi[11]'s
Otogi Bōko (1666)[12] is the foundational literary form.
A test of nerve: walking alone at midnight through graveyards, ruined temples, or deserted mountain paths. Began as wartime training for the samurai, became a summer-night townsfolk custom in the late Edo, and continues today in VR experiences and elaborate haunted houses.
Short for urabon (Obon). The four days (August 13–16) when ancestral spirits return home. Most saijiki classify it as early autumn, but to the ear it belongs on the summer continuum.
The welcome fire. On the evening of August 13, hemp stalks (ogara) are burned at the gate to receive the ancestral spirits. In Kyoto, the welcoming counterpart to the Daimonji farewell fires.
The farewell fire of August 16, sending the ancestral spirits back to the other world. Kyoto's Gozan no Okuribi — Daimonji, Myō-Hō, the boat, the western 大, the torii — is the most famous example.
The grave visit during Obon. A site of conversation with the dead, and a source for countless Bon-night kaidan.
A Buddhist festival whose name derives from the Sanskrit ullambana. Transmitted via China in the seventh century, it took on folk character in Japan as the four days (August 13–16) when ancestors return.
Urabon-e[6] is the formal name.
The 'spirit shelf' set up during Bon to receive the ancestors. Offerings include an eggplant ox, a cucumber horse, water, rice, and fruit — a vegetable embodiment of the folk idea that 'the ancestors come quickly home on the horse, and go slowly back on the ox'.
The first Bon after a person's forty-ninth-day Buddhist memorial — observed more formally than ordinary Bon, with the family gathered. Called hatsubon in some regions.
A Buddhist offering rite for the homeless dead and for those who have fallen into the realm of hungry ghosts. Often combined with Obon and performed at temples in July or August. The religious ritual underlying the 'homeless ghost' protagonist of kaidan.
Ancestral spirits — protected by family, returning home at Obon. They stand in contrast to the homeless ghosts: in kaidan, it is the homeless spirits, not the ancestors, who are the protagonists.
A general term for any story that deals with the strange — events that resist explanation. Kaidan is a subgenre. The lineage runs from the ancient Nihon Ryōiki onward.
Urban legend — rumor passed in the anonymous spaces of modern life (schools, workplaces, subways, the internet). A modern descendant of the kaiitan, presupposing contemporary urban living.
'True' kaidan, told with the convention that the events actually happened. From the 1990s on, series like
Shin Mimibukuro[63] established the form. The narrator-to-tale distance is the basic format of contemporary kaidan.
The folk belief that explains a person's sudden disappearance — and possible later return — as the work of a spirit. A classic source material for the kaiitan.
An oral storytelling art in which the performer strikes a reading desk with a folding fan (harisen) while narrating historical accounts, war chronicles, and tales of chivalrous outlaws. Stands alongside rakugo in the late-Edo oral repertoire.
The performance form of reading a text aloud. In the contemporary period, YouTube and podcast kaidan-reading channels have emerged as a new generation of storytellers.
The variety theater where rakugo, kōdan, naniwa-bushi, and other arts are performed. Developed in the late Edo period. In summer, kaidan-banashi takes its standard place on the bill.
A subgenre of rakugo: long-form pieces centered on human feeling and on romantic devotion.
Enchō[3] established both kaidan-banashi and ninjō-banashi as full forms.
A general term for inexplicably strange events. The raw material of kaidan. The phenomenon itself is neutral; once narrated, it branches into kaidan, yōkaitan, or urban legend.
A general term in the classics (such as the Tale of Genji) for evil spirits, vengeful spirits, and living spirits that attach to a person. In yokai studies: the 'ki of mono', an 'invisible foreign presence'.
A colloquial term for non-human beings that appear in transformed shape. Within the broader yokai category, it emphasizes the 'shape-shifting' lineage. Frequent in Edo-period kaidan haiku.
Divine spirits that take up residence in objects that have lived for a hundred years. The category was systematized by
Toriyama Sekien[16] in Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro (1784).
