Japanese Folklore

1. Yours truly,
Nur-Aisha Paszible-

3. By: Lafcadio
Hearn

4. The Yong-Lo Bell, cast in
1403 at the end of the first
year of the reign of the
Emperor Yong-Lo, the third
emperor of the Ming
dynasty. Weighing nearly
fifty tons, its sound could
be heard fifty kilometers
away on a clear night. The
bell is housed in the Great
Bell Temple, located in the
Haidian District of Beijing
and built in the year 1733.
Image courtesy of Cultural
China.

7. Lafcadio Hearn (aka) Koizumi Yakumo (in Japan)
Born on June 27, 1850, in Levkas, Ionian
Islands, Greece (Lefkada, Greece)
Son of Charles Bush Hearn & Rosa Antoniou
Kassimati
Grew up Dublin and was educated at Roman
Catholic Ushaw College, Durham, where his name
appears in records as Patrick Hearn
Got injured in a playground accident during his
teens, & suffered from lost of vision in left eye

8. • At the age of 19, Hearn left Ireland
for United States and settled in
Cincinnati, Ohio
• Worked at various menial jobs &
then on the Trade List, a business
weekly. Eventually he became a
reporter for The Cincinnati
Enquirer.
• While in Cincinnati he translated
stories from the French writer
Theophile Gautier entitled One of
Cleopatra’s Nights (1882) &
Gustave Flaubert’s Temptation of
St. Anthony (publishes
posthumously).

9. • Married to Alethea “Mattie” Foley, a
black woman (illegal at the time).
• When discovered he was fired from
Enquirer and went to work for rival,
The Cincinnati Commercial (1875),
where he contributed prose poems &
scholarly essays on themes unusual
for that time, such as life among
urban blacks.
• Divorced Foley in 1877 and then,
Hearn went to New Orleans.
• He wrote about Creole culture,
French Opera, Louisiana politics
(Voodoo), & helped popularized New
Orleans’ unique culture.

10. • Later, he made up two of his earliest works – Stray
Leaves from Strange Literature (1884) and Some
Chinese Ghosts (1887).
•He wrote on Buddhism, Islam, on French and Russian
Literature.
•His editorials ranged from scientific topics to articles on
anti-Semitism in Russia & France. Chita (1889), an
adventure novel about the only survivor of a tidal wave.
• 1887-1889 he lived in Martinique in the West Indies on
assignment for Harper’s Magazine, which resulted in
Two Years in the French West Indie (1890) & his
novel Youma (1890), a highly original story of a slave
insurrection.

11. JAPAN
•Sent to Japan as a newspaper
correspondent in 1890, but was quickly
terminated
•Shimane Prefectural Common Middle
School and Normal School in Matsue
•Married Koizumi Setsu, daughter of a
samurai family, had four children
•1891: Moved to Kumamoto & worked at
Fifth Higher Middle School while
completing Glimpses of Unfamiliar

12. LATER LIFE 1894:

13. LEGACY
• Grave located at Zoshigaya
Cemetery in Toshima
• With introduction of
Japanese aesthetics to west
in 1900,
• Hearn’s writings became
known to the world
Offered the West first
glimpses into pre-
industrial and Meiji-era
Japan Homes in
Kumamoto and Matsue are
now museums dedicated to

14. WORKS ON JAPAN
•Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894)
•Out of the East: Reveries and Studies in
New Japan (1985)
• Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese
Inner Life (1896)
•Gleanings in Buddha-Fields: Studies of
Hand and Soul in the Far East (1897)
•The Boy Who Drew Cats (1897) Exotics
and Retrospectives (1898) Japanese Fairy
Tales (1898)
•In Ghostly Japan (1899) Shadowings
(1900)
•Japanese Lyrics (1900)
•A Japanese Miscellany (1901)
•Kottô: Being Japanese Curios, with
Sundry Cobwebs (1902)
•Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange
Things (1903)
•The Romance of the Milky Way and Other
Studies and Stories (1905)

15. By: Lafcadio
Hearn

16. Protagonist:
Kouan-Yu – the Worthy Mandarin, an
official of Ming Dynasty. The beloved father
of Ko-Ngai.
Ko-Ngai – the Loving daughter of Kouan-
Yu. She had a dazzling loveliness of beauty
whose heart was even more beautiful than
her face.
Antagonist:
Celestial August – the Son of Heaven.
Yong-Lo (Emperor) of the “Illustrious” or
Ming Dynasty.

17. Vocabulary:Mallet n – hammer
Smite v – to strike or heavily especially with hand
Eaves n – the lower boarder of a roof that overhangs the wall
Shiver n – a tremulous motion; a tremble
Gilded adj – covered or highlighted with gold
Gargoyles n – a grotesquely carved figure of a human or
animal.
Perches n – a pole or rod, usually horizontal, serving as a roost
for birds.
Pagodas n – a temple or sacred building, usually a pyramid
like tower and typically having upward-curving roofs over the
individual stories.
Quiver n – the act or state of quivering; a tremble or tremor.

18. Vocabulary:Writhing n – to twist or bend out of shape or position;
distort
Incense n – the perfume or smoke arising from such a
substance when burned.
Lacquered
Goblins n – a grotesque sprite or elf that is mischievous
or malicious toward people.
Cornices
Wriggle
Moan
Sibilant
Sobbing

19. Vocabulary:
Faints
Stupendous
Cunning
Foundry
Toiling
Behest n - an order, command, or request

20. The water-clock marks
the hour in the Tachung
sz’, in the Tower of the
Great Bell: now the
mallet is lifted to smite
the lips of the metal
monster—the vast lips
inscribed with Buddhist
texts from the sacred Fa-
hwa-King, from the
chapters of the holy Ling-
yen-King! Hear the great
bell responding!—how
mighty her voice, though
tongueless! KO-NGAI!

21. All the little dragons on the high-tilted eaves
of the green roofs shiver to the tips of their
gilded tails under that deep wave of sound; all
the porcelain gargoyles tremble on their carven
perches; all the hundred little bells of the
pagodas quiver with desire to speak. KO-
NGAI—all the green-and-gold tiles of the
temple are vibrating; the wooden goldfish
above them are writhing against the sky; the
uplifted finger of Fo shakes high over the
heads of the worshippers through the blue fog
of incense! KO-NGAI!—What a thunder tone
was that!

22. All the lacquered goblins on the palace cornices wriggle
their fire-coloured tongues! And after each huge shock,
how wondrous the multiple echo and the great golden
moan, and, at last, the sudden sibilant sobbing in the ears
when the immense tone faints away in broken whispers of
silver, as though a woman should whisper, “Hiai!” Even so
the great bell hath sounded every day for well-nigh five
hundred years—Ko-Ngai: first with stupendous clang, then
with immeasurable moan of gold, then with silver
murmuring of “Hiai!” And there is not a child in all the
many-coloured ways of the old Chinese city who does not
know the story of the great bell, who cannot tell you why
the great bell says Ko-Ngai and Hiai! Now this is the story
of the great bell in the Tachung sz’, as the same is related in
the Pe-Hiao-Tou-Choue, written by the learned Yu-Pao-
Tchen, of the City of Kwang-tchau-fu.

23. Nearly five hundred years ago the Celestially
August, the Son of Heaven, Yong-Lo, of the
“Illustrious” or Ming dynasty, commanded the
worthy official Kouan-Yu that he should have a
bell made of such size that the sound thereof
might be heard for one hundred li. And he
further ordained that the voice of the bell should
be strengthened with brass, and deepened with
gold, and sweetened with silver; and that the
face and the great lips of it should be graven
with blessed sayings from the sacred books, and
that it should be suspended in the centre of the
imperial capital to sound through all the many-
coloured ways of the City of Pe-King.

24. Therefore the worthy mandarin Kouan-Yu
assembled the master-moulders and the
renowned bell smiths of the empire, and all
men of great repute and cunning in
foundry work; and they measured the materials
for the alloy, and treated them skilfully, and
prepared the moulds, the fires, the instruments,
and the monstrous melting-pot for fusing the
metal. And they laboured exceedingly, like
giants neglecting only rest and sleep and the
comforts of life; toiling both night and day in
obedience to Kouan-Yu, and striving in all
things to do the behest of the Son of Heaven.

26. A second time the bell was cast, and the
result was even worse. Still the metals obstinately
refused to blend one with the other; and there
was no uniformity in the bell, and the sides of it
were cracked and fissured, and the lips of it were
slagged and split asunder; so that all the labour
had to be repeated even a third time, to the great
dismay of Kouan-Yu. And when the Son of
Heaven heard these things, he was angrier than
before; and sent his messenger to Kouan-Yu
with a letter, written upon lemon-coloured silk
and sealed with the seal of the dragon,
containing these words:

28. Now, Kouan-Yu had a daughter of dazzling
loveliness whose name—Ko-Ngai—was ever in
the mouths of poets, and whose heart was even
more beautiful than her face. Ko-Ngai loved her
father with such love that she had refused a
hundred worthy suitors rather than make his home
desolate by her absence; and when she had seen the
awful yellow missive, sealed with the Dragon-Seal,
she fainted away with fear for her father’s sake.
And when her senses and her strength returned to
her, she could not rest or sleep for thinking of her
parent’s danger, until she had secretly sold some of
her jewels, and with the money so obtained had
hastened to an astrologer, and paid him a great
price to advise her by what means her father might
be saved from the peril impending over him.

29. So the astrologer made observations of the
heavens, and marked the aspect of the Silver Stream
(which we call the Milky Way), and examined the
signs of the Zodiac—the Hwang-tao, or Yellow
Road—and consulted the table of the Five Hin, or
Principles of the Universe, and the mystical books of
the alchemists. And after a long silence, he made
answer to her, saying:
So Ko-Ngai returned home sorrowfu
at heart; but she kept secret all that she had heard, and
told no one what she had done.

30. At last came the awful day when the third and last
effort to cast the great bell was to be made; and Ko-
Ngai, together with her waiting-woman, accompanied
her father to the foundry, and they took their places upon
a platform overlooking the toiling of the moulders and
the lava of liquefied metal. All the workmen wrought at
their tasks in silence; there was no sound heard but the
muttering of the fires. And the muttering deepened into a
roar like the roar of typhoons approaching, and the
blood-red lake of metal slowly brightened like the
vermilion of a sunrise, and the vermilion was transmuted
into a radiant glow of gold, and the gold whitened
blindingly, like the silver face of a full moon. Then the
workers ceased to feed the raving flame, and all fixed
their eyes upon the eyes of Kouan-Yu; and Kouan-Yu
prepared to give the signal to cast.

31. But ere ever he lifted his finger, a cry
caused him to turn his head and all heard
the voice of Ko-Ngai sounding sharply sweet
as a bird’s song above the great thunder of
the fires—“For thy sake, O my father!” And
even as she cried, she leaped into the white
flood of metal; and the lava of the furnace
roared to receive her, and spattered
monstrous flakes of flame to the roof, and
burst over the verge of the earthen crater,
and cast up a whirling fountain of many-
coloured fires, and subsided quakingly, with
lightnings and with thunders and with
mutterings.

33. Then the father of Ko-Ngai, wild with his
grief, would have leaped in after her, but that
strong men held him back and kept firm
grasp upon him until he had fainted away,
and they could bear him like one dead to his
home. And the serving-woman of Ko-Ngai,
dizzy and speechless for pain, stood before
the furnace, still holding in her hands a shoe,
a tiny, dainty shoe, with embroidery of pearls
and flowers—the shoe of her beautiful
mistress that was. For she had sought to
grasp Ko-Ngai by the foot as she leaped, but
had only been able to clutch the shoe, and the
pretty shoe came off in her hand; and she
continued to stare at it like one gone mad.

34. But in spite of all these things, the
command of the Celestial and August
had to be obeyed, and the work of
the moulders to be finished,
hopeless as the result might be. Yet
the glow of the metal seemed purer
and whiter than before; and there
was no sign of the beautiful body that
had been entombed therein. So the
ponderous casting was made; and lo!
when the metal had become cool, it
was found that the bell was beautiful

35. li,

36. And still, between each mighty stroke there
is a long low moaning heard; and ever the
moaning ends with a sound of sobbing and of
complaining, as though a weeping woman
should murmur, “Hiai!” And still, when the
people hear that great golden moan they keep
silence, but when the sharp, sweet shuddering
comes in the air, and the sobbing of “Hiai!”
then, indeed, do all the Chinese mothers in all
the many-coloured ways of Pe-King whisper
to their little ones: “Listen! that is Ko-Ngai
crying for her shoe! That is Ko-Ngai calling
for her shoe!”