KWAIDAN means "weird tales." Lafcadio Hearn has taken KWAIDAN and written some amazing, hair-raising tales of long ago—delicate, transparent, ghostly sketches of a world unreal, but with a haunting sense of spiritual reality. It is a unique collection of haunting Japanese supernatural stories written by a Westerner who adopted Japan as his homeland.

KWAIDAN is full of goblins and ghosts, snowwomen and treewomen, a kingdom of dead warriors, and a kingdom of ants where a man might spend a lifetime in only a few moments. The stories inspired no less a writer than Edgar Allen Poe, and were the basis for the 1965 movie of the same name, which consisted of four ghost stories adapted from Hearn’s work.

作为近代西方有名的日本通，小泉八云的名字在日本广为人知。他虽然是爱尔兰裔希腊人，但在日本生活了十四年，直至生命的终点。受了东方民族与宗教充满魅力的文化影响，小泉八云习惯于从民俗与情感方面入手，去解释、透视日本人的灵魂。在十四年里，他花了无数心血来研究日本民族的传统和国民性，研究日本的文学、艺术、宗教、神话，用生花妙笔写下了多部有关日本的著作，如《陌生日本的一瞥》（1894）、《远东的未来》（1895）、《异国风情及回想》（1898）、《灵之日本》（1899）、《暗影》（1900）、《日本杂录》（1901）、《骨董》（1902）、《怪谈》（1904）等。这些著作使他成为一面西方人透视日本的镜子，也为他在世界文学史上取得了一席之地。