Impermanence

Impermanence

For thousands of years, due to the great differences between the eastern and western civilizations, when civilizations began to blend, some people who wandered between the two cultures felt interesting, but others felt frightened. In the 20th century, after the world was connected by Westerners after the industrial revolution, Koizumi Yakumo was such a traveler who wandered between eastern and western cultures. Through his novels in which the Stories and Legends of Ghosts and Gods are narrated in the East, what I see is not the cultural differences, but the common breath of Eastern civilization. Many of the stories in Stories and Legends of Ghosts and Gods actually borrowed historical stories, including Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio 500 years ago, and Extensive Records Compiled in the Taiping Years a thousand years ago; Even in the Tang Dynasty, which can be traced back to 1,200 years ago, Japan has studied the culture and system of the Tang Dynasty for a long time in history; but the Japanese have added their own culture and style to the stories they have borrowed from. Those familiar stories show the living conditions of ancient Japanese ministers, warriors, businessmen, farmers, and other classes, and the books are full of their emotions and various living conditions. The talented blind pipa artist in Hoichi the Earless was almost taken to hell because of his amazing pipa skills；The lactating mother exchanges her life to pray for the recovery of her child. The "cherry blossom tree" that blooms on February 16 each year is a manifestation of this maternal love；There are also snow girls, raccoons who become faceless women, mermaid, spring water that can rejuvenate people, and greedy wives greedily drink spring water and finally become a baby ... To sum up, among ghosts and gods, people in the East have faith in reincarnation and karma in the impermanent world.  

Aside from all the horrible or strange stories, the short stories in the Stories and Legends of Ghosts and Gods are like dark red camellia flowers blooming in the shade, giving off mysterious, mysterious, delicate, and mournful beauty in the shade, like the flowers on a dark kimono, showing impermanence through ghosts, gods and monsters.