Haunted Japan

Exploring the World of Japanese Yokai, Ghosts and the Paranormal

By: Catrien Ross

Narrated by: Ruth Urquhart

Japanese folklore is abundant with tales of ghostly creatures and the supernatural. In Haunted Japan, author Catrien Ross reveals the legends that have been passed down for generations and continue to terrify us today. To research this book on the country's ghosts, demons, and paranormal phenomena, Ross collected accounts from across Japan including:

• Sacred Mount Osore, a Japanese gateway to the land of the dead, where people gather to contact those who have passed on
• The Tokyo grave of the samurai Taira no Masakado, where passersby regularly witnessed his ghost until prayers finally laid him to rest
• The mummified remains of the monk Tetsumonkai at the Churenji Temple on Mount Yudono - a place where bizarre happenings are common
• The ruins of Hachioji Castle in Tokyo, which was abandoned for many years because of its many hauntings

The result is an unparalleled insight into the dark corners of the Japanese psyche - a world filled with horrifying creatures including Oni (demons with fierce and ghastly appearances), Yurei (Japanese ghosts who inhabit the world of the living), and Yokai (supernatural monsters).

©2020 Catrien Ross (P)2020 Tantor

Disappointing.

My main issue with this audiobook is the performance. The pronunciation of Japanese words and names is so terrible it distracts from the actual content. (ex. “myojin” was prounced “moyojin” — where did the extra “o” come from?) Many times It’s hard to imagine how the actual word or name is spelled because of the way the narrator speaks it. Maybe it’s passable for non-Japanese speakers, but not for anyone who is at least familiar with how the Japanese language is spoken.

The terrible pronunciation applies to English words, too. “Shogunate” was pronounced as if it were a Japanese word, “ethnologist” was pronounced “ethynologist”, and “aum” (the Greek letter) was pronounced “A-U-M” as if it were an acronym. This only shows the narrator’s lack of familiarity with the subject or simply doesn’t understand what she is reading. How people thought this quality is actually good enough to take money for it is beyond me.

As for the content, it’s interesting but it lacks structure. The title is “Haunted Japan” but half the book is about mystics. That part reads like a separate book altogether.

It also abruptly ends without tying anything up. It’s like saying, “Here are mystic and ghost stories I heard about, I’ll just throw them all at you and not add any insight.”

The stories are also more based on hearsay rather than actual research. Parts of it feel like the author simply retold what she she was told and failed to add first-hand research. For example, she writes of Lady Oiwa as if the kabuki play were based on a real story, but fails to note that this was Nanboku’s reimagining. The real Lady Oiwa was not killed by her own husband, and in fact lived very well. You can even see it written where Oiwa Shrine stands. Very misleading!

If you’re interested in scary stories about Japan, you’ll likely find better content elsewhere. Or if you must absolutely read this book, opt for the written one. Otherwise, you’ll just roll your eyes most of the time.

Not acceptable for scholarly research

Catrien Ross's "Haunted Japan: Exploring the World of Japanese Yokai, Ghosts and the Paranormal" is many things, but one thing it cannot be said to be is scholarly. While Catrien says she was a university lecturer, she only lists her secondary education.

I am not from the UK, but I am pretty sure that it would be extraordinary if she were a university lecturer with just a marginal degree of education; however, if she's a guest lecturer, that might explain this, given that guest lecturers don't have to have any set of specific credentials.

I would have more minor issues with Catrien if she didn't also describe herself as a "sudden genius." Catrien also claims to be a practitioner of traditional Asian medicine, which seems to be something that clouds her objectivity.

Any individual with external knowledge of Japan and the Supernatural as it pertains to Japan (albeit it an ever-shifting understanding dependent on time, place, history, and changing social, political, economic, and cultural norms) would know that much of her work is surface-level, lacking in any content worth serious discussion.

Catrien is not interested in the facts and their interpretations, nor is she willing to cite sources for anything that appears in her book, excluding illustrations. The problem is that this book lies in an ambiguous grey zone between fiction and nonfiction. If Catrien advertised the book as a spiritual /new age/ autobiography, it would be better than the grey zone in which it exists as quasi-non-fiction.

The title is somewhat misleading as well; I would have titled it "Paranormal" or "Super Natural Japan." I state this because Catrien spends more time discussing Clairvoyance, telekinesis, body energies, eastern medicine, and mysticism, while very little of the book details hauntings. Whether Catrien is unaware or is aware and chooses to ignore, much of her claims can and have been debunked by magicians like James Randi and Penn and Teller.

She could just as easily written a book about magicians in Japan with changing little of the content aside from admitting that these beliefs are more fiction than fact.

Further, Catrien makes bold claims about a song around a particular festival actually being Hebrew rather than Japanese in nature. While there is a belief among some Japanese that Jesus escaped to Japan to avoid the crucifixion, I could not find any reference to these lyrics in any credible secondary source, just a translation of the imagined lyrics. I am Jewish and had she provided these lyrics; I would have been able to tell you at the very least if they were Hebrew.

She also seems to be ignorant of what a Star of David is; I say this because she asserts that the Sawaguchi clan's emblem bears a striking resemblance to a Star of David. Aside from both symbols being stars, the similarities end there. A Star of David has six points while the Sawaguchi star has five. Unless we wish to state all stars (regardless of the number of points) have universal meanings and can be transplanted into any culture and have the same meaning, Catrien's claim seems problematic in the most polite sense of the term.

I will say that I did learn about more modern beliefs, but no context makes the Japanese in this book come off as poorly educated and superstitious. She uses the term "primitive" to describe a variety of indigenous animistic beliefs, which I feel are not exactly complimentary nor academically rigorous.

Readers less familiar with these traditions and their origins might get an extraordinary and noncomplementary view of Japan and its complex religious, philosophical, cultural, and historical past.

I give this book a 2.3/5 stars

Confusing

Too much parapsychology and not enough yokais. Ghost stories were okay, though some of them are quite famous - it would be nice to include something less known.
Pronunciation of Japanese words was awful and caused me headache.

good book

this book gives amazing insight to the culture impact of yokai on modern Japanese culture

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