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On the left is the lovely little
wooden statue of Hoichi with his biwa (lute) - minus his ears.
The story was brought to the West by the writer Lafacadio Hearn in his collection of
Japanese folklore entitled Kwaidan,
and can be found online on many sites.
You can also find it in Apples from Heaven: Multicultural Folk Tales About Stories and Storytellers
by Naomi Baltuck.
I tried, without success, to find the origins of another
another favourite Hearn ghost story from Japan: The boy who had to draw cats. If you know, I would love to hear from you. I first discovered this story in Frances Carpenter's Wonder Tales of Dogs and Cats which was bought for me when I had my tonsils out as a child. |
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At the train station,just outside the H.C. Andersen Danish Bakery, from which arose an aroma that took me back to a wonderful three months in Denmark, we fell into a conversation,with Reiko Kajitani, a retired English teacher who lives in Shimonoseki. Reiko is a hibakusha,
one who survived the atomic-bomb attack on
Hiroshima. She wrote us her first person account of this experience and
asked us to tell her story. We thought it best to let her tell it in her own words. We have stayed in touch with Reiko ever since. Our thoughts are with her especially as we watch the events of 2011 unfolding in Japan. She has written of her sadness at seeing nuclear radiation damage her country once again: "We have to think over and over again, when we make a new material, if it is tender to the earth or not. The earth is the only place for us to live." |
Ron with Reiko Kajitani, poet, caligrapher, teacher and
Atom Bomb survivor, Shimonoseki |
