Japan's summer spooky season is in full swing, as today marks the first day of the ghostly Obon festival, and to celebrate we've got the exclusive details and cover reveal for the Folio Society's stunning illustrated hardback release of Japanese Ghost Stories.
Set in the haunted world of Ancient Japan, the twenty spine-tingling tales were originally published in 1904 by Lafcadio Hearn, a 19th-century traveller and resident of Japan whose collections of supernatural stories drawn from folklore are still wildly popular in Japan.
Some of the stories included, like that of the Yuki-Onna (Snow Woman) and rokurokubi (long-necked spirit) have been adapted many times in modern Japanese horror movies, while the book also served as the basis for the 1964 anthology film Kwaidan from Masaki Kobayashi.
Also included is “The Story of Aoyagi,” in which a young samurai falls in love with a mysterious woman only to discover she is not what she seems; “Oshidori,” the haunting tale in which a mandarin duck mourns the loss of her lover, who was shot and killed by a hunter’, and “The Dream of Akinosuké,” in which a man becomes the king of an ant kingdom.
The Folio Society's edition of Japanese Ghost Stories will include an all-new introduction from Japanese novelist, Yoko Ogawa, whose novel The Memory Police was a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature, the International Booker Prize and the World Fantasy Award.
The book also includes five haunting double-page illustrations—as well as a frontis, cover, slipcase and endpaper art -by multi-award-winning illustrator Yuko Shimizu, who expands more on the traditional art with a contemporary twist in an official statement:
“Coming up with a good concept, or, at least a concept I am excited to materialize, is the most important and crucial part of the process […] After looking at a lot of old Japanese books and its formats, I wanted to make the illustrations look like a traditional Edo period EHON. These picture books are like an ancestor of manga. They are magazine format story books for adults that are heavily illustrated. But of course, this book is coming out in the 21st century, so it’s a traditional Edo Ehon look with a modern twist.
Get a full look at the delightfully creepy cover below:
Folio Society Editor Mandy Kirby expands more on the release, as well as Ogawa and Shimizu's contributions:
“Lafcadio Hearn's 19th-century ghost stories are famous throughout Japan and are part of that country's culture of the supernatural. I love the way we've taken something traditional and given it a modern twist […] At first glance, you might think Yuko Shimizu's illustrations are from the time of Hokusai, but look closer and you can see that they have modern touches, and the cover is unmistakably 21st century.
One of Japan's contemporary novelists, Yoko Ogawa, has provided an introduction in which she talks about Japan's obsession with ghosts and demons, and how unsettling and scary these stories actually are. She's right – they are absolute gems of the supernatural, the perfect read for the ghostly season.
The 200 page hardcover edition of Japanese Ghost Stories will be available to order on October 20, 2026 exclusively from the Folio Society's official site.
