Sunday 22 November 2009

Weird Tales of Old Japan
by Eisaburo Kusano

(Tokyo News Services Ltd, 1953)


I bought this in Greenwich market today. Wouldn't you..?


It has a beautiful hand-painted (??!!) title page:





And the best contents page ever:



"Ground spider attains occult power; Becomes too ambitious, Killed" absolutely made my day. Can't wait to read some of these.

Oh, and in case you were wondering re: the cover;



I'll leave you with Eisaburo Kusano's dedication;



Amen to that.

7 comments:

VJESCI said...

http://www.tomsheehan.co.uk/images/robert_siouxsie.jpg

Ben said...

Superb!

JRSM said...

'Alluring Siren of Atago-Yanna Gets Her Arm Cut Off': as fine a summary as you could hope for.

Ben said...

Sounds like one of those sleazy gore folk tales to me!

Deptford dame said...

Good grief, the women don't seem to come off too well!

Pierre Kikuchi said...

hey!

I´m so interested in get this book, do you have any suggestion or offer for me?
regards!!

Ben said...

Hey Pierre -

I don't know if I do have any leads sadly...

I'd like to keep my copy, just because I like it, and I very, very rarely get rid of any of my books (and if I did I'd prob'ly donate them to charity).

I don't know how sought after this book is (I can't find an entry for it on Amazon marketplace?), but if it's any reassurance, I bought it off the stall of someone who was obviously a pretty savvy book dealer for £5, so it can't be *that* rare/valuable...

You could try doing some searches of the standard auction and rare books sites - should turn up a copy eventually..?