Put simply, kaidan literally means "a narrative of the strange." While tales of strange phenomena in the kaidan mold existed prior to the Edo period (1600-1867), the appellation "kaidan" does not appear in extant historical records until the seventeenth century. Although kaidan need not evoke fear in the minds of those who hear them, frequently they include elements of horror as well as a revenge motif Etymologically, the character kai in kaidan means "strange, mysterious, rare, or bewitching apparition," while dan is similar in meaning to hanashi or katari or katari (i.e., "talk," or "recited narrative"). IN JAPAN TODAY THE GENERAL term for frightening ghost stories is kaidan. Keywords: kaidan-kaidan-shu-storytelling-entertainment-Edo Japan By tracing the kaidan-shu from its emergence in the early Edo period up to the appearance of Ugetsu monogatari, this paper will demonstrate how kaidan liter ature of the Edo period (1600-1867) moves away from the religious and didactic, toward the secular. At the same time, the artistry of kaidan attained a zenith in Kinko kaidan (Kaidan Present and Past) and Ugetsu monogatari (Tales of Moonlight and Rain, 1776), a collection of nine short stories of the supernatural written by Ueda Akinari (1734-1809). In the middle of the eighteenth century, the production of kaidan literature reached one of its peaks. It was only during the Edo period that these stories were collected, compiled, and published under the rubric of kaidan as kaidan-shu (collections of kaidan). Written Stories that fit the kaidan mold have been part of Japanese literature since ancient times, but they were not identified apart from the rest. Many contemporary Japanese regard stories of the kaidan genre as frightening ghost stories.
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