Week Three: J-Horror

For the third week, I read some of the Chinese ghost stories by Lafcadio Hearn. More specifically The Soul of the Great Bell and The Tale of the Porcelain God. The Soul of the Great bell was more sad than scary.  The idea of sacrifice is very prominent in both stories. One must sacrifice oneself for the success of something being made. In the instance of the Great Bell, the daughter threw herself into the molten metals in order to save her father from death and then her spirit forever resides in the bell. In the Tale of the Porcelain God, a man sacrifices himself in order to successfully made a vase with the ”tint and the aspect of human flesh” and when tapped the vase utters the name of its creator. This attachment to objects by the spirit of those sacrificing themselves also seems to be a common theme within these ghost stories. Although I felt that the Tale of the Porcelain God was a little on the long-winded side, I enjoyed it a little more than the other story.