SEKINO (Junichiro).
Yurei no sho [Ghost stories]
The expanded and more luxurious edition
Sekino Junichiro’s little book of ghost stories, including the hyakki yagyo ‘Night Parade of 100 Demons’, a zashiki warashi demon, the yuki onna ‘Snow Woman’ who freezes people to death, mimi-nashi Hoichi ‘Hoichi the earless’, the Botan doro ‘Peony Lantern’ tale, among others. Sekino had a fascination with ghost stories, folklore and mythology. The present title is one of a few books he made on this theme.
The first edition of this book was printed in an edition of 100 copies in 1950. Exactly 15 years later, Sekino decided to revisit this title and add a few flourishes. While there are some spreads printed from the same blocks as the first edition, there are differences in the colour palette and he also included several extra stories that do not appear in the previous edition. Additionally, the binding is more luxurious; while the first edition was bound with woodblock printed paper covered boards, the present edition is bound with katazome stencil dyed cotton, and with more elaborate fukuro-toji stitching by his frequent collaborator Naito Masakatsu (bookbinder, dates unknown).
Only 1 copy of this edition in OCLC (Harvard).
