The Empty Boat

Name: The Empty Boat
ISBN: 9787549593255

涩泽龙彦 / 黄洁萍Guangxi Normal University Press · ChinaJul 2020

3.9

Word count: 74K words
Chapters: 9
ISBN: 9787549593255

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Summary

The Empty Boat is a collection of strange tales by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, containing eight short strange tales published at various times, exploring themes such as life and death, good and evil, and the light and dark sides of human nature. These include "The Empty Boat," which developed from legends about unidentified objects in the Edo period and discusses concepts of life and death, and "The Skull Cup," which reflects the dialectical idea of the轮回 of good and evil. Building on traditional Japanese strange tales while incorporating real history and rich knowledge, and continuing Shibusawa's dark aesthetic style, the work is both real and illusory and is an important work by the author.

Editor's review

Shibusawa's The Empty Boat is a collection of essays blending Edo-period strange tales, natural history inquiry, and literary imagination, showcasing the distinctive "dark aesthetics" of this Japanese cultural critic. The eight strange tales collected here are not mere horror stories; through deep exploration of traditional Japanese eerie elements such as the "empty boat," the "diver woman," and the "kappa," they probe the ambiguous boundary between the other world and the human one. Shibusawa's touch is cool and meticulous; he observes folk legends through the lens of history and culture, lending them philosophical depth. In "Lord Hai," for example, he traces the Japanese transmutations of a story from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, revealing the mutations and imagination involved in cultural transmission. Reading The Empty Boat is more like a "strange-tale stroll" under erudite guidance: readers not only appreciate the profound, mysterious beauty of Eastern strange tales but also sense the author's scholarly ambition to bring marginal cultural phenomena into the canon. The book's value lies in transcending entertaining strange tales to become a special window onto the Japanese aesthetic of mono no aware and the spiritual constitution of modern intellectuals.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in Japanese yokai culture and Edo-period folklore
Lovers of literature with a classical strange style, such as Ryunosuke Akutagawa and Kyoka Izumi
Readers hoping to understand the social psychology behind strange tales from a cultural-studies perspective
Readers who appreciate an erudite, cool, and imaginative essayistic style

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking tense, thrilling, purely horror stories
Readers entirely unfamiliar with Japanese history and culture who are unwilling to do any supplementary reading

Reading tips

Readers may first consult the appendix or notes to understand Shibusawa's academic background and the overall context of the 'Dark Pavilion' series.
Reading alongside books of Japanese ukiyo-e or yokai illustrations will enhance visualization and depth of understanding.
After each piece, pause to consider how the author turns legendary material into a point of entry for cultural commentary.

About the publisher

Guangxi Normal University Press China · Founded in 1986

Guangxi Normal University Press is a publisher known for literature, foreign literature and history titles. Its 1,175 books in the database show a solid accumulation in classics and prose collections, including foreign literary works such as Les Fleurs du mal: Annotated Poems of Baudelaire, Snow Country, Dubliners and The Wild Palms, as well as modern prose compilations like The Complete Prose of Zhou Zuoren. History and philosophy also hold a notable share, with titles such as Running Dogs: Clerks and Runners in Qing County Yamen and The History and Thought of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom reflecting attention to Qing local administration and modern history. In art literature there is the 16-volume Ten Bamboo Studio Painting and Calligraphy Manual. Its author resources include foreign writers Charles Baudelaire and Yasunari Kawabata, translators and annotators Liu Nanqi and Zou Bo, and scholars such as Zhong Shuhe, Bradly W. Reed and You Chenjun. As public information is limited, this characterization is based only on the books in the database, which together present a profile balancing Chinese and foreign literary classics with academic works in the humanities and social sciences.

版权信息
护法童子
鱼鳞记
花妖记
骷髅杯
菊灯台
鬼剃头
虚舟
工匠

FAQ

How does The Empty Boat differ from common collections of Japanese yokai stories?

This is not a simple compilation of stories but a cultural-historical interpretation and literary re-creation of strange tales grounded in Shibusawa's vast erudition, leaning more toward scholarly essays and aesthetic criticism.

Can I understand it without a background in Japanese culture?

The core chapters pose some difficulty, but the author's narration is clear, the translator's notes are detailed, and key cultural concepts are often explained. Readers need only an open mind and treat it as a cross-cultural adventure.

How does this book relate to other works by the author, such as A Handbook of Black Magic?

It belongs to Shibusawa's vast "dark natural history" system, sharing an obsession with the marginal, the abnormal, and the mysterious and a methodology of rigorous inquiry, but this book focuses more on native Japanese strange themes.

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About the author

涩泽龙彦 Author

Tatsuhiko Shibusawa is a Japanese author whose works are available in thirteen titles on this Chinese-language book site, spanning foreign literature, essays and miscellaneous writings, and fiction. He is known for his dark aesthetic, with subjects that often move between the heretical, the phantasmal, poison, and the bizarre, appearing in both fiction and essay form. Representative works include the two collected sets of the Dark Aesthetic Master Tatsuhiko Shibusawa series, The Fox's Treasure Bag: My Boyhood, Portraits of Heretics, The World inside a Walnut, A Handbook of Poisons, The Strange Tales of Tatsuhiko's Realm, and Chronicles of Demonic Phantoms. These works are distinguished by curious lore, exotic imagination, and a refined style, giving him a distinctive presence in fantasy literature and the essay form. Because public information is limited, his biography, education, and awards are not speculated upon here; his writing is presented solely through the works at hand.

黄洁萍 Author

Huang Jieping is an author about whom very little public information is available. Her nationality, dates of birth and death, and English name cannot currently be confirmed, and only one work by her is held in the collection, namely Xu Zhou (The Empty Boat). According to the existing classification, this book is placed under foreign literature, which suggests that her writing engages with translated or borrowed traditions from beyond the Chinese literary sphere rather than belonging to other categories. Because reliable records of her life and creative background are lacking, her writing experience, education, and literary activities cannot be verified, and readers and researchers can only approach her narrative methods and language style through the text of Xu Zhou itself. On the evidence currently available, her output is small, yet its placement in the foreign literature category gives it a certain distinctiveness, and it may serve as a modest example for observing how contemporary Chinese writing interacts with foreign literary resources.