The Folio Society Announces Japanese Ghost Stories, Illustrated by Yuko Shimizu
The Folio Society will release Japanese Ghost Stories on October 13, 2026, collecting twenty supernatural tales by Lafcadio Hearn in a new illustrated hardcover edition. The book features artwork by Yuko Shimizu and a new introduction by novelist Yoko Ogawa.
Hearn collected and translated stories drawn from Japanese folklore, introducing generations of readers to a world of spectral brides, vengeful spirits and other uncanny encounters. This collection includes “The Story of Aoyagi,” in which a young samurai falls in love with a mysterious woman; “Oshidori,” about a mandarin duck mourning its mate; “The Dream of Akinosuké,” in which a man becomes the king of an ant kingdom; and “Rokuro-Kubi,” which pits a monk against five flying heads.
Shimizu’s artwork includes five double-page illustrations, a frontispiece, and art for the cover, slipcase and endpapers. The edition marks her third collaboration with The Folio Society, following Japanese Tales (2018) and The Great Gatsby (2025).
“After looking at a lot of old Japanese books and its formats, I wanted to make the illustrations look like a traditional Edo period EHON. These picture books are like an ancestor of manga. They are magazine format story books for adults that are heavily illustrated. But of course, this book is coming out in the 21st century, so it’s a traditional Edo Ehon look with a modern twist,” Shimizu said.
The full-spread illustrations were placed within framed pages inspired by those traditional picture books. Ai Tatebayashi contributed the Japanese calligraphy that appears along the edges of the illustrated pages.
Ogawa, whose novel The Memory Police was a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature, the International Booker Prize and the World Fantasy Award, provides a new introduction exploring Japan’s fascination with ghosts and demons.
Hearn was a writer, journalist and translator who settled in Japan in 1890 and later became a Japanese citizen under the name Koizumi Yakumo. His collections, including Kwaidan and In Ghostly Japan, helped bring Japanese folklore to Western readers.
The 200-page hardcover edition of Japanese Ghost Stories is available October 13, 2026, exclusively from The Folio Society at www.foliosociety.com.
Source: The Folio Society / Superfan Promotions. Illustrations by Yuko Shimizu.