ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests the development of the Chinese-style ghost story in Asian literatures from the classical Chinese genres of zhiguai and chanqui, through their transformation into Japanese kaidan, to contemporary versions of them. Chinese ghost stories have a long literary tradition. Chinese stories of the strange have proven very influential in the region, exported to medieval Japan, where their reproductions contributed to the emergence of the highly popular genre of kaidan, and then spreading across Asia in the wake of Chinese migration and Japanese imperialism. Beginning with the Chinese zhiguai, Asian ghost stories have thus been known as stories of the strange, or anomalous rather than supernatural. Zhiguai stories, most prolific between the fourth and fifth centuries, were short records of strange events and phenomena that evolved from orally circulated accounts. Zhiguai ghost narratives, almost exclusively focused on encounters with the non-ancestral dead, offered scenarios through which new relationships could safely be explored.
