ABSTRACT
In 1776 the Japanese writer Akinari Ueda published “Jasei no in”, one of nine stories in the genre of the kaidan, or narration of the “strange or anomalous”, that were compiled under the title Ugetsu monogatari. In “Jasei no in”, Akinari reinterprets the East Asian serpent woman myth as the spirit world repressed from cultural consciousness and stages Toyoo’s confrontation with the serpent woman, the unintegrated anima, as a psychologically enriching encounter with the world of the spirits. This chapter argues that Akinari’s text treats an early modern individual suffering from a separation from the world of the spirits and needing to regain a balance between the external world and the spirit world. In the Western tradition, the lamia is the closest figure to Akinari’s serpent, and Keats’ 1819 poem Lamia constructs the snake woman as an anima figure to the young hero, Lycius.
