Rampo, Edogawa : see Edogawa, Rampo.
Rashomon : A ghost tale of old Kyoto not to be confused with the Akutagawa short story and movie with the same name. In this tale, a man meets a young woman at Rashomon Gate, who turns out to be a ghost. He slashes off her hand, which he proudly displays to everyone. The ghost uses this pride to get her hand back.
Reconciliation, The : One of Lafcadio Hearn’s most noted tales. It is the story of an ambitious Samurai who divorces his sweet and faithful wife to marry a woman of position and wealth. He gradually comes to realize that he loved his first wife and longs to return to her. One Autumn the opportunity at last arises for him to return. He hastens to his old home and searches frantically for his former wife, wishing to make amends and start again with her. Instead he has a ghostly encounter and the story has a shock ending. His wife’s “corpse is so wasted that little remained save the bones and the long black tangle hair.”
This tale kicks off the movie version of Kwaidan, even though its from Hearn’s Shadowings. Beautifully rendered, it preserves the quiet eerieness of the original tale.
Reincarnation : Belief in reincarnation is widespread throughout Asia and frequently is element is weird or ghostly literature. Love affairs can span several existences but so can the desire for revenge.
Reikon : Human soul in Shinto beliefs. At the time of death, the reikon returns to
join the other souls of the dead, and these souls can be a comfort to the
living. If a reikon cannot rest in
peace, it becomes a yurei.
Religion : In The Philosophy of Horror, Noel Carroll
mentions the connection between horror and relig
Renjō,
Mikihiko : Japanese writer. His Akuryou no Shoumei (Evidence of Evil
Spirits) was made into a Japanese
teleplay in 1986.
Resuscitated Corpse
: Tale from P’u Song Ling’s Liao Zhai
filmed as The Vampire. It is one of the best “haunted inn”
tales and is recounted in Willoughby-Meade and Montague Summers. In need of shelter, four traveling men
sleep in the same room with a dead young girl.
During the night, the girl rises incapacitates the sleeping men with her
icy breath apparently from some vampiritic purpose. The fourth man is not incapacitated and escapes. The corpse gives chase but is tricked into
embedding her fingers into a tree trunk.
The Ring : Modern Japanese horror novel by the “Stephen King of Japan”, converted into manga and made in a very popular film. It spawned a sequel, “The Ring 2.” Also by the same author, the film “The Spiral” and the TV series and manga “Rasen” (a.k.a. Lasen).
Translated into Korean and Chinese and a best seller in both languages, according to film director, Nakata Hideo, but it is not available in English or any other Western language..
Recently, a prequel Ring 0: The Birthday was published in Japan and subsequently filmed. Naturally, this gave rise to a Ring 0 manga by noted horror comic artist Meimu, who also did the manga versions of the other books in the Ring series. To their credit, the manga are closer in spirit and plot to the novels than are any of the films.
The story does not end in Japan. Korean knockoff versions of The Ring and Spiral were also produced. Made to Korean standards, they have less emphasis on gore and disgust and more on suspense and mystery. They still revolve around the deadly video cassette plot device and were quite popular in Korea.
Rohan, Koda : Noted Japanese novelist and essayist (1867-1947). Pseudonym of Kouda Shigeyuki. Under the influence of Chinese classics, he created realistically cast heroes with high ideals and religious values. Both Buddhist and Taoism influenced Rohan’s writing. Later in life, he became interested in history and spent his last years writing a commentary on the works of the most famous haiku poet, Basho.
Although Rohan was known for his realistic fiction, “Encounter with a Skull” (1890, Taidokuro) is an all-out horror tale. The narrator meets more a just a skull in an eerie mountain setting. While reminiscent of Lafcadio Hearn’s ghostly tales, the realistic tone and the grisly description give this tale unusual impact. A true horror tale in the Western sense of the word.
It is a gripping union of old Japanese terror told in a very modern style. Using the time-honored technique of the haunted refuge for unwary travelers, his narrative creates a convincing sense of mystery and awe. The horror at the end is gruesome but somehow tinged with mysticism. Rohan’s translator and critic, Chieko Mulhern wrote that:
Its structure is reminiscent of Nō plays, in which the protagonist undergoes metamorphosis, usually from a humble disguise to the spirit of a dead nobleman suffering because he is still undelivered from his former self, revealing the pathos of this world and visions of life after death.
The story’s hero, also named Rohan, wandering lost in the mountains meets a beautiful young woman who invites him to spend the night in her cabin. Not wishing to succumb to lustful temptations, he tries to stay awake by listening to her tell her life story. She has an unnamed curse that precluded her having a normal life of home and family. In the morning she and her cabin vanished without a trace, except for her clean, white skull.
Rohan learns from a local innkeeper that he had met the ghost of a leper girl who recently died. He imagines a terrible vision of her bodily decay, a warning against the consequences of lust and a reminder of the transience of life. The innkeeper describes her in horrific detail:
…her face was even more horrible, looking like a half-melted copper-lion. With all the eyebrows gone, the prominent forehead was marred by deep hollows filthier than faded purple rubbed with ditch mud, oozing yellowish grey pus like rotten oysters pouring out of the shells… Her hairless head glistened weirdly like a well-polished red gourd… Her right eye was merely a red crater,
Mulhern compares Rohan’s horrid description of leprous
decay to the Japanese medieval
depictions known as the “Disease Scroll” (yamai-zōshi) and
the “Hell Scroll” (jikoki zōshi)
Rohmer, Sax : British novelist and creator of the notorious Fu Manchu. Highly effective Tales of Chinatown. Rohmer, pseudonym for Saxfield Ward, probably did more for promote the fear of the Yellow Peril than any other journalist. His Chinese villains were ruthless, emotionless monsters who envy the Western civilization and wanted to destroy it, enslaving or killing all of its people. He also promoted the idea of Asian super-science, whereby the Asian held all sorts of natural and supernatural powers in their esoteric texts and ancient learning passed orally from generation to generation.
Rokurokubi :
Japanese supernatural creature, a woman who appears normal during the day but
at night grows an extraordinarily long neck.
With this hyper-extensible neck, her neck seeks to drain the life force
out of her victims.
Ryoui. Asai : see Asai, Ryoui.
Ryutei, Tanehiko : Japanese (1743-1842) novelist and essayist. An active samurai all his life, he became interested in literature through the poetry of Basho. Starting in his mid -50’s, he published an unbroken string of successful romantic novels that brought him fame second only to Bakin’s. Author of Kinsei kaidan shimoya no hoshi (Stars on a Frosty Night, 1808), yomi-hon with supernatural fantasy elements.
