Ancient Japanese Narratives of Wonders

The belief in the miraculousness of the world nourished Japanese medieval prose throughout its more than millennium-long history. From century to century, new narratives about the amazing and extraordinary were created: about mysterious transformations and prophetic dreams, about werewolves and restless souls of the dead, about journeys to distant fairy-tale countries, about descent into the underworld or ascension to paradise. This edition includes translations from some of the most famous and also varied in type, genre, and time of creation monuments of ancient Japanese prose about wonders — from early collections of short didactic stories, where the most incredible events are considered no less real and credible than any everyday occurrence, to works of late medieval novella, in which the supernatural is enveloped in a haze of mystery and appears in all its intriguing and frightening otherness. A number of texts are published in Russian for the first time.