Kwaidan

Kwaidan was an interesting and entertaining experience in non-western horror, and though it was composed of several short stories, there were noticeable consistencies and parallels between each. A crucial point made by a number of the stories was the importance of honesty and faith to others and one's own promises. The story of The Black Hair, for example, follows a swordsman who divorces his first wife, a weaver, for a woman from a much more powerful family, only to find unhappiness in the arrangement. He eventually leaves her as well, returning to his first wife, who seems the same as he left her, and who forgives him as well. However, he awakens the next day besides her corpse, and finds himself trapped within the house. A story with a similar theme is The Woman of the Snow, in which a young woodcutter sees a Yuki-onna, a winter spirit, who kills his master but elects to spare him, so long as he tells nobody that he saw her. He later meets a woman named Yuki, who he later marries, fathers two children with, and recounts his meeting with the Yuki-onna to. Yuki reveals herself to be the Yuki-onna, but spares him once more for the sake of the children. She disappears into the snow once more, however. These stories take a much more unassuming approach than many western tales tend to in that the punishing force is neither stated nor even implied to be in the wrong, or "evil", rather, they simply carry power with them and ought to be respected, similar to forces of nature. This natural concept is, however, somewhat inline with gothic and romantic attitudes towards nature and the sublime.