小泉八雲のKWAIDAN－怪談－展翻訳本と映画の世界 (Lafcadio Hearn ‘KWAIDAN’ Exhibition: The Special Collection of Books and Film)

趣旨

小泉八雲（ラフカディオ・ハーン）と言えば「怪談」。

これは、多くの日本人が抱く小泉八雲のイメージでしょう。インターネットの書籍販売やオークションサイトでも、初版本の刊行から120年近くたった今でもハーンの本は数多く販売され、そして今でもなお再版され続けています。しかも、それは日本だけではなく、海外においてますますそうであり、そして、その中でも『怪談』（KWAIDAN）がトップであるという事が確認できます。

では、なぜ120年を経た今でも小泉八雲の「怪談」なのでしょうか。このことをテーマに、今新たによみがえってくる怪談の本質に迫るとともに、現代社会における「怪談」の意義や生かし方を探るひとつの提案として、この企画展を実施するに至りました。

小泉八雲は様々な文芸ジャンル（小説、随想、散文詩、紀行文、再話など）に挑みましたが、なんといっても、彼の作家としての本領は物語作家としての語り口の巧みさと表現の簡潔さにある、といわれています。八雲文学の最大の美質は、伝承や説話や昔話に材を採りそれらを八雲一流の美意識で語り直した『怪談』や『骨董』などのいわゆる「再話」文学に求めることができます。そして、八雲が語ろうとしたのは、たんなる奇をてらう怪談話や怪奇譚ではなく、八雲は怪談の再話を通して、人間とは何か、人間とはどう生きるべきか、人間の心や魂とは何か、を私達に問いかけようとしました（『妖怪・妖精譚』（ちくま文庫）の池田雅之氏による解説）。

八雲自身も「怪談の中にはTruth（真実）」が隠されている」と言っていますし、また「風変わりな物、奇妙なもの、珍奇なもの、異国的なもの、怪奇なものの愛好に身を没頭させるのが自分の気性に合っている」と、若い頃友人にあてた手紙の中で、告白しています。

この企画展では、そのようなハーンの再話文学としての著書『怪談』（KWAIDAN）、『骨董』（KOTTO）、『霊の日本』（In Ghostly Japan）などにスポットを当て、彼の再話文学の本質に迫ってみたいと思います。また、世界の中の小泉八雲または「怪談」への評価という点において、世界中で出版されている彼の再話関係書の中から大変珍しい十数カ国の翻訳本を紹介します。また、怪談の受容という観点から、1964年小林正樹監督によって制作された映画《怪談》の世界各国のポスターを展示し、その評価と受容過程も合わせながら紹介したいと考えています。

近年の世界的なスピリチュアルブームや日本の若年層に支持されるパワースポットブーム、妖怪への関心の高まりも、物質文明や科学技術だけでは人間の幸福は得られないとする現代社会の価値観が根底にあります。このようなことからも、現代社会における「怪談」の持つ意義は大きいのではないでしょうか。

また、『怪談』をはじめとする八雲の再話作品の大半は、妻セツの語りによって生み出されたものであり、八雲もそのことを十分に理解し「世界で一番よきママさん」と言い、敬意を忘れませんでした。タイトルであるKWAIDANは、セツの出雲弁訛りをそのまま本のタイトルにしたものであり、そこにも言葉の意味よりもセツの語りを大切にしていた八雲の想いが伝わってきます。この企画展が松江出身のひとりの語り部であるセツを再評価するきっかけにもなればと願っています。

実施内容

この企画展は、世界の中での小泉八雲と「怪談」の評価と受容という観点から展示を行うものです。そのひとつとして、1904年のKWAIDAN（Houghton, Mifflin & Co.）の刊行をきっかけに、各国語に翻訳された小泉八雲の怪談・奇談の再話文学の書籍を展示します。フランス語、ドイツ語はもちろんですが、トルコ語、ポーランド語、イタリア語、中国語、スペイン語、デンマーク語など世界中で読まれていることが分かります。また、Japanese Fairy Tales（『日本お伽噺』）は、イヌイット語に翻訳されている絵本もあり、大変興味深いものです。最終的に何ヵ国で出版されているかはわかりませんが、いつの時代もGhostlyな異界をのぞいてみたいという好奇心はいずこも同じということでしょうか。

映画《怪談》は小林正樹監督の代表作で、1964年に公開された。小泉八雲の原作をオムニバス方式で映画化した初のカラー作品《怪談》は3時間の大作で、この世のものとは思えぬ幻想的な世界を作り上げ、カンヌ国際映画祭審査員特別賞を受けた他、アカデミー賞外国語映画賞にノミネートされ、日本映画史上屈指の傑作と絶賛されました。

このカンヌでの受賞で映画《怪談》は受容され、約30カ国で上映される結果となりました。オークションでは、当時の各国のオリジナルポスターが今でもコレクターの間で収集されています。フランス、アメリカ、アルゼンチン、旧ユーゴスラビア、ポーランドなどそれぞれ特徴のあるオリジナルポスターを展示しまた、アメリカや中国で発売されたVHSビデオやDVDも紹介します。

これらの数十点に及ぶ展示品は、すべてギリシャ在住のアート・コーディネーター、タキス・エフスタシウ（Takis Efstathiou）氏のコレクションで、氏の好意によってお借りできるものであり、今回の展示はこれらの貴重な資料を見ることのできるまたとない機会です。

監修：小泉凡
展覧会企画：小泉祥子
デザイン：石川陽春
コレクション所蔵：タキス・エフスタシウ

Lafcadio Hearn ‘KWAIDAN’ Exhibition
The Special Collection of Books and Film

Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum
Sunday, June 26, 2011 – Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Organizer: Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum
Co-Organizer: Matsue City
Sponsor: The Hearn Society

Extention of the exhibition “Lafcadio Hearn KWAIDAN – The Special Collection of Books and Film”
The exhibition “Lafcadio Hearn KWAIDAN – The Special Collection of Books and Film” which is being held at the Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum will be extended until March 20, 2012 due to its popularity. We are looking forward to meeting you on the site.

Intent

The words ‘Kwaidan’ and Lafcadio Hearn (Koizumi Yakumo) are rarely seen one without the other. And Hearn is known in Japan primarily through this association. Sales of Hearn’s earlier publications (from 120 years ago), right up to more recent editions continue to sell strongly in online auctions and web sales. Printing even continues to meet this demand. This unfading interest in Hearn is not limited to Japan. He also has a growing overseas following, with KWAIDAN topping the sales list.

So how does ‘Kwaidan’ maintain its appeal 120 years on?

The search to answer this anomaly is the ‘Kwaidan’ exhibition’s central theme. The exhibition is a search for the significance of and how ‘Kwaidan’ may be integrated into today’s society.

Hearn took his hand at penning in various literary genres (e.g. novels, prose poetry, travelogues, folktales retold, etc…), but whatever else may be true about him, his eloquence and simplicity of expression in narrative writing is undeniable. Hearn’s finest attribute lay in his retelling folktales in his personal aesthetically descriptive style. This attribute is evident in both KWAIDAN and KOTTO, where he took folklore and traditional tales as the basis for his books, and made them his own through a very characteristically Hearn writing style. In doing so, he brought about ‘Saiwa’ literature (Folktales retold lit.). Hearn did not simply choose bizarre ghost stories as his subject to work on just to play the eccentric artist. Rather, he used this retelling of traditional ghost stories as a vehicle for posing questions about humanity, for questioning how we should live, and questioning the essence of the spirit and the soul. Through his writing Hearn posed these questions to us, the readers. (Ghost stories & Fairy tales, Chikuma Publications, Ikeda Masayuki)

Hearn himself also commented that within ghost stories there is a hidden truth, and that and also that these eccentricities, curiosities, bizarre other worldly things which he was more than happy to be immersed in, suited his personality. He revealed these thoughts in letters he wrote as a youth to friends.

This exhibition will focus primarily on works such as KWAIDAN, KOTTO, and In Ghostly Japan, all of which fall under Hearn’s folktales retold literary genre. It is an investigation into the nature of this so called folktales retold literary field.

Within the exhibition, publications of KWAIDAN and other books will displayed in various languages. It is the rarity of some of these translations that clearly demonstrates the widespread appreciation of Hearn’s writings. As a further indication of Hearn’s international reception with the release of ‘Kwaidan’, posters fromthe film will also be exhibited as they were produced in each respective country. This poster display, in addition to the other formats on display, provides another route to seeing how Hearn’s works were received on a global scale.

In recent years in Japan, there has been somewhat of a ‘spiritual’ boom. So called ‘power spots’, have been enjoying a new found popularity amongst the Japanese youth, and it seems that more and more of today’s youth are turning to the spiritual world in search of happiness, rather than science, technology, and the material world. In this vein, ‘Kwaidan’ may hold a valuable message for the modern world.

A large part of the work that went into KWAIDAN, was listening to and putting to use the stories Setsu (Hearn’s wife) told him. He himself recognised how important a role she played in the books’ creation, praising her as “the best wife in the world”, remembering to honour her for her contribution. The extent to which Hearn valued Setsu's storytelling, (even more than lexical meaning), is evident in the title KWAIDAN itself. Rather than translating and replacing kwaidan with ‘ghost stories’ etc, Hearn retained the Japanese, in Setsu’s direct pronunciation of her local Izumo dialect. We are also hoping that this exhibition will draw attention to Setsu role, and thus provide impetus for the re-evaluation of Matsue’s very own talented storyteller.

Details

The exhibition addresses the field of Hearn’s global reception and evaluation. In order to explore this area, one of the aspects that we will look at will be the various languages into which KWAIDAN (Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1904) was subsequently translated into. It’s little surprise that there were French and German translations of the publication, but it was also translated into Turkish, Polish, Italian, Chinese, Spanish, Danish, etc. What’s even more interesting to note is a rare publication of a picture book version of Hearn’s Japanese Fairy Tales which has been translated into Inuit. A definitive figure has yet to be put on the number of translations of Hearn’s works, suffice to say that curiosity in the ‘spirit world’ seems to span generations and countries alike.

The film adaptation “KWAIDAN” first opened in 1964. As director Kobayashi Masaki’s major production, he presented Hearn’s original work in omnibus format. Lasting a lengthy three hours, it was the first colour adaptation and portrayed a fantastical world pushing the bounds of what we expect from the real world. Masaki’s production of “KWAIDAN” was not only nominated for the Academy Film Award’s best foreign film, it also received the Cannes International Film Festival Special Award as designated by a panel of judges. “KWAIDAN” received rave reviews and was considered to be a masterpiece, leading the way in Japanese filmography.

As a result of receiving the prestigious title of Cannes International film festival award winner, “KWAIDAN” went on to be screened in dozens of countries around the world, each with it’s own poster. These posters subsequently went on sale through online auction and web bookstores, avid collectors getting their hands on the various versions. We will be displaying those very posters, from France, America, Argentina, Yugoslavia, Poland, etc. In addition, the DVD and VHS production of the American and Chinese versions will also be on display.

It is thanks to the good will and favour of one Takis Efstathiou that we will be able to enjoy this insight into Hearn’s reception through various fields of production worldwide. Efstathiou is an Art Coordinator living in Greece, and having loaned his collection for this exhibition, we can now offer many people a once in a life time chance to view his rare collection.

Superviser: Koizumi Bon
Coordinator: Koizumi Shoko
Designer: Ishikawa Kiyoharu
Collection of Takis Efstathiou