The rainy season has come. After the season, the climate quickly turns to the summer. I don’t know the horror storytelling in the summer time is unique in Japan or not, but I want to introduce you to Japanese traditional horror story “Kaidan”.

Before telling the horror story, I’m going to explain the relationship between the summer season and horror stories in historical context. You might guess the reason is in the high temperature in summer or Obon ceremony, but actually, it continues to the traditional theater culture from Edo era. The theater is so called “Natsu-kyogen(夏狂言)”. In Edo period, there was no air conditioner, and it causes the decline of a number of the audience who come to the theater. For that reason, actors had to go tour to the countryside, and it held in summer, so the play had called “Natsu-Kyogen(夏狂言)”. It was the best way to get the audience for them because the theater is not common in the country side. Therefore, the played contents didn’t have many variations in stories to cut off the cost to open the temporal theater on tour. The most popular contents in “Natsu-Kyogen” was the horror stories. As I mentioned above, Japanese people prefer to the summer season to talk horror stories than other seasons.

There are several famous horror stories, which all Japanese people might know. If you want to know such a stories, please come to our school, our teacher Mrs.Kobayashi will talk to you. (Of course, she is the good Japanese teacher, but also good story teller.)