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The Folio Society To Publish JAPANESE GHOST STORIES,

A Collection of Twenty Spine-Tingling Classic Tales from Japan

Illustrated by Award-Winning Artist Yuko Shimizu

Featuring An All-New Introduction by Novelist Yoko Ogawa

Press release,

(October 13, 2026) This fall, the Folio Society, independent publisher of beautifully illustrated hardback books, will publish JAPANESE GHOST STORIES, a stunning, collectible collection of twenty spine-tingling tales illustrated by award-winning artist Yuko Shimizu. Set in the haunted world of Ancient Japan, the classic tales were collected and translated by Lafcadio Hearn, a 19th-century traveller and resident of Japan whose collections of supernatural stories drawn from folklore are wildly popular in Japan. JAPANESE GHOST STORIES is the latest literary classic from Japan to be published by the Folio Society, alongside contemporary classics by Kazuo Ishiguro and Haruki Murakami and Japanese Tales, a treasury of Japanese folklore and wisdom, beautifully bound by Folio, translated by Royall Tyler and also illustrated by artist Yuko Shimizu. The Folio Society edition of JAPANESE GHOST STORIES will include an all-new introduction from Japanese novelist, Yoko Ogawa, whose novel The Memory Police was a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature, the International Booker Prize and the World Fantasy Award. JAPANESE GHOST STORIES will be available on the Folio Society’s website on October 13, 2026, just in time for Halloween.

JAPANESE GHOST STORIES features twenty transportive and sometimes terrifying tales, including “The Story of Aoyagi,” in which a young samurai falls in love with a mysterious woman only to discover she is not what she seems; “Oshidori,” the haunting tale in which a mandarin duck mourns the loss of her lover, who was shot and killed by a hunter’ “The Dream of Akinosuké,” in which a man becomes the king of an ant kingdom; and “Rokuro-Kubi,” an action packed story in which a monk battles five flying heads.

In JAPANESE GHOST STORIES, the dead wreak revenge on the living, paintings come alive, spectral brides possess mortal men and a priest devours human flesh. These tales draw on the phantoms and ghouls of traditional Japanese folklore—including the headless 'rokuro-kubi', the monstrous goblins 'jikininki' and the faceless 'mujina' who stalk lonely neighbourhoods. The stories are massively popular in Japan and highly regarded by folklore aficionados and horror enthusiasts alike.

The stories in JAPANESE GHOST STORIES are provided by Lafcadio Hearn, a writer, journalist and translator whose works introduced Western readers to the culture, folklore and literature of Japan. Born on the Greek island of Lefkada to an Irish father and Greek mother, he emigrated to the United States before settling in Japan in 1890. There he married, became a Japanese citizen under the name Koizumi Yakumo, and devoted himself to recording the country’s stories, customs and beliefs. His ghost stories—Kwaidan, In Ghostly Japan, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan—which were drawn from Japanese folklore, appeared in collections throughout the 1890s and 1900s. He remains today a much-celebrated figure in Japan.

“Lafcadio Hearn's 19th-century ghost stories are famous throughout Japan and are part of that country's culture of the supernatural. I love the way we've taken something traditional and given it a modern twist,” said Folio Society Editor Mandy Kirby. “At first glance, you might think Yuko Shimizu's illustrations are from the time of Hokusai, but look closer and you can see that they have modern touches, and the cover is unmistakably 21st century. One of Japan's contemporary novelists, Yoko Ogawa, has provided an introduction in which she talks about Japan's obsession with ghosts and demons, and how unsettling and scary these stories actually are. She's right - they are absolute gems of the supernatural, the perfect read for the ghostly season.

JAPANESE GHOST STORIES is accompanied by 5 haunting double-page illustrations—as well as a frontis, cover, slipcase and endpaper art—by the New York-based Japanese artist Yuko Shimizu, who has received multiple Gold and Silver Medals from the Society of Illustrators. JAPANESE GHOST STORIES marks Shimizu’s third collaboration with The Folio Society, following Japanese Tales (2018) and The Great Gatsby (2025).

Shimizu is a multi-award-winning Japanese illustrator based in New York City. She is also an instructor at The School of Visual Arts and has more than twenty years of experience illustrating. Her work includes multiple disciplines; from pages of The New York Times, TIME, Newsweek, and The New Yorker to WIRED, covers for DC Comic, Penguin Random House, and Scholastic, and advertising for BBC, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Universal Pictures, SONY, Paramount, MTV, Nike, Hasbro, and Target, to name a few. Additionally, she has collaborated with the United Nations, Smithsonian Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Library of Congress.

Shimizu has illustrated multiple books including two Caldecott Honor-winners: The Cat Man of Aleppo (2020 written by Karim Shamsi-Basha and Irene Latham) and Up, Up, Ever Up! Junko Tabei: A Life in the Mountains (2024, written by Anita Yasuda) the Museum of Tolerance Young Reader Award winning Barbed Wire Baseball (2013 written by Marissa Moss), A Wild Swan by Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Michael Cunningham, and Godzilla: The Official Pop-Up Book (2024 written by Chip Carter and Matthew Reinhart). This is her 3rd book from Folio Society, following Japanese Tales (2018, written by Royall Tyler) and The Great Gatsby (2025, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald). She will be providing both cover and interior art for Haruki Murakami’s highly anticipated upcoming book Abandoning a Cat ( October 2026 from Knopf). Shimizu has also provided art for multiple films for the Criterion Collection, including The Ballad of Narayama (1958 directed by Keisuke Kinoshita), Demon Pond (1979, directed by Masahiro Shinoda), Godzilla (1959, directed by Ishirō Honda), The Mikado (1939 directed by Victor Schertzinger), The Samurai Trilogy (1954 - 1956 directed by Hiroshi Inagaki) and Tospy Turvy (1999, directed by Mike Leigh) and created art for films including John Wick 4 (2023, directed by Chad Stahelski) and 60th anniversary of Darling (1965, directed by John Schlesinger).

“Coming up with a good concept, or, at least a concept I am excited to materialize, is the most important and crucial part of the process,” said Shumizu. “After looking at a lot of old Japanese books and its formats, I wanted to make the illustrations look like a traditional Edo period EHON. These picture books are like an ancestor of manga. They are magazine format story books for adults that are heavily illustrated. But of course, this book is coming out in the 21st century, so it’s a traditional Edo Ehon look with a modern twist.”

“The full spread illustrations were created first, then they were dropped into the framed pages, in the style of typical Ehon,” added Shumizu. “Each image has the title written in Japanese on the edges of the page, which I asked my very good friend Ai Tatebayashi in Japan to create the calligraphy of. I can draw anything with brush, but I cannot write, and I needed her help.”

JAPANESE GHOST STORIES is perfect for fans of J-horror and classic Japanese horror films like Kwaidan. The 200 page hardcover edition will be on October 13, 2026 exclusively from https://www.foliosociety.com/.

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Yuko Shimizu is an award-winning New York-based Japanese artist, renowned for her intricate and expressive artwork. She has a MFA from the Illustration as Visual Essay Program offered by the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where she now teaches in the BFA undergraduate department alongside working as a freelance artist. Her work has been published by Penguin, Time, Newsweek, the New York Times and the New Yorker; for Folio her work includes Japanese Tales (2018) and The Great Gatsby (2025). Her accolades include multiple Gold and Silver Medals from the Society of Illustrators, along with recognition as one of Newsweek Japan's '100 Japanese People the World Respects'.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) was a writer, journalist and translator whose works introduced Western readers to the culture, folklore and literature of Japan. Born on the Greek island of Lefkada to an Irish father and Greek mother, he emigrated to the United States before settling in Japan in 1890. There he married, became a Japanese citizen under the name Koizumi Yakumo, and devoted himself to recording the country's stories, customs and beliefs. His ghost stories – Kwaidan, In Ghostly Japan, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan – which were drawn from Japanese folklore, appeared in collections throughout the 1890s and 1900s. He is a much celebrated figure in Japan.

ABOUT THE INTRODUCER

Yoko Ogawa is one of Japan's most prominent writers and has won every major Japanese literary award. Internationally, she has been the recipient of the Shirley Jackson Award and the American Book Award. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space and Zoetrope. Her works include The Diving Pool, The Housekeeper and the Professor, Hotel Iris and Revenge. Her dystopian novel, The Memory Police, was shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize.

ABOUT THE FOLIO SOCIETY

The Folio Society, based in London, publishes beautifully produced, illustrated hardback books. From a single purchase to a lifetime of collecting, book lovers around the world can buy these exquisite editions exclusively from their website, foliosociety.com. Proudly independent for its 75-year history, in 2021 under the leadership of its CEO, Joanna Reynolds, The Folio Society became an Employee Ownership Trust. The Folio Society is committed to a progressive sharing of power and profit in publishing, and this is reflected in their new status.

The Folio Society publishes some of the best names in publishing past and present, across the globe in high specification, collector editions. Notable publications include Frank Herbert’s Dune, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Andrew Chaikin’s A Man on the Moon and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple among many other contemporary and classic titles including a publishing partnership with Marvel delivering the world-recognized, iconic brand’s luxury editions

Retail price: $110

Pages: 200

Dimensions: 9½ inches × 6¼ inches (24.5 × 17 cm)

Production Details:

Bound in screen-printed cloth

Text printed in four colours throughout

Printed endpapers

Ribbon marker

Colour top book edge

Die-cut and blocked slipcase covered in a tactile, textured Japanese-inspired pape

Included Stories:

Oshidori