When October rolls around, many of us reach for classic Gothic romances: Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Bram Stoker’s Dracula or Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera. These Western tales of dark love stories have shaped our sense of “romantic horror.”
But Japan has its own treasury of haunted romances. Rooted in the aesthetics of yugen, a subtle, mysterious beauty that hints at the ephemeral, Japanese stories of love and ghosts offer something both delicate and terrifying.
Where Western Gothic often dramatizes horror with thunderclaps and ruined castles, Japanese romantic horror whispers in a way that makes our skin crawl. Its allure lies in the thin veil between the living and the dead.
If you’re looking to add a heart-throbbing twist to your Halloween reading list, here are some of Japan’s most iconic romantic horror tales.
1. Izanagi and Izanami’s Eternal Separation—Kojiki (8th century)
Though not necessarily of the horror genre, the creation story of Japan begins with the tragedy of a divine couple. When the goddess Izanami dies in childbirth, her husband, Izanagi, travels to the underworld to bring her back. But in the shadows of the underworld, he finds her decaying form, crawling with demons. Love turns to horror, and the couple’s heartwrenching finale marks the birth of mortality itself.
Read on Amazon:
Kindle: Kojiki (Gustav Heldt translation)
Paperback: Kojiki (Gustav Heldt translation)
2. Lady Aoi’s Haunted Marriage—The Tale of Genji (11th century)
In Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji, courtly love is not always gentle. Lady Aoi, the protagonist Genji’s wife, finds herself tormented by strange ailments after romantic rivalry stirs jealousy. Whispers spread of a restless spirit drawn by passion and envy, blurring the line between romance and the supernatural.
Read on Amazon:
Kindle: The Tale of Genji (Royall Tyler translation)
Paperback: The Tale of Genji (Royall Tyler translation)
3. Iemon’s betrayal and Oiwa’s rage—Yotsuya Kaidan (1825)
The most famous ghost story from the Edo Period (1603-1868) begins with betrayal. Iemon, a faithless samurai, poisons his devoted wife Oiwa to gain wealth. Twisted by suffering, she returns as a spirit—her hair unbound, her face disfigured, her love turned into a chain that binds her even in death. Yotsuya Kaidan reminds us that not all love stories are noble; sometimes devotion becomes the very source of horror.
Read on Amazon:
Kindle: Ghastly Tales from the Yotsuya kaidan
Paperback: Ghastly Tales from the Yotsuya kaidan
Or, watch its adaptations.
4. Gothic Romance by Izumi Kyoka—The Surgery Room (1895)
In the modern Meiji Period (1868-1912), while naturalist writers pursued realism, Izumi Kyoka wove decadent fantasies filled with longing and the supernatural. His short story The Surgery Room tells of a woman’s mysterious love for her surgeon, blending clinical coldness with fevered romance. Kyoka’s other tales also hover between dream and nightmare, giving Japanese Gothic its modern form.
Read on Amazon:
Kindle: The Surgery Room
Paperback: The Surgery Room
Read Izumi Kyoka’s other works in Japanese Gothic Tales.
5. Folkloric Love Stories by Lafcadio Hearn—Kwaidan (1904)
The Irish-born writer who later became Koizumi Yakumo introduced English readers to Japan’s spectral love stories. In The Story of O-tei, a woman vows to reunite with her beloved in another life. In Yuki-onna, the snow woman spares a man she loves, until betrayal dooms him. Hearn’s retellings capture the tender ache at the heart of Japanese ghost lore.
Read Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things for free in the public domain.
These tales offer a glimpse into the realm of yugen, a beauty that is shadowed, fleeting and tinged with melancholy. For readers new to Japanese folklore, romantic horror offers more than ghostly chills; it opens a window into a literary tradition where passion itself becomes spectral.
This Halloween, trade haunted mansions for haunted hearts, where the scariest thing is not death but devotion that refuses to die.
Learn more about the Irish-Greek wanderer who became Japan’s foremost folklore chronicler: Lafcadio Hearn (Yakumo Koizumi)
