The Peony Lantern

A young woman returns each night by the light of a peony lantern. Her lover believes that the rumors of her death were lies. The neighbor who watches them together sees something far more terrible—and discovers that fear can be turned into profit.

Across Edo and the highways beyond it, another young man pursues the enemies of his master. His devotion draws him into a household ruled by deceit, a confession that overturns his understanding of his own father, and a reunion with his mother that carries its own dreadful cost. These stories converge through stolen gold, treachery, and the uncertain boundary between the living and the dead.

San’yūtei Enchō (1839–1900), one of Japan’s great masters of performed storytelling, gives this classic ghost tale the scope of a revenge narrative and the intimacy of spoken conversation. This complete new English translation preserves all twenty-one sections, the final continuation, comic asides, repeated accounts, and the narrator’s startling revelations. Brief notes clarify selected historical and religious terms. AI-assisted translation.