Izumi Kyōka (泉鏡花) (1873-1939) was an author and playwright whose career began in the final years of the Meiji era. He was heavily influenced by supernatural and grotesque themes from Edo-period literature and folklore. Izumi’s atmospheric and allusive technique — though not, in most cases, his humor — remains a strong influence on modern Japanese horror. This story “Night Fishing” 「夜釣」dates from 1911.

This is a story I heard from the wife of Daikatsu the Carpenter.

Daikatsu ran a crew in Ushigome-Tsukudo-Mae, and a man named Iwaji — who was married with two children — used to drop in and out, making himself mildly useful. Iwaji drank, he spent, he brawled. He had nothing you could call a hobby, except one thing: he had always loved to fish.

And he had talent to match. They say that eel-fishing is too hard for amateurs, but casting for eel was his specialty. He would step out for an evening and come back with so many eels that it was like he had been digging for earthworms in a marsh.

Nor was it rare for him to toss some eels in through Daikatsu’s kitchen door: “Boss, three twenty-six ouncers.”

His wife, though young, worried about their afterlife, and so Iwa-san’s destruction of living creatures made her terribly unhappy.

It was late November. An unseasonably muggy wind had blown all evening. Humid clouds swelled overhead. People too near a brazier were damp with sweat, wishing they could remove their coats. And now the sun was setting. Iwa-san left work and wound through the alleys of the Gyōgan temple grounds to the longhouse where he lived with his family. But once he got there, he seemed agitated by something and in a great hurry. Without even making his usual visit to the bath-house, he wolfed down his rice and tea, said that he was going to visit a friend, and left the house.

While he was gone, the wind grew ever fiercer. The doors and shoji screens rattled. The dark mouths of the shutters yawned and slammed. The skies, despite all this, were clear, stars still and twinkling even as the gale grew wild. Gray clouds like piles of cotton swelled into view from time to time, shedding a few drops of rain. But just when it seemed about to pour, the wind would grow wild and blow the skies clear.

The night wore on, and before long it had become a merciless pitch-black.
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