I have recently started recording some Japanese stories to improve my voice acting skills and to share non-Rakugo traditional tales with the world.
Thanks to the fantastic The Project Gutenberg, I have found a few scripts that are in the public domain.
My first project is “The Snow Bride” or “Yuki-Onna” (雪女）.
It is one of the best known ghost stories that literary everybody in Japan knows.
You can access the full text from here.
As it is a public domain work, I will copy the texts below as well:
Mosaku and his apprentice Minokichi journeyed to a forest, some little distance from their village. It was a bitterly cold night when they neared their destination, and saw in front of them a cold sweep of water. They desired to cross this river, but the ferryman had gone away, leaving his boat on the other side of the water, and as the weather was too inclement to admit of swimming across the river they were glad to take shelter in the ferryman’s little hut.
Mosaku fell asleep almost immediately he entered this humble but welcome shelter. Minokichi, however, lay awake for a long time listening to the cry of the wind and the hiss of the snow as it was blown against the door.
Minokichi at last fell asleep, to be soon awakened by a shower of snow falling across his face. He found that the door had been blown open, and that standing in the room was a fair woman in dazzlingly white garments. For a moment she stood thus; then she bent over Mosaku, her breath coming forth like white smoke. After bending thus over the old man for a minute or two she turned to Minokichi and hovered over him. He tried to cry out, for the breath of this woman was like a freezing blast of wind. She told him that she had intended to treat him as she had done the old man at his side, but forbore on account of his youth and beauty. Threatening Minokichi with instant death if he dared to mention to any one what he had seen, she suddenly vanished.
Then Minokichi called out to his beloved master: “Mosaku, Mosaku, wake! Something very terrible has happened!” But there was no reply. He touched the hand of his master in the dark, and found it was like a piece of ice. Mosaku was dead!
To be continued.
English Rakugo NZ 