Tales in Which Ghosts Help Human Beings: Focusing on “Konnjakumonogatarishuu” and Chinese Ancient Stories

In tales of Six Dynasties and The Tang Dynasty, we encounter many characters of ghosts. Some cause trouble, others disturb human beings and kill them, while still others take human beings away by force. However, not all ghosts hold hostility towards human beings. There are some who help human beings, though always with a reason or condition. Ghosts come in such a great number of different types in tales of Six Dynasties and The Tang Dynasty that they can always arouse readers’ interest. Owing to the constant interaction between China and Japan, Chinese tales spread to Japan later and further influence Setsuwa, one of the genres in Japanese literature. For example, the 32th story in Vol. 9 of Shinntanbu was written based on the story of Sonnkeiboku in Vol. 20 of Meihouki. Besides Shintanbu, we also read in Hochoubu some tales in which ghosts come to human beings’ assistance.
We can see how Chinese literature interacts with Japanese literature by exploring the similarity and the difference between tales of “Konnjakumonogatarishuu”, in Six Dynasties and in The Tang Dynasty. Therefore, in the thesis I would like to focus on the tales in which ghosts help human beings, in order to discover how tales of Chinese literature and Japanese literature are related to each other.