Abstract
Yōsōki (Records about a Creepy Monk, 1902) is a lesser-known short story of Izumi Kyōka, one of the most popular writers of the Meiji period. Kyōka, known for his fantastic, pictorial and folksy stories, belonged to the renowned literary circle Kenyūsha, founded by Ozaki Kōyō, that committed itself to light fiction and firmly rejected didactically motivated literature. The story Yōsōki presented here for the first time in German translation, stands prototypically in the tradition of the fantastic-aesthetic literature characteristic for Kyōka’s writing.