Japan is imagined routinely in American discourse as a supernatural entity. Gothic tales from these two cultures have been exchanged, consumed, and adapted. Here, Blouin examines a prevalent tendency within the United States-Japan cultural relationship to project anxiety outward only to find shadowy outlines of the self abroad.
"Blouin's transnational approach is an especially novel, and timely, one; certainly, it is the next stage in Asian Gothic Studies and Blouin engages with (and in many ways, spearheads) its discourse. Blouin's research, coupled with his relatively untrodden line of inquiry, makes this a valuable supplementary work in graduate seminars and for upper-division undergraduate courses." - John Edgar Browning, Arthur A. Schomburg Fellow, Department of Transnational Studies, University at Buffalo, SUNY, USA and co-editor of Speaking of Monsters: A Teratological Anthology and The Forgotten Writings of Bram Stoker