Author’s Note
Great liberties have been taken with many of the places mentioned in this book. For example, the Aokigahara Forest is a real place, but it is in the vicinity of Mount Fuji in the Eastern part of Japan’s main island. It does have a long and colorful history involving suicides, and was featured a few years ago in a horror movie entitled “The Forest.” The Kumano Kodo is a network of pilgrimage trails through the peninsula south of Osaka. They have been in use for over a thousand years and are the only pilgrimage routes besides the Camino de Santiago in Spain to be designated a world heritage site.
Lafcadio Hearn is a fascinating man with a small but dedicated following throughout the world. In Matsue, Japan, there is a museum dedicated to him, and it is near the samurai house
