Starry Night, by Takahashi Shotei, c. 1926. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of Chuck Bowdlear, PhD, and John Borozan, MA.
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Miscellany
In Japanese tradition, ghosts and spirits are more likely to appear at dusk or dawn than in the middle of the night. “In order for people to see them and be frightened by them,” wrote folklorist Kunio Yanagita, “emerging in the pitch-dark after even the plants have fallen asleep is, to say the least, just not good business practice.”
What hath night to do with sleep?
—John Milton, 1637





