A girl not one of us could forget

Five college friends reunite for Kyoto’s Kurama Fire Festival every October. Ten years ago, a sixth classmate, a woman named Hasegawa, then 20 years old, disappeared without a trace. With this memory casting a shadow over an otherwise happy occasion, the five share curious tales about friends and acquaintances that involve deaths and disappearances at night. The Japanese title Yakō is intended to suggest both the modern “night trains” that play a role in the stories, as well as the hyakki yakō—“night parade of a hundred demons”—of classical Japanese literature and folklore.

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