Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

The true first is the American edition: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston & New York, April 1904. Hearn wrote in English from Japan, working from old Japanese texts, so this is the original-language first — there is no earlier Japanese-language edition to displace it. The London edition, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1904, is separately collected as the first English edition and is found in green cloth titled and ruled in gilt, top edge gilt. The census claim that the London Kegan Paul issue was made up from American sheets is NOT confirmed — I could not trace it to a primary dealer or bibliographic source, and an uncorroborated report points the other way (that the publisher's Introduction, prompted by the February 1904 outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, is absent from the London first edition and appears there only in a later issue). Do not publish the American-sheets claim as fact.