I think "horror" is one of genre that shows clear differences between eastern and western style. People must feel fears of different things and have different thoughts about horror. I felt what's the feature of eastern horror when I read Kwaidan for sure, because I'm a Korean and I think Asian horror things all have this feature.
Kwaidan is about Japanese strange story. I think variety of eastern horrors are not much as those of western horror, and almost movies and books are about spiritual beings. Like Mujina in this book, spiritual being who doesn't have its eyes, nose and mouth can be a theme of oriental horror story.
One of the episodes in Kwaidan, Diplomacy was about people's psychological fear of ghosts who have vengeance. As a result of this story, nothing at all happened and dead man couldn't do anything but people were seized with panic and fear. This shows that what's the feature of eastern horror very well because almost of eastern horror story arouse fear using spiritual beings or bizarre situations psychologically. On the other way, I think western horror is almost about mysterious beings or monsters like Frankenstein, zombies, or murderer. For example, there are a lot of animations that show this feature; Paranoman, Corpse Bride, or Casper. Those are all about mysterious beings that arouse our curiosity.
I think Of a Mirror and a Bell was also similar case. In the story the author already said "You must know that the last wish or promise of anybody who dies in anger, or performs suicide in anger, is generally supposed to possess a supernatural force". I think the author emphasized the feature of eastern horror very well. Like those stories, there are many movies or books about advanced horror stories that was passed down orally and personal spiritual experience. They also usually use everyday objects like bell and mirror in this story. In my opinion those stories are really good examples for Asian horror- but I'm not sure other people can understand it because there was some superstition like "a mirror is the Soul of a Woman".
Actually I felt interested in fact that people from all over the world must feel about "horror" in different way. For me, I'm not really scared of ghosts or spiritual things; I'm scared of disturbing and brutal horror stories like one of western horror styles. Kwaidan was quite simple and ordinary for me.
