A closed world, without any humans to create history.

Youkai remember distorted versions of past events, and Gensokyo is not facing the fact.

Because of that, the humans, could not know the reality of the youkai, and only could cower in fear of them.

You might be thinking that if humans knew more about the abilities and the countermeasures of the youkai, if we knew beforehand what parts of Gensokyo were dangerous, if we knew more about those humans who specialize in defeating youkai, then we wouldn't have to live in fear.

We, the Hieda family, decided to collect information about Gensokyo's most prominent youkai every one hundred twenty to one hundred eighty years in order to ensure humans to live in safety.

The result is this. The "Gensokyo Chronicles".

It started more than a thousand years ago, in Aichi's age. And with me, this is already the ninth generation.

The Gensokyo Chronicles are divided into a youkai encyclopedia, heroic legends, a guide to dangerous areas, various unresolved matters and a monologue, thus painting a picture of contemporary Gensokyo.

The youkai encyclopedia describes each type of youkai's characteristics and countermeasures to take against them; furthermore, youkai that are known to be active today are each treated separately in detail.

This encyclopedia should serve as a guide to avoid fearing youkai more than necessarily, or the opposite, to prevent provoking particularly strong youkai.

It starts with commonly encountered youkai, such as fairies and phantoms, proceeding to powerful youkai such as vampires and tengu, providing a list of abilities, threat levels, the places and times at which they most commonly appear, and how often they're seen.

All of them are illustrated.

It should be a most useful item to the human villagers.

The heroic legends are introductions to humans not living in the Human Village who engage in youkai extermination and incident resolution.

They are essentially allies of humans, so if you're being harassed by youkai, you may be well served by consulting with one of the humans described here.

There are many mysteries about most of these humans, but I have tried to shed some light on the mysterious points as well.

The dangerous areas guide is a list of key locations in Gensokyo, describing each and giving a sense of how dangerous they are.

If you want to know what kind of preparations are needed in order to go to one of those places, please read this guide beforehand.

When an occasion asks for you to leave the Human Village, please read it carefully.

The unresolved matters are articles with incomplete information, articles that appear incompatible with Gensokyo, newspaper articles, and other inserts.

I intend to start gathering material and finish writing those.

The monologue consists of thoughts that I, Akyuu of the ninth generation, had when compiling this book, as well as my written thoughts about Gensokyo.

It is fine either if you read it or not, but I would be glad if you did.

With this book, the Gensokyo Chronicles have reached their ninth volume.

A new wind of change has swept through Gensokyo since the previous volumes of the Gensokyo Chronicles; I believe that the new volume has been greatly redesigned in the contemporary style, and is much easier to read.

I wanted people who find it difficult to read handwriting by brush like classic literature, or who wouldn't read the Chronicles because of all the abstruse sentences, to read it, too.

Now, please read these Gensokyo Chronicles, and may the wonderful you have a safe life in Gensokyo.

Hieda no Akyuu, the Ninth Maiden of Are