Folklorist YUMOTO Kōichi, Japan’s foremost yōkai collector. A Japanese Rail Travel Journal Vol. I have suggested that yōkai are born from the human need to explain the unexplainable, and in this context they are nothing more than highly creative metaphors for things for which we have no words. A folklorist and cultural anthropologist, he has been honored as a Person of Cultural Merit by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Particularly following the influx of Western ideas in the nineteenth century, yōkai also proved an irresistible topic for folklorists, anthropologists and other scholars seeking insight into the Japanese psyche. --------. Hardcover | He examines the popular Yokai legends from an historical, anthropological, and sociological viewpoint, presenting various theories as to how and why various popular Yokai creatures came about. Although yōkai did become a familiar part of life in the Edo Period, that’s not to say that people suddenly stopped being scared of them. They come about through human interpretation, through the intellectual drive to find causality and agency in the signs we see around us. mass media, yôkai boom, J-horror, Japanese horror films, traditional yôkai, yôkaigaku, Sadako, Pokémon. They can also be called ayakashi, mononoke, or mamono. She appears in snowfall and glides without feet over the snow like a ghost. Throughout this long history, then, what commonalities and consistencies can we find within the broad concept of yōkai? Yamauba crones. This long, relatively peaceful (and relatively authoritarian) phase of Japanese history is famous in part for the development of a sophisticated and literate urban populace who enjoyed entertainments such as kabuki drama, ningyō jōruri (puppet theater), woodblock prints, and all sorts of inexpensive, often highly illustrated works of fiction. Holding exhibitions for the purpose of education and enjoyment is obviously a part of that, but the role of the museum is also conservation and restoration, as well as compiling a database and enabling further investigation and research. Each one of these stories began as an individual’s response to an uncanny encounter, which then became hearsay and gossip before becoming part of a greater oral tradition. The Legends of Tono: 100th Anniversary Edition. ISBN 978-4-916055-80-4 It begins with a section on the J-horror genre, which are composed of Japanese horror films that entered the global market during the late 1990s. They were all but abandoned as a relic of a superstitious and embarrassing past. DOI:10.1525/california/9780520253612.003.0006, Chapter 2 Natural History of the Weird: Encyclopedias, Spooky Stories, and the Bestiaries of Toriyama Sekien, Chapter 4 Museum of the Weird: Modernity, Minzokugaku, and the Discovery of Yōkai, Chapter 6 Yōkai Culture: Past, Present, Future, Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai. We can think of the creation of yōkai as an inventive way of interpreting or explaining the otherwise mysterious things we observe around us. Another good example is the kappa mentioned above. The oldest picture scroll featuring yōkai is said to be the Hyakki Yagyō (Night Parade of One Hundred Demons), painted in the Muromachi Period (1336 – 1573). In Mizuki’s hands, yōkai are rendered as mystical nostalgic icons of an older more innocent Japan—representing a sort of longing for a time before the tragedy of war and the landscape-altering industrialization and urbanization of the postwar period. Historically speaking, it was during the Edo Period (1603 – 1868) that yōkai came to be depicted as being not only frightening, but also cute. Seattle: Chin Music Press, 2015. de Visser, M.W. Marshaling vast amounts of scholarship into a compact and accessible form, An Introduction to Yōkai Culture is a distillation of the knowledge and experience Komatsu has accumulated over his storied academic career—a career that has encompassed everything from fieldwork in Micronesia to his current position as Director-General of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies. Many of these animals were said to have the ability to shift their shape, taking on the form of a person or another animal or object in order to cause trouble in the human world. Located in Hiroshima Prefecture, the city of Miyoshi was the setting of a series of hauntings that formed the basis of a well-known ghost story from the Edo Period. Enryakuji – The Cradle of Japan’s Buddhist Culture. We’d love your help. This is not only because of their roots in diverse small communities throughout Japan but because of their ability to transcend these roots and proliferate within urban centers and through popular media. Copyright© Shidax Co Ltd., All rights reserved. At the same time, a kappa might be worshipped as a powerful and protective water deity, perhaps appeased with an offering of a cucumber, one of its favorite foods (hence the “kappa roll” on the menu at sushi shops around the world). But why are there yōkai in the first place? Part 1: Ume – The Japanese Plum. “Yōkai and Yanagita Kunio Viewed from the 21st Century.” In Ronald A. Morse ed., Yanagita Kunio and Japanese Folklore Studies in the 21st Century, 20-35. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. 210mm (h) x 148mm (w) | This world is what we hope to give people a glimpse of. Japanese Ghosts and Demons: Art of the Supernatural. Was rather skeptical about this study at first but found it fascinating. Although the name kappa has become the most common label for this river sprite, there are literally hundreds of local names for such nasty water goblins—including, kawatarō, garappa, enkō, mintsuchi, gameshiro, komahiki, etc. Rather than a coffee table book of folk legends we are given a scholastic introduction into the academic field of Japanese Folkloric research. If they say yes, she takes off the mask to reveal her mouth slit from ear to ear and asks the question again. Shiibashi Hiroshi. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Ordinary folk wouldn’t have been able to afford them. Each page of his catalogs contains a line drawing of a particular creature—some from Japanese folklore, some from Chinese literature, and some seemingly invented from whole cloth by the artist himself. As always they use the media of the given moment—everything from oral narratives, line drawings and woodblock prints in the Edo period, to the anime, video games and other digital technology of the contemporary global cultural arena. Yōkai benefited from this move towards mass printing, with stories and picture scrolls becoming widely circulated. Yōkai range eclectically from the malevolent to the mischievous, or occasionally bring good fortune to those who encounter them. Even though many yōkai may have been born in Japan, with the current worldwide popularity of anime, manga, and games of all sorts, it is difficult these days to claim that yōkai are still just Japanese. Yamauba crones. This chapter continues the discussion on yôkai in mass media, and explores the yôkai boom that occurred during the 1980s and 1990s. If the woman answers “red,” Aka Manto tears the flesh from her back to make it appear she is wearing a red cloak. This chapter also examines some of the famous yôkai characters in media, such as Sadako and the Pokémon (pocket monsters). Such an animistic worldview has traditionally informed Japanese religious conceptions in which all sorts of things—including trees, stones, mountains and other natural features—can be inhabited by deities or kami-sama. VIZ Media, 2011. In these media, yōkai were not always very scary: more often, they were comical, invoked for parody and satire, or even just for silliness and fun. Particularly important was a man named Inoue Enryō (1858-1919), a Buddhist priest, philosopher, and prominent educator who founded a university (current-day Tōyō University) and also created a brand new academic field of study called yōkai-gaku (or yōkai-ology). World Heritage in Japan. Civilization and Monsters: Spirits of Modernity in Meiji Japan. The demon was let into the house and, after a struggle, bit off the man’s head, held it up and danced with it before his family, and then vanished. Putting on displays for people’s enjoyment is an important part of the museum’s role, but these visual representations of yōkai are only a tiny part of the yōkai world. In Japan the creatures and strange phenomena of folklore have been known historically by a variety of terms, including mononoke, bakemono and obake, but most commonly today they are called yōkai, a word that has become a catchall for everything spooky—from creepy monster, to ghostly spirit, to mysterious phenomenon. In one version of the story, Aka Manto asks women if they would like a red cloak or a blue cloak. Collecting such things enabled me to see the bigger picture of Japan’s yōkai culture; the way that yōkai had gone from being something frightening to becoming something familiar. We may not be conscious of it, but this contradictory approach to yōkai, horrifying on the one hand but cute on the other, continues to this day. Yamabuas also have mouths under their hair. Karuta cards with yōkai from the Edo period and later. All this to say that even within a particular type or “species” of yōkai, the variety is endless. All these and more are placed in their proper context, including valuable summaries of individual papers for those interested in going deeper. I look forward to reading other such books. As Yumoto san was preparing for the opening of the new yōkai museum, we talked to him about his life’s work and why yōkai continue to hold such a strong appeal. And there are also thousands of different stories associated with tengu—some famous and used in kabuki drama and other forms of cultural production, and some known only to the residents of a particular village. Yamauba (Mountain Ogress) Also originating in the medieval period, yamauba are generally considered to be old women who were marginalized by society and forced to live in the mountains—who also have a penchant for eating human flesh.

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