The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore

Michael Dylan Foster

Jan 2015 · Univ of California Press

About this ebook

A lively excursion into Japanese folklore and its ever-expanding influence on global popular culture through the concept of yokai.

Monsters, ghosts, fantastic beings, and supernatural phenomena of all sorts haunt the folklore and popular culture of Japan. Broadly labeled yokai, these creatures come in infinite shapes and sizes, from tengu mountain goblins and kappa water spirits to shape-shifting foxes and long-tongued ceiling-lickers. Currently popular in anime, manga, film, and computer games, many yokai originated in local legends, folktales, and regional ghost stories.

Drawing on years of research in Japan, Michael Dylan Foster unpacks the history and cultural context of yokai, tracing their roots, interpreting their meanings, and introducing people who have hunted them through the ages. In this delightful and accessible narrative, readers will explore the roles played by these mysterious beings within Japanese culture and will also learn of their abundance and variety through detailed entries, some with original illustrations, on more than fifty individual creatures. The Book of Yokai invites readers to examine how people create, transmit, and collect folklore, and how they make sense of the mysteries in the world around them. By exploring yokai as a concept, we can better understand broader processes of tradition, innovation, storytelling, and individual and communal creativity.
 

Ratings and reviews

I don't know why people are calling this stupid. I bought this book because the sample content impressed me. I am fond of Japanese yokai because of anime and they tend to be an obscure topic. I love this very much and it's engaging as well for spiritual purposes. I think the writer pays respect to yokai as something beyond concrete reality but somehow also present in daily life. Thank you for this book and may your efforts be rewarded.

I am in the middle of this book. And I love it. The author is amazingly informative and passionate. The book has a lot of good recommendations for more good books/journals/sources which are well written. It does explain a lot. I am looking forward to read more books from this autor And more of the books he mentioned. Hopefully I will find some of the Japanese journals as well :) (well yea let me dream at least ;) )

Stupid

About the author

Michael Dylan Foster is Professor of Japanese, Department Chair of East Asian Languages and Cultures at University of California, Davis. He is the author of Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai (California) and numerous articles on Japanese folklore, literature, and media. Shinonome Kijin is an artist and scholar of yokai. He lives and works in Chiba Prefecture, Japan.