The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creature of Japanese Folklore

Michael Dylan Foster; with original illustrations by Shinonome Kijin

University of California Press, 2015

http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520271029

This monograph introduces yokai in a style that is intended to be accessible to students and scholars of Japan as well as to a general readership with interest in the supernatural or monstrous.

Here is the cover description, followed by a list of the contents:

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 provides a lively excursion into Japanese folklore and its ever-expanding influence on global popular culture. It also 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.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations
Water Goblin Tales: Preface and Acknowledgments
Names, Dates, Places

Part I. Yokai Culture
1. Introducing Yokai

Yokai, Folklore, and This Book
The Language of Yokai
Event Becomes Object

2. Shape-Shifting History
Heroes of Myth and Legend
Weird Tales and Weird Tastes
Modern Disciplines
Postwar Animation and the Yokai Boom

3. Yokai Practice/Yokai Theory
Yokai Culture Network
Zone of Uncertainty

Part II. Yokai Codex
4. The Order of Yokai
5. Wilds
6. Water
7. Countryside
8. Village and City
9. Home

Epilogue: Monsterful

Notes
Bibliography
Alphabetized List of Yokai in the Codex
Index

https://bookofyokai.wordpress.com/