Significantly expanded and updated—a lively excursion into Japanese folklore and its increasing influence within global popular culture.
Monsters, spirits, fantastic beings, and supernatural creatures haunt the folklore and popular culture of Japan. Broadly labeled
yōkai, they appear in many forms, from
tengu mountain goblins and
kappa water sprites, to shape-shifting
kitsune foxes and long-tongued ceiling-lickers. Popular today in anime, manga, film, and video games, many yōkai originated in local legends, folktales, and regional ghost stories.
The Book of Yōkai invites readers to examine how people create, transmit, and collect folklore, and how they make sense of the mysteries in the world around them.
Revised and expanded, this second edition features fifty new illustrations, including an all-new yōkai gallery of stunning color images tracing the visual history of yōkai across centuries. In clear and accessible language, Michael Dylan Foster unpacks the cultural and historical contexts of yōkai, interpreting their varied meanings and introducing people who have pursued them through the ages.
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Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments
Names, Dates, Places
PART I. YOKAI CULTURE
1. Introducing Yōkai
Yōkai, Folklore, and This Book
The Language of Yōkai
Event Becomes Object
Questioning Yōkai
2. Shape-Shifting History
Heroes of Myth and Legend
Weird Tales and Weird Tastes
Modern Disciplines
Postwar Animation and the Yōkai Boom
3. Yōkai Practice / Yōkai Theory
Yōkai Culture Network
Zones of Uncertainty
PART II. YOKAI CODEX
4. The Order of Yōkai
5. Wilds
6. Water
7. Countryside
8. Village and City
9. Home
PART III. YOKAI GALLERY
10. Seeing Yōkai
11. Illustrating Yōkai
12. A Completely Incomplete Yōkai Exhibition
Epilogue: Monsterful
Notes
Bibliography
Alphabetized List of Yōkai in the Codex
Index
O autorze
Michael Dylan Foster is Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Davis. He is author of many works on Japanese folklore, including Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yōkai.