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.

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.

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