The Book of Yokai, Expanded Second Edition

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 yokai, 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 yokai originated in local legends, folktales, and regional ghost stories. 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. Revised and expanded, this second edition features fifty new illustrations, including an all-new yokai gallery of stunning color images tracing the visual history of yokai across centuries. In clear and accessible language, Michael Dylan Foster unpacks the cultural and historical contexts of yokai, interpreting their varied meanings and introducing people who have pursued them through the ages.

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 Yokai.

Contents List of Illustrations 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 Questioning Yokai 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 Zones of Uncertainty PART II. YOKAI CODEX 4. The Order of Yokai 5. Wilds 6. Water 7. Countryside 8. Village and City 9. Home PART III. YOKAI GALLERY 10. Seeing Yokai 11. Illustrating Yokai 12. A Completely Incomplete Yokai Exhibition Epilogue: Monsterful Notes Bibliography Alphabetized List of Yokai in the Codex Index