The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore by Michael Dylan Foster

The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore Reviews

• 
  Philipp

  Wonderful short book - two parts, first what we can learn from yokai and other monsters about how humans interpret reality, and how they assign agency. He does so while keeping away from the 'weird Japan' cliches, as most culture have created stories to explain their reality - think of Germany's
  Heinzelmaennchen, or Australia's
  Adnoartina. It's just that while Germany mostly forgot their stories and Australia's colonization destroyed and forcibly shifted a lot of culture Japan was fortunate enough to keep these stories going, to the point of every small island town having their own stories, or variants of those.
  
  

  
  Thinking about the genesis of yokai, then, is really a philosophical problem: it helps us explore how human beings struggle to grasp, interpret, and control the world around them.
  

  
  
  The second part of the book is a yokai encyclopedia which serves as examples for the first part of the text, with numerous yokai who serve as examples for humans making sense of their surroundings. There are yokai who make unexplainable noises around the house (
  Yanari), yokai who watch you with their many eyes so you feel watched (
  Mokumokuren), and so on. He even includes the more famous modern urban myths such as
  toire no Hanako or
  Kuchisake-onna.
  
  To me, the best thing about the geneology of yokai is that it's such a great example for an old unbroken
  'remix culture' - a relatively new term for a culture which is open towards the recombining of older elements to create new elements (just look at
  Simpsonswave, what is happening on the Internet is a prime example of a remix culture). Here Foster accidentally traces the steps of the yokai remix culture starting hundreds of years ago. You have people telling each other stories, then folklorists started to write down these stories while inventing their own yokai to add (what happened to the Grimm's Fairy Tales between the first and second edition is another example for this in Germany), then later authors expand on the early authors' works while changing and expanding, and now you have manga artists who take these 300 year old drawings and update them, add their own details or reimagine them completely, Shigeru Mizuki probably being the most famous for that inside of Japan.
  
  

  
  But because yokai emerge from the process of thinking through the unknown, they can perhaps offer a small metaphor for considering these immense challenges. As I have argued implicitly throughout this book, yokai are born from the dual acts of reading and writing the world around us; they develop from symbiotic processes of interpretation and creation.
  

  
  
  Recommended for: people interested in people
  
  P.S.: I have to say I'm jealous of Foster getting to stay on tiny Japanese islands to interview old story-tellers for his work, that sounds amazing.
• 
  Darjeeling

  I wanted a book on Japanese mythical creatures. What I got was a social studies essay that used the words "diverse" and "diversity" on almost every page. Often twice on a page. Frequently interrupting the myths and legends to give a feminist perspective, the book ends with a lecture on the dangers of global warming.
  
  When the book is actually about yokai it's great, and as a Studio Ghibli fan learning the connection between many Ghibli films and yokai is very interesting to me. I did not enjoy the social studies lecture.
• 
  Canon

  "...We may visualize this force as a monster or a spirit or a ghost or a shape-shifting animal. In Japan such a force, and the form it takes, is often called a yōkai," (p. 5).
  
  "...yōkai would not exist without the human beings who told of them, studied them, wrote about them, and in some cases tried to subdue them... Thinking about the genesis of yōkai, then, is really a philosophical problem; it helps us explore how human beings struggle to grasp, interpret, and control the world around them," (pp. 7, 25).
  
  Because so many beings can be yōkai, from ghosts to tree spirits to goblins and beyond, Foster leaves the term untranslated into English, letting it carry its rich ambiguity, and avoids giving any airtight definition that would be reflective of just one of the many theories of yōkai. Instead, Foster does something much more interesting and engaging. Noting that "one of the biggest challenges for anybody putting together a taxonomy is to decide what principles should be used in the ordering process," (109), Foster writes about the cultural history of storytelling about yōkai, exploring the many ways that humans have imagined and understood and categorized yōkai.
  
  For example, some folklorists have categorized yōkai according to whether or not they are stationary (haunting a particular place) or mobile (haunting a particular person wherever they go); others have compared them with kami along various spectra of good/bad, beneficent/malevolent, worshipped/reviled, and so on; still others (Foster included) emphasize how yōkai represent both event and object. But Foster doesn't just focus on academic folklorists — he also considers local, vernacular, and commercial "nodes... around which people and activities tend to cluster" in the so-called "Yōkai Culture Network" (YCN). These nodes are all connected and symbiotic — between them, yōkai enthusiasts share popular, scholarly, literary, and artistic creations of yōkai with one another. The commercial node is particularly notable for anime and manga, where yōkai are prominent — Foster mentions Miyazaki's films several times (especially Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away), and invites readers to think of their own favorite anime or manga where strange beings appear.
  
  All of this highly interesting history is the content of part 1. Part 2 is a partial "bestiary" of yōkai, which Foster organizes quasi-geographically by "zones of contact," from wilds (furthest from human contact) to the home (nearest to human contact). One could argue that only this second half of the book is really about yōkai, whereas the first half is really about humans writing about yōkai, and thus not really about yōkai per se. Yet this misses the point. As Foster points out (in agreement with that great religious studies scholar, Neil Gaiman), yōkai are human creations and wouldn't exist without humans and their yōkai-sustaining practices. As such, the sheer proliferation of yōkai reflect the diversity* and messiness of human creations over time and in different contexts. So all the stuff about humans thinking about yōkai is really about yōkai, too. (*A note on "diversity": unfortunately, it is one of the top Goodreads reviews of this that complains that Foster uses the "words 'diverse' and 'diversity' on almost every page." This is false (searching a PDF of the 336-page book reveals a scant 7 uses of "diversity" and 13 of "diverse") and merely reflects the reviewer's apparently anti-woke rightwing ideology, not the value of the author's informative and engaging text).
  
  
  Kwaidan, 1961
• 
  Rosa

  This is that kind of book that you start reading, think you're progressing well enough and then, when you look at the page count you only have advanced a little since the last time you looked... Still, I think this book is an imprescindible reading for everyone interested in Japanese culture and its myths.
  The first part is a bit redundant, and as I said, dry, but once you reach the bestiary, it's really interesting. I was amazed at how some of the yokai have similitudes with some European tales. The 7 leagues boots the oni used in one of the stories, is really similar to the Tale of the 7 leagues boots my granny used to told me when I was little. The same goes for Yamamba. That yokai reminded me the Tale of the Wolf and the 7 Little Kids, you know, that one in which the mother goat goes to the market and had to leave her 7 kids at home advising them not to open the door to anyone. I loved when my granny told that tale to me, impersonating the voices of the mom, the wolf and the kids.
  
  This book makes for an interesting reading, it has good points, and lots of bibliography (mostly in Japanese) to investigate further if you like the subject. I'm happy I finally get to read it. It's been two years since Sole and Joe gifted it to my sis!
• 
  Akylina

  This is a wonderful and highly informative book for anyone who is fascinated by folklore and its history until today. I really liked how the author decided to structure this book; the first part is something like a history of yokai, where the author explains their origins, their importance for Japanese culture and society, and also talks about the study of yokai at an academic level (I did not know such an academic field existed, and it is so very fascinating!).
  
  In the second part, the author creates what he calls a "Yokai Codex", where he categorizes some of the yokai according to the places where they are mostly exncountered and explains some things about each one of them. It is understandable that not all yokai could be featured in this book due to their massive numbers, but I believe that the author managed to include the most basic ones, the ones most people are familiar with, even if they have not delved much into the world of yokai. I also loved the illustrations that accompanied the yokai descriptions.
  
  This book, despite having been written by an academic, is written in such an engaging way that I am certain everyone can understand and enjoy. I, for once, immensely enjoyed reading this book and I think I now have enough material to start reading more about yokai.
  
  A copy was provided to me by the publisher via NetGalley.
• 
  Adam

  As an American fantasy reader, the influence of things like Norse and Greek mythology and Arthurian romance on contemporary works are so transparent they can feel almost uninspired. From that perspective, Japanese cultural stuff feels bursting with creativity and novelty. It's one of those insights that feels really obvious in hindsight, so much so that I'm searching my memory for occasions when I surely must have inferred the existence of a cohesive body of folklore from which all the anime and games I was consuming were drawn, even if I never bothered to look into it. That's not really true, unfortunately. I've seen Pom Poko twice (or more?), Mushishi is one of my favorite works of fantasy, I wrote an article about Pokemon's relationship to Japanese environmental history and views of nature. Shit, I literally checked out a book of Japanese folk tales a few years ago and read a bunch of genuine yokai folktales. And it was somehow still a revelation to me when Nioh took the original yokai and presented them directly.
  
  In the wake of that revelation I've looked into a bunch of yokai resources--a facebook group, the NHK's Begin Japanology video, Matt Meyer's yokai.com, and Matt Alt's
  Yokai Attack!: The Japanese Monster Survival Guide. Those other resources have more and arguably better art, and far more comprehensive yokai listings. Only Foster's work is crucial, however. It provides a broad but modestly comprehensive overview of yokai folklore studies, their evolution as a body of Shinto-adjacent spirits and working day to day knowledge to a playground for wordplay and political comedy to the modern bestiary of kawaii and horror material. It's a great summary, written in accessible and fun academic prose. The yokai descriptions stand out for their careful distinction between historical variants and attention to other points of reference, from zoology to carpentry. On a couple of occasions he indulges more speculation about the underlying causes of a yokai's popularity in a way that doesn't feel very enlightening (eg, he suggests in a few sentences that kuchi-sake-onna could "represent" parents pressuring their kids to do well in school, or growing up in concrete apartment complexes, or awareness of pollution, or anxiety over changing roles for women).
  
  Far more than Shinto or even Japanese history writ large, yokai provide the core patterns and mechanisms that underlie Japanese fantasy pop culture stuff. Foster provides the best introduction to that material I've found, at least for an adult with a taste for scholarship and history and layers to things.
• 
  Joe Muntal

  A good introduction to the creatures who occupy Japanese folklore. For further reading and deeper analyses check out Foster's Pandemonium and Parade and Gerald Figal's Civilization and Monsters.
• 
  Ashes

  3.5* The Book of Yōkai Repetitions
• 
  Jared Jensen

  This book is more of an analysis of why cultures create folklore like the yokai, and what they represent, than a book about the stories of yokai. The author spends a ridiculous amount of time explaining his research and how he organized the material. When he actually gets around to describing or telling stories about yokai, it is in sparse portions. So, if you have a Japanese ethnology class with an emphasis in folklore, congratulations, this is the perfect book for you. If you just wanted a book describing yokai and telling traditional stories about them, run away! The author is fond of blathering and tangents. He also draws a lot of connections that are pretty thin in my opinion.
• 
  Love

  Pretty satisfied with this book. It contains every little thing I wanted to read about. Packed with details. A solid 5 stars!
• 
  Morgan

  I don't know why but, just thinking about this book, just makes me angry, or at least just a little annoyed.
  This book is sectioned into 3 parts (one being the glossary, which I didn't read, cause glossary). The first part was so boring!!! If you want to read this book (which I don't really personally recommend), I highly suggest skipping the first section. If I remember correctly I think the first section made me fall asleep at least once.
  The second section that was actually about the Yokai was good. I enjoyed the original illustrations and some of the old art that's sprinkled in there. I do think it would be hard to make something super boring when you have such an interesting source material.
• 
  Jacob

  A great short history of Yokai culture in Japan and a small encyclopedia of some of Foster’s favorite Yokai at the end. I have been slowly learning more about Yokai and this book helped me frame a lot of the pieces I’ve read in disparate places online. I loved many parts. Some that stick out: the part recounting a Yokai event in Tokyo with lots of homemade zines and costumes and figurines; the part where a Kitsune shapeshifted into a man’s wife and the man kicks his other wife out of the house; the part about a college class coming up with their own Yokai to explain strange phenomena (the empty seat in the train that no one sits in); Lafcadio Hearn and Mizuki Shigeru’s roles in the continuing popularity of Yokai. Foster is careful not to make Japan out as exotic and weird for its Yokai culture, but instead makes it clear that these traditions are common all around the world. That said, I do appreciate that the monsters and mythical creatures of Japan seem to have a more accepted and playful role in pop culture than American folk myths (I’m thinking about big-foot and how we think about the people that talk about big foot🤷🏻‍♂️). For example, today I saw a human-sized Tanuki statue standing on someone’s balcony, huge ball sack and all :)
  
  Also, this emoji is a Tengu 👺
• 
  Alex

  Solid research and in-depth descriptions make this book an excellent reference.
• 
  Thomas J. Benedict

  I quite liked this book about Japanese folklore Monsters
• 
  Dominika

  More academic than I was expecting - a lot of dwelling on nomenclature, half of the book is going around social and folklore studies. But the second half, with specific yokai mentioned, their background explained, was decent.
• 
  Alina

  O kulturze i folklorze Japonii powstały niezliczone dzieła - jest to temat na tyle obszerny, że nie ma możliwości wyczerpać go całkowicie. W Polsce dostępnych jest wiele takich publikacji, ale wydaje mi się, że “Yokai” jest pierwszą wydaną u nas książką, poświęconą w całości badaniom nad tajemniczymi stworami z kraju kwitnącej wiśni.
  
  “Yokai zamieszkują pogranicze między faktem a fikcją, wiarą a wątpliwościami. Ich żywiołem jest królestwo opowieści, w którym prawa natury nie zawsze obowiązują. Stwory nieustannie się zmieniają - są inne w każdym miejscu i w każdym pokoleniu.”
  
  Terminem “yokai” japończycy określają wszelkie potwory, duchy, dziwne istoty i nadprzyrodzone zjawiska, nadając im cechy osobowe i tłumacząc ich działaniem to, czego wytłumaczyć się nie da. Na przykład jeśli idąc przez las nagle czujecie, że nie możecie postawić kolejnego kroku, japończyk powie Wam, że natknęliście się na nurikabe - yokai mające postać gipsowej ściany i zagradzające Wam dalszą drogę. Niektóre ze stworów funkcjonują w lokalnych wierzeniach od setek lat i występują w różnych wariantach, inne są młodymi wytworami XX wieku. Niektóre z nich znane są jako złe, złośliwe istoty, krzywdzące ludzi, inne natomiast jako nieszkodliwi psotnicy. Wszystkie jednak cechuje niezwykła różnorodność i aura tajemniczości, typowe dla japońskiego folkloru.
  
  Książka podzielona jest na dwie części - pierwszą Foster poświęcił na objaśnienie ważnych terminów, związanych z yokai oraz na przekrój ich historii i występowania w powszechnej świadomości i tekstach kultury na przestrzeni wieków. Autor przywołuje wiele ciekawych legend, w których kluczową rolę odegrały tajemnicze stwory, przedstawia sylwetki najbardziej znanych badaczy yokai, a także pokazuje, jak wielki wpływ miały te stworzenia na współczesną kulturę japonii, przenikając do mangi i anime, filmów, literatury, czy nawet do reklamy.
  
  Druga część stanowi swoisty bestiariusz - spis wybranych yokai z krótkimi charakterystykami i ilustracjami. W tej części również poznajemy wiele legend i podań, związanych z konkretnymi stworami. Czyta się ją zdecydowanie łatwiej i szybciej niż pierwszą, bo chociaż cała książka nie jest w ścisłym sensie rozprawą naukową, to jednak przejawia sporo cech tego gatunku.
  
  Do moich ulubionych stworzeń, które poznałam dzięki tej książce, należą na przykład yamabiko - przypominający małpkę stworek, będący personifikacją echa; wspomniany już nurikabe; nurarihyon, zakradający się do domów i wypijający ludziom herbatę, czy kuchi-sake-onna - wytwór miejskiej legendy, postrach wracających ze szkoły uczniów w całej Japonii.
  
  “Yokai” z pewnością nie jest lekką lekturą na jeden wieczór, ale z czystym sumieniem polecam ją wszystkim miłośnikom kultury wschodu i fantastycznych stworzeń oraz tym, którzy lubią poszerzać swoją wiedzę o świecie.
  
• 
  Jewels-PiXie Johnson

  I'm fascinated by the Yokai as so many appear in Japanese fiction and are so firmly immersed in the culture.
  So I was very much looking forward to reading this book!
  However it left me feeling extremely disappointed and shortchanged.
  Michael Dylan Foster (the author) really does like to waffle ! He spends a lot of time talking about how he became interested in Yokai and how he will explore them but he spends more time doing that than he spends telling us about the Yokai.
  While he talks about being very passionate about the subject ,this sadly doesn't come across in a palpable way.
  When we reach the codex of Yokai , it's great because we do find out the various different creatures names and a little about them. But there is a distinct lack of magic in the very brief descriptions Foster gives about each one. I think this is probably intentional ,since he seems keen to explore and reiterate a sociocultural (sometimes sociopolitical) foundation and demystify the Yokai.
  The descriptions in the codex are largely brief and matter of fact and there is an emptiness about these descriptions ,that I find quite sad.
  Personally ,if you want to find out a little more about the types of Yokai ,I would skip ahead to the codex because the rest is repetitive waffle. And in the codex itself , don't expect too much but simply to become a little more acquainted with each creature. And then let your imagination continue to do the rest!
• 
  Петър Тушков

  Изненадващо много интересни аспекти в методологията около изследването на йокай (за фолклористи и хора, които се интересуват от работата на фолклориста). Йокай са първичен бульон, от който през вековете са се оформяли богове, демони, домашни духове, традиции, поверия, суеверия, а в днешно време - градски легенди, комиксови и анимационни герои, корпоративни/събитийни/регионални талисмани, литературни и филмови феномени (йокай не са мъртва материя, а това са модерни проявления на мисленето ни като вид от началото на човешката история). Включени са потрети и на ловци на йокай, постигнали легендарен статус (което е възможен поглед към устойчивия модел на драматичното в изпъкването и съхраняването на сведения за реални исторически личности). И не на последно място книгата е радост за всеки, които иска да усети различното и сходствата в бита и културата на Япония - дребните подробности отпреди повече от хиляда години до наши дни.
• 
  Charlotte

  In the preface, the author promises a wealth of scholarship applied to language that's not limited to academics and experts. He definitely delivers! "The Book of Yōkai" is interesting and understandable to someone who has no knowledge of Japanese, of Japanese folklore or much culture. But those who've seen Hayao Miyazaki movies will find much to connect to. And there are many insights that can be gleaned about the culture from the history of these creatures. The author takes you through the history of writing about Yōkai in such a way that it feels like a narrative. The second half of the book is a codex, with scattered illustrations. And there's a good index, making this a valuable work for people who are studying the subject.
• 
  Kylie

  I found this engaging due to my interest in the subject; the first half is a discussion of Japanese folklore history, the second a small encyclopaedia of yokai. I liked that he included discussion of some more recent yokai/urban legend creatures as well as the 'classics'. I would recommend this for anyone already slightly knowledgeable on the subject but not for any newcomers or those looking for a casual read as it is highly footnoted and at times delves into critical theory abstractism - for those readers I would advise they try the more accessible
  Yokai Attack!: The Japanese Monster Survival Guide instead.
• 
  AndyWhistle

  Interesting read about yokai through history. The first part of the book is more about the history of yokai and the cultural impact, including perception of yokai, attitudes towards them, and how they propogated through different time periods and media. The second half of the book is the yoaki codex. The codex itself is laid out in a factual manner with descriptions of the yokai's apperance and what they do, as well as when and where they originated.
  
  The book itself can get dry at times and I was hoping for a few more stories to go with the yoaki in the codex, but overall it's an interesting book.
• 
  Vera Marsova

  The first half reads like a protracted list of references 😅.
  The second half, however, is a solid introduction to Japanese folklore – the author expatiates on both the stories associated with each mythological creature and the possible geneses of each story, the latter making this introduction particularly interesting.
• 
  Miggy

  A fantastic, fun book. I wouldn't call this a complete bestiary of yokai, but I learned a lot from it.
• 
  Andre

  Why are introductions always so boring? Because it really was, only when it dealt with terms like mononoke, bakemono, oni and yokai was the reading experience much better. Also, he mentions that depicting ghosts without legs is a japanese tradition and that made wonder: Was that exported to other parts of the world? Because in pre-20th century depictions of ghosts here in germany, they always have legs but later on you see in fiction ghosts without legs. And I can't remember anyone, ever, portraying Yamata no Orochi as having trees on its back. I can't even remember 8 tails being portrayed, only 8 heads.
  Sadly, I have to ask, did one-third the book really have to deal with all this history stuff and all these many many authors and books? Who would be able to remember even half of it and I don't think that most people reading this, really care about that part. Heck, it was a chore for me to sit through.
  And the chapter on how the yokai sections are ordered really could have been left out, there was no reason for it.
  The book only gets better when he actually gets to the yokai, but sadly for me, it happened time and again that there wasn't much stuff for me that was new, even in the long sections, like with the Oni. Nonetheless, it had some interesting stuff, like how the term tsuchigumo (earth-spider) might have been a derogatory and demonizing term by the Japanese for the indigenous inhabitants of Japan. Granted, that is apparently in mythological texts, so who knows whether these people ever existed. There some more new stuff for me, like the element that Tengu were once humans who failed in Buddhism and so became Tengu. And an edo-period depiction of the nurikabe doesn't show a wall with eyes and limbs as is so widely known, but a flat-faced three-eyed elephant. Furthermore, the human faced tree may have originated from a Persion illustration of Alexander the Great and the Feejee mermaid came from Japan and originally was supposed to present a ningyo and not a European mermaid. Also, mostly these snow woman stories sound quite different from this one popular tale. The latter is full of romance and all and apparently a creation by a guy called Hearn which became popular in Japan and used common japanese folklore motives.
  And while it is interesting to read certain lesser known details about well known yokai, like the nue once being a bird or the one-eyed rascal possibly originating with human sacrifice where the potential victim gets his eye poked out before, I had the problem that most of these yokai were already familar to me. And things like a human faced bovine that predicts the future is nothing for me. In fact, these yokai have been incredibly mundane in both look and behavior from my perspective as I have seen much weirder stuff. So a dog with a human face, is for me not even a three on the creepiness scale when compared to all the other shit that I have seen. I was so happy when the grimelickers finally appeared, I had really started to wonder whether they would ever come up. And these are the freakiest yokai here, the others are really tame and mundane looking for my standards.
  Shortly afterwards, I was done and holy shit, the rest of the book is notes and all, almost 100 pages!!!!
• 
  P

  This book consists of 2 parts. Part 1 deals with the yokai culture in Japan and how the idea of yokai became popular post WW2. It has some interesting anecdotes. Part 2 is Yokai Codex where monsters, demons, spirits are categorized according to the places they inhabit. I really enjoyed reading about them. Being an anime fan, I already knew about some of these yokai; notable examples include kitsune and tanuki (Kyuubi/Kurama and Ichibi/Shukaku respectively from Naruto), yuki-onna and shikigami (from InuYasha).
• 
  Sakib Ahmed

  I was watching some Yokai-related anime(mushishi) made me interested in Yokai.
  So here I am.
  
  
  
  
• 
  NadiaN99

  شاید یکی از جالب ترین قسمت های این کتاب-که پر از داستانهای ترسناک و داستانهای کیوته-یوکایی بود به اسم جینمنجو
  Jinmenju
  یوکایی که از شاهنامه برگرفته شده
  کاش کمتر توضیحات تکراری داشت که خوندنش انقدر طاقت فرسا نمیشد
• 
  Robin

  Books about yōkai are becoming increasingly popular, even in English, but this is the clearest explanation I’ve encountered about the cultural context surrounding these folkloric monsters in Japan. It’s written in an extremely engaging manner and is a pleasure to read as well.
• 
  Rebecca

  Monsterful!