Everything You Need to Know About Yokai in One Delightful Book
Your guide to the weird and wonderful supernatural spirits of Japan
If you have any interest in Japanese yōkai or Japanese culture in general, this compendium of yōkai is a must-have.
The title of the book: “Strange Japanese Yokai: a Guide to Weird and Wonderful, Demons and Spirits” by Kenji Murakami, translated by Zack Davisson, is an accurate description of what you’ll find inside.
Yōkai (妖怪), literally, “strange apparitions” are supernatural spirits found in Japanese folklore. Some are dangerous man-eaters while others are only out to scare people. Many of the yōkai included in this volume are just weird or wonderfully silly. A few are hard to understand at all.
Each page includes a fun, manga-style illustration, a few paragraphs describing the yōkai’s story, and a summary of where and when the yōkai were known as many are unique to particular regions of Japan or only existed during particular eras.
Of the thousands of yōkai, this small, fun book describes 122 grouped into 8 different categories:
