Narrating the Strange: Kaidan of Yokai and Yurei in Japanese Folklore
While I majored in history, I’ve found that the less concrete narratives of myths, legends, old superstitions, tales of the paranormal, and other topics that fall in and around the fuzzy discipline of folklore continue to fascinate me. When studying folklore, I feel, the lines between the different fields in the humanities and the social sciences begin to blur, lending to it an interdisciplinary approach that appeals to me. Starting with my entry last year on indigenous North American stories of the windigo, I’ve been reading up on various folkloric themes to better understand how folklore can provide insight into aspects of human culture difficult to express in other ways. So far I’ve found that, in the same way, studying folklore blurs boundaries between different academic disciplines, folklore itself often deals with blurring cultural boundaries, boundaries between the real and the speculative, belief, and experience. The places where these borders meet can serve as windows into the universal human concerns common to everyone regardless of culture and reveal specific values held by each culture, grounded in our real world but highlighting the world of our minds. And, of course, those boundaries can change, especially as cultures encounter each other and learn from each other.
A good case in point, and the subject of this entry, is the vibrant folk culture of Japan. I think there are probably few folkloric milieus that have had as much influence internationally over the last century as the tales of the various monsters and ghosts, the yokai and yurei, of Japanese lore. More books about the strange, silly, and horrifying beings that have come collectively to be called yokai are being published in English each year, showing their strong appeal even outside Japan. These motifs have always been incorporated into Japanese art, from literature as separated as the thousand-year-old Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu and the modern works of Haruki Murakami, to famed ukiyo-e artists like Hokusai, to the manga, anime, and video games the country began to export at the end of the 20th century. Each has helped stoke a global fascination for these bizarre and macabre menageries.
As we pass through the languid late summer, a hot and humid period in Japan and the American Midwest both, traditionally the time of year for the Obon, or Lantern Lighting festival, the Japanese festival of the dead, I read through as many recently published books on the subject as I could find in the library collections. Spending the month engrossed in kaidan, stories “narrating the strange” with eerie tales of monokoke (a general term for any weird or unsettling presence), bakemono (shapeshifters), or other strange phenomena recorded across the millennia of Japanese culture, I learned how these spine chilling tales help to keep one cool in the sticky summer, especially during a game of hyakumonogatari kaidankai (the telling of one hundred supernatural stories, a kind of nocturnal storytelling endurance test that became popular during the Edo period).
I chose books that approached the topic from a variety of viewpoints, including works collecting or adapting traditional tales or analyzing their importance to Japanese culture through art and literature. As a whole, it was an edifying introduction. Read together, each complemented the others by filling in gaps and contexts outside the focus of one alone. I often found myself flipping from one book to another, seeking confirmations, parallels, or discrepancies. Across everything I read, my biggest takeaway was how they showed the way folklore expresses the interplay between cultural beliefs, whether social, religious, or supernatural, and art. How do they shape each other? Where does one end and the other begin? In particular, I saw a tension between the more elite ideas expressed in writing by aristocrats and religious officials and the oral tales of the rural populace. As I discussed in my opening paragraph, folklore exists at the crossroads of culture and the books I discuss here all demonstrate that ambiguity in different ways. Boundaries between the human and inhuman, the living and the dead, the natural and the supernatural, humor and horror, each blur and shift constantly when discussing yokai.
The study of folklore (or minzokugaku in Japanese) developed in unique ways in Japan, seeming to take on a much broader, though not uncontroversial, place in Japanese scholarship. Throughout these works, for instance, a few of the same names appeared often. The writings of the Victorian Irish-Greek writer Lafcadio Hearn and that of the Japanese folklore innovator Yanagita Kunio, along with acclaimed artists like Kyosai and Yoshitoshi, and most recently, manga artist Shigeru Mizuki, all have strong influences on the development of how the world understands and interacts with these concepts. This trend continued even in the more recently published books, with many of the books I checked out being published by one specific press, Tuttle, and the work of the translator and folklorist Zack Davisson appearing frequently as well. All in all, as I read, it was interesting to see how the perspectives of both Japanese and foreign writers shaped how these tales are presented and appreciated.
As can be seen, these stories spark the imagination of foreigners and lifelong Japanese alike. Resources like Zack Davisson’s Yurei: The Japanese Ghost (2020) and Murakami Kenji’s Strange Japanese Yokai (2023) are good places to start, I feel, each providing context to much of the following works, serving as strong foundations to delve into the topic, especially in their differing moods reflecting the constant tension between humor and fear in strange tales. In Yurei: The Japanese Ghost, for instance, Zack Davisson provides a wealth of information on the origins and conception of the infamously horrifying Japanese ghost legends, and what, he claims, makes them unique from any other cultural idea of the unquiet dead. Despite his deep focus on yurei (literally a “dim spirit) specifically, Davisson’s work is useful in looking at Japanese folklore as a whole as he follows the idea of ghosts in Japan from antiquity to its contemporary international popularity.
Davisson charts the evolution of the yurei legend from origins in ancient literary sources like the Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters, circa 712) and the Konjaku Monogatarishu (Collected Tales of Times Now Past, circa 1120) to the collected lore of early folklorists like Hearn and Kanagita, but his emphasis on how the contemporary vision of the yurei really took off during the Edo period (1603–1868 CE), the book sets the stage for much of the background of other works. Using legends of the “Three Great Yurei of Japan,” Oiwa, Otsuyu, and Okiku to exemplify the development of the various motifs of the yurei trope, he illustrates how the popular medias of ukiyo-e prints and kabuki theater shaped them.
As we see across many of the following works, the Edo period marked a major shift in popular conceptions of supernatural phenomena. This makes clear a running theme throughout the works I read of the interplay between the relatively inaccessible written sources of aristocratic literature and religious documents and the oral storytelling of the common people, with the Edo period representing a time in which media became more accessible to people regardless of social class, in urban areas at least. “Vulgar” art forms like kabuki theater and cheap kusazoshi (popular fiction combining text and illustrations) allowed the population space to play with them, and as Davisson suggests, even bringing the lurid yurei tales back around into high art in the form of Ueda Akinari’s 18th-century masterwork Tales of Moonlight and Rain, which couched his eerie tales in the rarefied rules of noh theater and classical references.
This is seen also in the sillier but still informative Strange Japanese Yokai, Murakami Kenji’s casual catalog of scary but mostly ridiculous monstrous entities from across Japan, celebrating the weirdness and humor of even the most disturbing of strange creatures. Translated by Zack Davisson, the book consists of brief entries written in a light-hearted fashion describing various monsters, from the standards like the kitsune, kappa, and tengu to the more obscure like the zashiki warashi, hitotsume kozo, mikoshi nyudo, and domo komo, including data listing their origins and various fun facts. It is interesting to note the frequency they were first reported during the Edo period, even as the book does not go too deeply into the cultural meanings behind them.
Both of these works reflect the ongoing interplay between what society considers important and what is ephemeral, unimportant, with the supernatural being an interesting intersection to study. The explosion of general interest in kaidan or weird tales during the Edo period across various media, and the creativity shown in expressing them as discussed by Davisson, followed centuries of oral storytelling left unrecorded. With the folklore buried in ancient sources like the Kojiki and Konjaku. inaccessible even to the bulk of the Japanese population for centuries and still mostly left untranslated into English, it is interesting to see where the same motifs appear and how they may differ. As I read through these collections of adapted stories, I would see familiar elements appear frequently, even in different contexts.
Legends of Japan (1972), for instance, compiled by folklorist Naito Hiroshi for the Mainichi Daily News takes most of its stories from Konjaku Monogatarishu, describing the world of the late Heian period (794–1185 CE) they originated from. A time not unlike the Edo period, in which long established social norms were changing, the stories Naito chooses to retell, including simple Buddhist parables and anecdotes in addition to more supernatural tales, also fit the time of the publication of his own book, emphasizing a more gentle fairy tale-like atmosphere. The quaint tales of cat haters, melon stealing kami, and comical tengu seem generally intended to amuse, not frighten.
This is not the case for the more recently published Strange Tales from Japan (2022), translated by American William Scott Wilson from the 1970s collections of traditional stories (densetsu) and strange tales (kaidan) by the Japanese folklorist Nishimoto Keisuke. These tales are, I think, a little rawer than the more picturesque pieces chosen by Naito, though they each contain similar elements and Nishimoto took a few pieces from Konjuko as well. Beginning with an introduction by Wilson discussing how such tales serve as a way to see the “real Japan” and what is meant by kaidan and densetsu in Japanese folklore, Nishimoto’s collection includes a wide variety of tales, from the grim and disturbing to the comic, often both in the same story. Whether devious kitsune and mujina, self-defeating kappa, or how one can use profanity to save your baby from being devoured by a floating head, the 99 stories chosen by Nishimoto depict the uncertain but lively experiences of common people. Aside from the stories, the collection includes woodcut prints from artists like Yoshitoshi expressing various themes included in them, though aside from a few footnotes and the specific source for each story, there is little context provided.
I definitely recall reading some of the stories Nishimoto included before in the work of Lafcadio Hearn, the globe-trotting journalist and writer who compiled some of the first written accounts of local stories in his studies of Japanese culture. Born in Greece to a Greek mother and an Irish father, and raised in Ireland before traveling widely across the US, the East Indies, and finally Japan, Hearn seemed to find in Japan the place he belonged in the end and even became a citizen despite never becoming fluent in the language, taking the adopted name of Yakumo Koizumi. Hearn’s work on supernatural topics he collected on his travels with his wife across Japan, such as Kwaidan and In Ghostly Japan sparked the interest of people across the world as he put to paper many traditional oral tales never written down before.
His work directly inspires manga adaptations like those from the British translator Sean Michael Wilson, such as Manga Yokai Stories: Ghostly Tales from Japan (2020), which includes seven comics by manga artist Inko Ai Takita drawn from Hearn’s works Shadowings, Kwaidan, and A Japanese Miscellany. Following the original stories quite directly, Takita’s art captures their eerie nature, making them an ideal introduction to Hearn. Including such influential tales as A Dead Secret, Nuke-kubi, and Reconciliation, this collection strongly showcases the folklore Hearn collected and retold for an international audience.
Even more than the exotified if meticulous work of Hearn, though, the work of Yanagita Kunio, the “founding father” of Japanese folklore study looms large over all of the list, and as Yanagita concluded his 1910 book Tono Monogatari, his exploration of the local folk legends of Tono, in Iwate prefecture would spark another burst of interest in things mononoke. One of the foremost was the late manga artist Shigeru Mizuki and his seminal manga GeGeGe no Kitaro, so I was very interested to see this translation (by Zack Davisson, once again) of Mizuki’s 2010 manga adaptation of Tono Monogatari.
Back in 2015, I visited the rural Japanese town of Tono in Iwate prefecture, known as the “City of Folklore,” just a few years after the hundredth anniversary of the publication of Yanagita’s masterwork, which is what sparked Mizuki to publish this lush graphic novel looking at Tono’s tales through his own style. I was very excited to read this account upon seeing it coming out in English. Mizuki takes Yanagita’s slim, fascinating collection of 119 short vignettes told to him by local citizen Sasaki Kizen, and crafts a thoughtful comic as the elderly manga artist depicts himself tramping across the Tono valley in the footsteps of Yanagita and Sasaki, making me feel like I was also visiting again.
Along with background information provided by Davisson on the Shinto meanings behind these lore, the tales lend themselves to Mizuki’s comical yet grounded style. Both eerie and oddly prosaic, the tales reflect the everyday life and concerns of the people of this remote place, both their fears and their desires. Including legends of the kappa, the tengu, snow women, and other supernatural entities, other tales discuss local landmarks and eccentric townspeople while aspects of daily life like farming and hunting continue throughout. Mizuki’s sympathetic yet questioning musings are an ideal medium for revisiting Yanagita’s work and the integral place it has in Japanese folklore study.
Continuing in Hearn’s interests as newcomers finding themselves entranced by the legends of Japanese culture and, like Mizuki, including themselves as characters in a graphic novel exploring the supernatural, the French cartoonist team Atelier Sento’s short comic Onibi: Tales of a Yokai Ghost Hunter delves into a unique travelog of the folklore of the Niigata prefecture. Though I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this teen-oriented comic as I began reading it as it itself blurred the boundaries between reality and fiction, it was a rather unique framing for a travel book with each chapter using a folklore story to highlight a certain aspect of the culture of Niigata. Framed around the charming trope of stumbling upon a special camera that detects yokai from an antique store, Sento captures the ways that folkloric entities intersect with daily life in Japanese society. However, while the framing was fun, it made it a little less useful as a guide to the region.
Being comics, the last few works emphasize the role of visual depictions of folkloric motifs in shaping how people envision and interact with them, returning to the theme I discussed in the opening of how belief and art influence each other. As discussed by Davisson in Yurei: The Japanese Ghost, for instance, art, particularly the visual arts, played a major role in shifting the public perception of what makes a yurei. Some of the books I looked at illustrated this even without discussing it specifically. Mythical Beasts of Japan From Evil Creatures to Sacred Beings (2009), for instance, is an interesting compilation of artistic representations of supernatural entities drawn from museums, libraries, and temple collections across Japan. Along with a few essays by Japanese academics discussing the role of such stories in Japanese society, from elite sacred guardians in temple sculptures to more popular conceptions of hyakki yako, the collection provides an overview of pieces illustrating the concepts discussed in other works. Many of the works included plates especially the prints from artists like Kyosai and Yoshitoshi, date from the Edo period we learned about earlier.
The short 55 page ebook Yokai Wars: Demonic Manga by Kyosai focuses on two collections of the nineteenth-century ukiyo-e artist Kyosai’s colorful, gruesome, and whimsical art from 1887 and 1889 but by itself provides no context to it. Billing it as a sort of 1800s manga is a fascinating choice, though, even with its wordless and chaotic scenes of animal folk engaging in mischief and demons torturing souls in jigoku (the Japanese hell) resonates with the conclusions made by other works here, and as with Shigeru Miyazaki, comics have continued to play a prominent role in promoting yokai lore.
The photography project by French photographer Charles Freger in his 2016 work Yokainoshima: Island of Monsters explores the depiction of strange and threatening entities that live on the island of Yokai, Japan. Freger photographs the elaborate and vivid masks and costumes of celebrants in local festivals across rural Japan throughout the year, some of the most prominent meetings of reality and the supernatural in daily life. Freger captures all these beings in their wonderful garb over the backdrop of the Japanese countryside, from snowy fields to lush mountains to sandy coasts. Representing vibrant folk costumes of namahage from Oga, Akita prefecture to various kappa, oni, and dragons of numerous places from Okinawa to Tohoku, each a participant in different rituals, dances, and traditions of seasonal festivals in rural communities.
Most interesting were the essays included by Japanese writers and folklorists whose work provides an introspective and thought-provoking analysis of Freger’s photography. In an introduction to Yokainoshima written by Ryoko Sekiguchi, a Japanese author writing in French, Sekiguchi muses on what is meant by the term yokai from both a Japanese and a French perspective. Additionally, in Akihiro Hatanaka’s essay on “sacred visitants” embodied by the costumes Freger depicts, he considers the ambiguity of such supernatural entities in Japanese folk belief and traditions. The namahage, for instance, are some of the most intriguing, echoing seasonal folkloric visitors across the world who appear to chastise children in some way, ambiguously offering threats for bad behavior while bestowing treats at the New Year. Hatanaka also writes a detailed description of each of the costumes that Freger depicts and the specific time and place at which the festival each represents occurs.
A great place to end this discussion is the fascinating art book Yokai: Ghosts, Demons, and Monsters of Japan. Published to accompany an exhibition at the Museum of International Folk Art (MOIFA) in Santa Fe (a place I have definitely added to my must-see list), the essays included focus on the interdisciplinary approach that suits the fuzzy discipline of folklore, featuring the ideas of folklorists, artists, literary scholars, and anthropologists, each bringing their own perspectives to the subject. Edited by curator Felicia Katz-Harris, the collection is both informative and contemplative, from artist highlights interviewing practitioners of traditional arts that depict yokai in Japan, to the segments focusing on artistic depictions of specific beings, like tanuki and kappa.
The essays by the contributing writers inside touch upon many of the same themes explored in earlier works, including yurei in Kabuki theater from Satoko Shimazaki, the use of oni costumes, especially namahage, in local folk festivals by Michael Dylan Foster, and Zack Davisson, once again, writing on the influence of Shigeru Mizuki. I found the essay on Yokai and Toys by Kagawa Masanobu to be particularly interesting, as he really digs into the relationship between folklore and popular culture in the form of toys, manufactured from the Edo period until today. All in all, the contributors hover, in various ways, around the ambiguity of fear and fun that seems so integral to spooky stories, both in ancient folklore and modern horror. As a whole, Yokai is the perfect companion piece to any one of the works above.
To conclude, throughout this collection of books I read through during the last month, there is an emphasis on how stories of supernatural events and beings are, however strange and fantastic, always grounded in the world that we live in. In all cases, I was impressed by the cultural diversity and variety of perspectives that these works represented, even in what is so often depicted as an utterly homogenous society. Rural and urban, different regions across the Japanese islands, different class structures, and the folktales explored by these works each describe the interaction between these viewpoints through time. From ideas thought important enough to be recorded to the oral lore accrued over the centuries among the common people, these stories illustrate the changing values of the culture over time. Of course, I have no knowledge of the Japanese language and I’ve only spent two weeks in the country the better part of a decade ago, so I need to be cautious in my conclusions.
As fascinating as these books are, though, I think the reader has to be careful in reading too broad a meaning into them. It can be all too easy to read folklore as an easy shorthand for cultural mores, exoticizing them as exemplative of a society as a whole. Among both some foreign and some Japanese thinkers described in the works I read, a few, like William Scott Wilson and Umehara Takashi, whose thesis on vengeful spirits Davisson discusses in Yurei, seem to place folklore about the supernatural as being integral to understanding the “Japanese mind,” or the “Japanese psyche.” These arguments illustrate the double edged sword of folklore, I feel, not only serving as a window into another culture but providing a focus for xenophobia and nationalism, in this case the idea that these stories show a unique, isolated way of thinking that can never be understood by outsiders. This can serve to both idealize and other the Japanese, to make it feel as though they all think alike and have a certain mystical ideal that has been lost in the so-called “Western world,” an alien if admirable people, simultaneously quaint and somehow superior.
I always find myself suspicious of using stories as a shorthand for some ineffable truth about people, whether on a societal or personal level. Of course, all of our own specific cultural milieus affect the way we perceive the world, and shape the interpretations of it we prioritize, for instance. Both Wilson, and Sekiguchi in her introduction to Yokainoshima, for instance, discuss the ideal of “rationality,” that Westerner’s ideals of the rational separate them from ideals of the mystical. Wilson’s depiction seems to insinuate that the Japanese simply believe in supernatural creatures, whereas Sekiguchi muses about the different attitudes toward the supernatural between French and Japanese culture, with the French value towards logic making them less open to the idea of other worlds. Certainly, the stories collected in Wilson’s translation of Strange Tales from Japan arise from Japanese attitudes toward the supernatural, but they come from times and places much different than today. On the other hand, Sekiguchi points out that the French seem drawn to stories of Japanese yokai, as if nostalgic for parts of their own culture they have neglected.
From my own perspective, I found this collection of readings to be an interesting comparison with the book list I read last year on ghost stories in US and UK cultures. Looking at how the books I read for both of these projects all explore the intersection between art and belief, relationships between the living and the dead, and imagining the supernatural versus experiencing the supernatural, there are definitely some strong parallels among them and they would be illuminating read in conjunction. Even if it could be a long time ago or far away, stories from our collective histories continue to exert influence on our cultures even in the rational, technological twenty-first century. I’m curious if I can identify any of the same shifting, mutual interactions between social ideas and popular culture as I start reading much newer folkloric milieu that has formed over the last century or so among the patchwork of settlers in my home region of the American Midwest.