Yokai as a part of Japanese Folklore and Culture

Yokai are strange and supernatural creatures from Japanese folklore. In ancient times yokai, or “monster” in the west was created to embody a certain cultural moment. The world of yokai also includes subsections such as ghosts (yurei), gods (kami), transformed humans and animals (bakemono), and spirit possession (tsukimono) (Komatsu, p.4). They are commonly associated with folklore, populating literature, and art. In more recent times they have become a part of popular culture in the forms of anime, manga, and video games. As culture changes, the attitude towards yokai rarely shifts. “Usually they are gradual, nuanced, overlapping,” says Foster (Foster, p.3, 2008). The four-time periods I will be focusing on will be during the Heian period (794-1185), Muromachi period (1336-1573), and post-world war 2 and how its always been apart of Japanese culture.

During the Heian period, Chinese missionaries came to Japan and introduced Onmyou-dou philosophy (Papp, p 11, 2010). This influenced their religious beliefs and led to the existence of yokai, Mononoke through the unexplained phenomena that people could not understand. Things like disease, fear, misfortune, etc were believed to be related to Mononoke. In this time period, many of the Mononoke was ”created” as names and traits were given due to the phenomena they had no answer for (Papp, p 11, 2010). These become part of the lore where they were feared and revered. An example that Foster brings up would be that “people believed that after death Sugawara no Michizane, a famous poet, transformed into a mischievous a spiteful spirit and caused a number of misfortunes, only relating once he deified as a sacred spirit” (Foster, p. 6, 2008). This is also shown in a famous timeless Japanese literature, “The Tale of Genji”. While Michizane transformed into an evil spirit after death the character Lady Rokujo had a living spirit who would detach from her body and torment her rivals (Foster, p.6, 2008).

Yokai did not have any visual representations back during the Heian period because people feared the power of image magic. Eventually, these characters did take on visual form through picture scrolls. However, they were presented in a more humorous manner. There are several related sixteenth-century versions of the picture scroll that show an array of yokai as fantastic creatures and animated objects. One of the most notable works depicting yokai in the Muromachi period was the first Hyakki Yagyou (Night Parade of One Hundred Demons), which marked the start of yokai depiction (Foster, p.8, 2008). Although yokai-ga is images of yokai, one of the problems that artists had trouble with until the Meiji period how to represent the concept of yokai, so many of these depictions relied on narration. Hyakki Yagyou is a controversial topic because of the concept of “the important relationship between that which cant be seen and that which must not be seen” (Foster, p.9). This connects to Japanese culture because of the way that they refer to yokai as gods and should not be subjected to the human gaze. This is why the yokai are transformed into humor and are transformed into everyday objects to keep people safe.

During the Edo period, art and culture flourished in japan. Ghost stories and stories about monsters and strange phenomena from all over Japan experienced a rise in popularity. At different points in history, the creation of yokai was shaped by specific religious, artistic, intellectual, and political contexts (Foster, p.8, 2008). In this era Japan started creating encyclopedias, collecting knowledge, and cataloging and labeling knowledge. This ties back into the Chinese missionaries bringing over their information and practices because the creation of the encyclopedia was born from “Neo-Confucianism and state ideologies”, which believed that “everything in the world was worth investigating, which encouraged reading and organizing information about the natural world (Foster, p.31, 2008). One of the first mythical bestiaries were put together by folklorists and artists such as Toriyama Seiken. These began as painted scrolls and later expanded into multi-volume illustrated encyclopedias. It then expanded into every aspect of Japanese culture, from fine art to high theater, etc.

Yokai fell out of popularity during the Meiji restoration and was disregarded as a superstitious. After World War 2 however, it all changed because of one man named Shigeru Mizuki and his manga GeGeGe no Kitaro. After serving in World War 1 and losing an arm, Mizuki went home and enrolled in art school. Once he finished art school, Mizuki produced several kashihon (rental) manga with the eerie theme of the supernatural from 1951 to 1957; one of them being Hakaba Kitaro in 1954. Hakaba Kitaro was completed by 1960, where it then started being published as an actual manga series in the magazine Garo. [Papp, Zília 54]. Because of the big success, it quickly became the first animated series featuring yokai in 1968 under the name GeGeGe no Kitaro. For the most part, Mizuki draws upon Toriyama Sekien's artwork for character design in referencing yokai, but later on, in the series he draws upon folk art depictions ranging from the Muromachi period to the Meiji period.

One of these Meiji sources is Takehara Shunsen's Ehon Hyaku Monogatari (Picture Book of One Hundred Scary Stories), which is a follow-up to Sekien's work, that also features yokai that aren't in Sekien's catalogs. Mizuki's work here created a bridge from the modern and postwar Japan to its historic past with yokai. These fear-created creatures of Japan's past have been extracted from then and reborn into the modern era as playful toys for children. He also illuminates the human dynamic of imagination and fear in the creation of new yokai as a reflection of the traditional yokai to illustrate that the process can still happen now. (Foster, p 181-183, 2008).Today the influence of yokai can be seen in all aspects of Japanese culture, from manga to anime and video games. The new yokai are normally urban legends that wouldn’t define them as yokai, however with the desire from the public for the continuity of monsters, some of these achieve the title. Yokai both new and old are capable of adapting to the new landscaped of the city and suburbs just like how people started to adapt in the age of industrialization and modernization. Japan has a culture unique to itself and is able to last for centuries to come.