At PBS’ Monstrum, Dr. Emily Zarka talks about everyone’s favorite fox spirits–Kitsune! “Why is the Kitsune Japan’s most enduring yokai? This video examines 2,500 years of folklore, religion, history, and pop culture to explain how the legendary shape-shifting fox became Japan’s most influential supernatural figure—and why its stories […]
At The Daily Beast, Jake Adelstein writes about comic creator and folklore scholar Shigeru Mizuki, the astounding breadth of Mizuki’s work and Mizuki’s challenge to revisionist history. “Mizuki rose to fame through his popular comics, but starting in the seventies, he created a variety of controversial works which […]
“Japan’s estimated population at the time of their last census was 127 million, and people have been living on this small collection of islands since the Jomon period (~12,000 BCE.) In an increasingly crowded country with a strong traditional belief in ghosts and hauntings, the question of avoiding […]
The Japan Society had a program featuring Japanese animation from the 1910s-1940s. Even if you missed it, you can still see some shorts —a beautiful 1929 silent featuring Tengu; sing along with a 1930 papercut animation village festival; an unfortunate butterfly from 1931; tricks between a fox spirit […]
The ever-wondrous Pink Tentacle is waving around creepy children’s book illustrations by Gojin Ishihara. They’re like the little lure on an angler fish and I’m totally going for it.
In the interest of Science: gallery of anatomical drawings of yokai, Japanese folk monsters. Hopefully, no actual yokai were harmed in making these drawings.
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The Cultural Gutter 