Status Updates From The Book of Yokai: Mysterio...

One of the tanuki's most famous characteristics is its gargantuan scrotum, which it employs for all sorts of creative shape-shifting—numerous woodblock prints and other images illustrate the powers of this magnificent paraphernalia.

Kitsune are connected with the worship of Inari, the kami of the rice fields.

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The kappa is associated with water, usually rivers, ponds, and swamps. It is one of the most famous of all yōkai in Japan. Different legends and beliefs about it are distributed throughout the country, but generally speaking, the kappa is thought of as scaly or slimy, greenish in color, with webbed feet and hands, and a carapace on its back.

Often characterized as a "mountain goblin," tengu tend to have birdlike characteristics and superlative martial arts skills and are often associated with Buddhism and mountain ascetic practices.

The word tsuchigumo, literally "earth spider," seems to have been used as a derogatory and demonizing label for the indigenous inhabitants of Japan. That is, the people writing the texts used the term negatively to describe the natives they were conquering; they portrayed them as having short bodies and long arms and legs, and as living in holes in the ground.

Strictly speaking, setsubun refers to a "joint" in the year when one season changes into another [...], much like New Year's Eve, a dividing point between the old year and the new and therefore a ritually meaningful moment of transition. This is a crack in the flow of time, a potentially dangerous bridge between one period and another, during which both good and bad spirits might enter.

It is said that when a tree reaches the age of one hundred, it has a kami that will show its form.

Part II: Yōkai Codex

One question often asked about yōkai is whether people actually believe in them. [...] Implicit in a question like this, however, is the assumption that there are only two possibilities—belief or doubt. One thing yōkai teach us is that between belief and doubt, between the literal and the metaphorical, lies a zone of ambiguity that is fertile ground for the imagination.

Yōkai begin where language ends.

Learning a lot about yokai!

Is it just me, or does this guy sound strangely bitter about Mizuki’s commercial popularity?

Something about this guy is a liiittle pretentious, but I’m still reading!

It’s very scholarly, so I don’t understand all of it, but I am really enjoying it!

Finally on to the Yokai!!!

Finally reached the Yoka!!!

One common characteristic of yōkai is their liminality, or "in-between-ness." They are creatures of the borderlands, living on the edge of town, or in the mountains between villages, or in the eddies of a river running between two rice fields. They often appear at twilight, that gray time when the familiar seems strange and faces become indistinguishable. They haunt bridges and tunnels, entranceways and thresholds.

Just getting started

Interesting

dnf

hot girl summer is reading this while keeping open both Matthew Meyer’s Yōkai book and Toriyama Sekien’s Gazu hyakki yagyō on the same entry. I may have a special interest

they way I can't wait to become fluent in Japanese so I can finally read all of Yanagita and Komatsu's writings!!!

You can tell which eras of yokai studies are particularly interesting to this author bc we cover influential mangaka post wwii but when we get to the modern era it’s a quick mention of like Pokémon and yu-gi-oh (a title I’d argue borrows more from the west) with no real deep dives. We did get a mention of Miyazaki but I’d argue inuyasha was hugely influential internationally for yokai.

I loveeee yokai but am not big on informative books (this one has a lot of history, and also a long intro). Problem is, when I start a book, I want to read everything. This book is one I open once in a while to take what I need and then close it again.

the introduction to this book is HOW LONG ???

Informational

It is a shame that only the second half of this book dives into the stories and the first half has this kind of academic style.

Not the type of book I was expecting, but still interesting in a different way.

Fb