Sourced and Translated from Japanese Wikipedia and Other Sources
After enjoying the delights of one of the famed courtesans of the Yoshiwara pleasure district, a young samurai settles into his futon to sleep off his illicit encounter. But in the middle of the night he suddenly awakens, and sees his beautiful companion hunched over a rotting fishbone, stripping the flesh away with her teeth. The dim lantern-light casts an inhuman, cat-like shadown on the wall. The samurai shudders with the knowledge that he has passed the night with no human being, but one of the dreaded bakeneko prostitutes of Edo.
The bakeneko prostitutes were a common urban legend / folklore during the Edo period. Stories of them appeared in kiboshi illustrated storybooks, sharenbon accounts of the pleasure districts, kabuki plays, and in ukiyo-e woodblock prints.
Most stories follow the same basic pattern—a customer of one of the beautiful courtesans spends a night in pleasure, then curls up to sleep. He is awoken in the middle of the night to see the woman dimly outlined, either with the head of a cat or casting a cat-like shadow, while gorging herself on fish or other sea food popular with cats.
Most of the stories stop there, but darker legends continue with the yokai prostitute then turning to slake her hunger on some human meat, provided by the customer of course.
The Bakeneko Serving Maid of Shinagawa
The bakeneko prostitute legend is thought to have begun as a rumor—or urban legend if you like—of a bakeneko working as a meshimori onna, a type of low-rent waitress/maid/prostitute, at the Ise Inn in the Shinagawa-juku area of Edo, one of the fifty-three stations of the Tōkaidō sea highway.
The gossip spread as gossip does, and soon enough people were writing about it with a fervor. In 1775, “The Courage of Genji at the Sumo Tournament” has a scene with a bakeneko prostitute scattering fish all over the room with her mouth. This scene was adapted into an ukiyo-e woodblock print, with what looks to be a human arm. Whether this is part of her costume or her meal is left up to the imagination of the viewer.
The legend appeared in rapid succession slightly re-told in several books. In 1776 it appeared in Urikotoba (The Words of Seller), and in 1798 in Haratsuzumi (Belly-drumming), which has the bakeneko prostitute chomping on shrimp. In 1796, one of the scarier legends from the book Koame Shuame Miko Matsukasu (Anticipation of Things Seen in the Rain) tells of the customer peeping in on his companion to see her in cat-form gnawing on a human arm.
The stories were often told as true accounts, as traveler’s tales of wanderers who stayed at the inn and survived an encounter with the supernatural creature.
The Bakeneko Prostitutes of Edo
Interpretations of the story changed over time, and spread away from Shinagawa to the Yoshiwara pleasure districts of Edo. More rumors of bakeneko prostitutes spread, but instead of a creature of horror they attracted fascination—customers went in search of any ladies of the night rumored to be bakeneko in disguise. Artists sold prints of samurai walking with their bakeneko mistress happily in tow, not at all bothering to disguise her cat head.
Ever the clever businesswomen, the courtesans of Yoshiwara were quick to capitalize on this new fad. Many adopted names that ended with –no, such as kono – because that was reminiscent of the name of the famed serving wench of Ise inn. Women kept cats as pets, and plied their companions for expensive fish and seafood treats, anything to play up the image and create the mystique that their companion for the night was something more than human.
Truth Behind the Legend?
Like with many yokai, there have been attempts to rationalize the story of the bakeneko prostitutes with actual history. The most popular account is the most simple—it was considered bad manners for courtesans to eat in front of their customers. The women were there for the man’s pleasure, and so while men could feast and drink all night, their women had to suppress their own hunger. Once the customer was snoozing, I’m sure many a clever woman took advantage of the time to snatch some leftover nibbles from whatever had been on the menu. And the hunched over posture, trying to hide the illicit snacks, could have appeared as a cat to a tired, drunken man awakening in the middle of the night.
Neko or Neko?
A further connection between cats and sex lies in the word neko. Cat in Japanese is neko, using the kanj i猫. But you can also use the kanji 寝子 (ne ; sleeping + ko; young girl) to draw an obvious allusion to the delights of the Yoshiwara.
Translator’s Note
I found this legend while I was doing research for my bakeneko article, and I promised I would give a deeper account of it someday. So here it is! This legend shows how deeply people believed in the reality of yokai and the supernatural during the Edo period. Many took the rumors at face value, and spent good money for the chance to spend the night with what they believed to be a supernatural creature.
Further reading:
Read more yokai magical animal tales on hyakumonogatari.com:
Kasha – The Corpse-Eating Cat Demon
Nekomata – The Split-Tailed Cat
The Tanuki and the White Snake
The Appearance of the Spirit Turtle
Translated from Mizuki Shigeru’s Mujyara and Japanese Wikipedia
The takaonna (tall woman) is a yokai with an interesting hobby. If she is walking along, and sees a two-story brothel, she stretches the bottom half of her body so she can peek in on men enjoying the delights inside. It’s said that the takaonna was a homely woman who could never attract male companionship, changed into a yokai by her own desire.
Takaonna were first illustrated by Toriyama Seiken in his The Illustrated Night Parade of a Hundred Demons (Gazu Hyakki Yagyo ). He drew a picture and a name, but with no story or explanation for the stretching yokai.
Folklorist Fujisawa Morihiko first recorded the story of the ugly woman peeking into brothel windows in his book Complete Discussions of Yokai (Yokai Gadan Zenshu), although he speculates that the local legends of the takaonna probably came from people seeing Toriyama’s illustration, then imagining a story to go along with it. Novelist Yamada Norio furthered the legend of the takaonna in his book Travels in the Weird Tales of Tohoku (Tohoku Kaidan no Tabi). Yamada tells of a woman consumed by jealousy and lust but too ugly to get a man, who then transforms into the takaonna and menaces anyone enjoying the pleasures of the flesh that she was denied.
There is a possible (but obscure) connection to a more horrible creature from Wakayama prefecture, a female demon called the takanyobo (tall wife).
It is said that the takanyobo was once the wife of Kijishi, a woodcutter of Kizaku village. She was a strong woman who would go and cut wood with him in the forest. He thought he was a lucky man to have such a wife, but she was actually a yokai. Kijishi was a successful woodcutter, and he always kept a servant. But the servant wouldn’t stay long. Over a year, Kijishi went through 30 servants. It was only when his own baby also disappeared that Kijishi discovered the truth at last—his yokai wife had eaten them all.
Kijishi confronted his wife and threw her into a well. He thought to let her die down there, but to Kijishi’s surprise she stretched the bottom half of her body right to the top of the well, then clambered out and made her escape into the night.
Translator’s Note:
The kanji for the tall woman is exactly what it says 高 (taka; tall) + 女(onna; woman). She is most likely an original creation of Toriyama Seiken, who apparently wasn’t feeling very creative because he didn’t give her a story. Fortunately the people of the Edo period filled in for him, and came up with a nice little urban legend based on his image.
I think the connections are obvious between the takaonna and the later kuchisake onna (split-mouth woman). Both yokai are urban legends more than folklore, both are hideously ugly women, and both have a grudge against the beautiful people they can never be, and the love (or sex) they can never share.
Further Reading
For more female yokai stories, you should read:
Bakeneko Yujo – The Bakeneko Prostitutes of Edo
Nure Onago – The Soaked Woman
The Long-Tongued Old Woman
Translated and Sourced from Japanese Wikipedia, and Other Sources
In the 100 candles game of Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai, when the last story is told and the last light extinguished, something is said to appear from the darkness. For some in the Edo Period, that “something” had a name—Aoandon, the Blue Lantern Ghost.
Who is the Aoandon?
Toriyama Seiken originated the legend of the Aoandon in his kaidan-shu Konjaku Hyakki Shui (今昔百鬼拾遺; Supplement to The Hundred Demons from the Present and the Past). According to Toriyama, the Aoandon is a female spirit with long black hair, two horns poking out of her head, black, sharp teeth, and dressed in a white kimono. She is a sort of merger of the Aoi Nyobo (Blue Wife) and Hannya (Devil Woman) of traditional Japanese folklore.
The name Aoandon (青行燈) means very simply “Blue Lantern,” and is a reference to the blue-tinged lanterns that became popular as the Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai game evolved.
Toriyaam Seiken’s Aoandon
Written on Toriyama Seiken’s Aoandon picture:
“When the final lantern is doused, and the shadows hang heavy, the Aoandon appears. In modern games of Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai, the lanterns are covered in blue paper giving an eerie light. People gather on dark nights to trade stories of evil things. But to talk about evil things is to summon them.”
Blue Lanterns and Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai
The game Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai started out very simple; a hundred lit candles were placed in a room, and as ghost stories and weird tales were told in order, a single candle would be extinguished. With each story the room got progressively darker. When the final candle was expunged, some supernatural creature was said to be summoned.
Exactly what was summoned was never made clear. In one of the earliest recordings of a Hyakumonogatari Game, in the kaidan-shu Tonoigusa (宿直草), the game was played in a cave by a group of samurai. When the last candle was being put out, a giant hand appeared to come down from the ceiling. A quick slash of a the sword showed that the hand was nothing more than a spider, whose enormous shadow cast by the last candle had appeared as a giant hand.
As the game left the warrior caste and moved into the realm of the townsfolk, it evolved. In order to create a spookier atmosphere, candles were replaced by specially prepared blue lanterns to give the gathering a more mysterious feel—an early form of mood lighting. These lanterns, called andon, consisted of paper panels in bamboo frames set over candles or oil lanterns. Normally the paper was white, but for Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai gatherings the white paper was replaced with blue. (Andon can still be seen all over the world nowadays, although most of them are electric instead of burning actual candles or oil.)
The game got even more sophisticated over the centuries, and even a little bit more lazy. Instead of lighting a hundred lanterns, sometimes oil lamps were prepared with specially made wicks that counted down from one hundred. Which each story, part of the wicks was cut, bringing the light down until the final cut. Some games would place the lantern in a room away from the main gathering place, next to a mirror. After each story, the storyteller would have to walk alone into the room, cut their wick and then stare into the mirror.
Many gatherings actually cut their event short after the 99th tale, with no one being brave enough to walk into the room for the final story.
Speak of the Devil, and the Devil Appears
It has long been a tradition in Japan that talking about ghosts and monsters attracts ghosts and monsters. They need the right atmosphere to appear, and the 100 candles Hyakumonogatari Game was all about setting the right atmosphere. If you talk about it, it will come.
But until Toriyama Seiken wrote about the Aoandon in his Konjaku Hyakki Shu, there was no consensus on what appeared. Toriyama did what he often did when inventing new yokai; he took a common phrase or word and imagined a spirit to go along with it. In the case of the Aoandon, he imagined the extinguishing of a blue lantern, and the ghost woman that might be waiting in the dark, or looking back at you from a mirror.
Like many of Toriyama’s creations, there were attempts to craft a story onto the Aoandon. Artists Kondo Misaki imagined a woman consumed by jealousy who transformed into a yokai and was cursed to haunt these blue lanterns, waiting for her chance to appear. When the mirror aspect of Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai was invoked, she served as Japan’s version of Bloody Mary, a test of courage and the tricks your mind can play on you when you are alone with a mirror in a darkened room.
Translator’s Note:
The Aoandon is not exactly the most exciting yokai—pretty much a name and a picture—but since this is officially my 100th post on Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai (and my blog finally lived up to its name) I thought it was time for the Aoandon to appear. I am nothing if not a traditionalist.
However, this particular game of Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai is far from over. I have lots more yokai to do and many more Japanese ghost and monster stories to translate for you. Thanks for reading!!
Translated and Sourced from Mizuki Shigeru’s Mujyara and Japanese Wikipedia
If you wake up on a cold morning to see a fire mysteriously roaring in what should be a cold fireplace, don’t be afraid. It just means the gotokoneko has been by, stoking up the hearth into a nice, satisfying, roaring blaze. Just the kind this magical cat enjoys.
Gotokoneko the Fire Builder
A type of nekomata, the gotokoneko has the split-tail and advanced age of all its kind. But the difference from average nekomata is the gotokoneko’s love of fire. Most animals—magical or otherwise—are naturally terrified of fire. They enjoy the warmth, but fear the flames. The gotokoneko is not only not afraid of fire, but is often found stoking up the fire in a cold hearth, using a hifuki-dake, a bamboo blowing tube, to coax flames from the coals.
The gotokoneko is not the only cat-yokai associated with fire—the kasha is a flame-wrapped cat demon who drags corpses to hell. Kasha and some bakeneko are said to be able to transform into hi-no-tama fireballs. Even the eyes of ordinary cats are said to be able to capture fire within them, sparkling in the dark. But of all the various cat demons and magical cats only the gotokoneko will actually sit down at a hearth and busy itself with the process of making a fire.
What is a Gotoko?
In traditional Japanese homes, trivets (gotoko) were often found near the sunken hearth. Hot utensils from the fire — like tea kettles or pots and pan — were set on trivets so as not to char the tatami mats. As the name implies, the gotokoneko wears a trivet on his head like a hat.
In his book Mujyara, Mizuki Shigeru points out that nobody knows why the gotokoneko wears a trivet on its head. It just does.
The History of the Gotokoneko
The gotokoneko first known appearance is in Tomi Mitsunobu’s Muromachi-period yokai collection Hyakki Yagyo Emaki (百鬼夜行絵巻; Illustrated Scroll of the Night Parade of 100 Demons). There is no description of the yokai, just a background figure of a cat marching in the Night Parade with a trivet on its head. It is thought that later artists copies this trivet-wearing cat and developed a mythology to go along with it.
The gotokoneko next appeared in Toriyama Seiken’s Edo-period Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro (百器徒然袋, A Bag of 100 Tedious Objects). Toriyama made a pun in the title of this collection, replacing the kanji –ki (鬼; demon) with the homophone –ki (器; objects). Sure enough, most of the yokai in this collection are either tsukumogami—a type of yokai that is an ordinary object come to life—or are associated with some object like the gotokoneko with the trivet on its head.
And Toriyama was nowhere near finished with his puns.
The Five Virtues
Toriyama wrote on his illustration:
“As the man who danced the Dance of the Seven Virtues forgot two of them, perhaps you will also forget this cat or think it just a dream.”
He makes both an allusion and a pun. Because the term “gotoko” refers to the trivet, but it also can mean “The Five Virtues. “ This is a reference to an old story by Shinano no Zenji Yukinaga.
In the story, a man is supposed to dance the Dance of the Seven Virtues—embodying all of the manly virtues required to be a warrior –before the Tang Emperor of China. Unfortunately, the man has forgotten two of the virtues. He figures if he can’t remember them, no one else will either, and announces his “Dance of the Five Virtues” that he then performs magnificently.
So Toriyama is making a pun, drawing a link between the object gotoko and the Five Virtues gotoko. This leads to the gotokoneko sometimes being translated into English as the “Five Virtues Cat,” but that is not correct. Aside from the homophone of the name, the gotokoneko is clearly not an embodiment of manly virtues, but is at home in front of a hearth, blowing his bamboo tube to stroke the flames, and wearing a trivet on its head.
Translator’s Note:
Another magical cat story! And just when I think I know them all, I find a new one to write about. The gotokoneko is a pretty rare beast—I don’t think he shows up much outside of Toriyama and Mizuki Shigeru. But I could be wrong.
The kanji for gotokoneko is exactly the pun Toriyama created. Go (五; Five) + to (徳; Virtues) + Neko (猫; cat). It is rare in Japanese for homophones to share the same kanji, but that is exactly the case here. However, the “trivet” version of the word is far more common than the “Five Virtues” version.
Further Reading
For more magical cat stories, check out
Nekomata – The Split Tailed Cat
Kasha – The Corpse-eating Fire Demon
Bakeneko Yujo – The Bakeneko Prostitutes of Edo
Iriomote Oyamaneko – The Iriomote Great Mountain Cat
Translated and Sourced from Mizuki Shigeru’s Mujyara, Kaii Yokai Densho Database, Japanese Wikipedia, and Other Sources
At the Hour of the Ox (between 1-3 A.M.) a lone figure creeps silently towards a sacred tree. She is dressed in white, and on her head an upturned trivet is worn like a crown, three candles burning in the night. In one hand, she carries a doll made of bound straw in the form of a person; in her other hand, a small wooden hammer and a set of long, iron spikes. The hatred in her heart blazes brighter than the candles, appropriate for one completing the curse-ritual known as Ushi no Koku Mairi, the Shrine Visit at the Hour of the Ox.
The Ritual
Ushi no Koku Mairi (丑の刻参り; also known as 丑の時参; Ushi no Toki Mairi, both of which translate as Shrine Visit at the Hour of the Ox) is an ancient, famous, and terrible Japanese curse-ritual. It has been performed for millennia—some sources trace it back as far as the Kofun period (250 – 538 CE), although in a different form. While the costume and ritual have changed over the centuries, the basic rite of pounding nails into dolls remains the same.
To perform an Ushi no Koku Mairi, you first make a straw doll (藁人形; waraningyo) to serve as an effigy of the person you want to curse. For the best effect, the doll should have some part of the person in it, some hair, skin, blood, fingernails, or other DNA. In a pinch a photograph will do, or even their name written on a piece of paper. This done, you done the ritual costume, and sneak into a shrine late at night. Many Shinto shrines have sacred trees, called shinboku, that are the homes of kami spirits. Nail the doll to the sacred tree using long, iron spikes called gosunkugi (五寸釘).
As stated in the name, the timing is very important. The ritual can only be completed at the Hour of the Ox, between 1-3 A.M. in the ancient method of counting time in Japan. The Hour of the Ox is the traditional Witching Hour in Japan, a time when yurei and yokai and other evil spirits come haunting.
And most importantly—the ritual must be done in secret; it is said that if anyone sees you performing Ushi no Koku Mairi, the curse will rebound on the caster. Unless, of course, the eyewitness is immediately slain.
How many times you perform the ritual vary; some say that you must go back seven nights, pounding in a single nail each night. The final nail goes into the head, which will kill the cursed person. The results of the curse vary as well—some say the cursed person will sicken and die. Some say that, like a Voodoo doll, the cursed person will feel pain where the spikes are hammered in. Some say it is a summoning ritual, and that performing an Ushi no Koku Mairi summons a vengeful spirit to torment and ultimately destroy the recipient.
The Costume
An important component to the ritual is the costume. One does not simply waltz into a shrine and pound a doll into a tree. The costume is a demonstration of your intention, and is more than just decoration; the curse is said to be so terrible that in order to be effective you must become a demon yourself.
Although the costume has changed over the years (and there are numerous variations depending on your source), the most recognizable version comes from the Edo period, and is still associated with the ritual.
• A white kimono and obi, with your face painted white (to look like a supernatural creature)
• An upturned trivet on your head, with three candles burning on the legs
• A mirror (a sacred symbol of Shinto) worn over your chest like a necklace
• A shortsword tucked into your sash, to kill anyone that sees you
• Tall, one-toothed geta clogs (or barefoot, if you can’t walk in them)
• A wooden comb (in some accounts, a razor) held between your teeth (It is important not to utter a sound once you enter the shrine, and the comb keeps you silent.)
Some variations of the costume swap out a headband and two candles for the trivet, but I think if you are going to do it, go all out.
The History of Ushi no Koku Mairi
No one really knows how old the ritual really is. In the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, the is an 8th century relic from an archeological dig of a doll made of bound wooden strips with an iron nail shoved through the chest. This is from a time when iron had just been introduced into Japan, and would have been a rare commodity. In the ruins of Datecho in Shimane prefecture, Matsue City, archeologists found a wooden plaque with a painting of a court lady that had wooden spikes pounded through it. It is known that dolls for curses were used by Onmyoji , the yin/yang sorcerers of the Heian period (794 – 1185 CE).
Going to the shrine at the Hour of the Ox has not always been associated with curses, however. Old records show that people originally snuck in to pray, and that during these nighttime visits your pleas to the kami were more likely to be answered. Somehow, along the way, these prayers for a kami’s blessing turned into prayers for a kami’s curse.
One of the oldest written accounts of the ritual comes from the Sword scroll of the Kamakura period epic poem The Tale of the Heike. It differs from modern accounts—the costume calls for you to bind your hair into five braids, to use bound-together pine branches threaded into an iron ring for torches, and to cake your face in red vermillion clay instead of painted white. Also, instead of a late-night sneak visit to a shrine, the curser runs down the street shouting their curse for all to hear. According to the story, the ritual was taught to a woman by a kami spirit, after she prayed for revenge at a local shrine. The woman would transform into the monstrous Hashi Hime (Bridge Princess), still wearing her frightful costume.
In the Muromachi period (1337 to 1573 CE), a Noh play called Kanawa (鉄輪; Iron Ring)is credited with drawing a connection between the Onmyodo doll ritual and the costume of the Hashi Hime, creating the first account of the Ushi no Koku Mairi as it is known today.
By the Edo period, the Ushi no Koku Mairi was firmly established and illustrated by artists in kaidan-shu collections of stories of the strange. One of the main differences in Edo period artists was the results of the ritual—many preferred to show some evil spirit or god lurking in the background, waiting to be summoned by the completed ritual.
Where to Perform the Ritual
Not all shrines are created equal for Ushi no Koku Mairi. Kifune Jinja in Kyoto and Ikurei Jinja in Niimi, Okayama, are famous sites for Ushi no Koku Mairi, as is Jishu Jinja, a small shrine located near the Kyoto Buddhist temple Kiyomizudera. If you look carefully, these sacred sites have shinboku trees that still bear the scars of centuries of iron nails pounded in by vengeance-seekers.
And if all this seems like a lot of work to put together, don’t worry. In the modern world, a complete Ushi no Koku Mairi kit can be ordered online. But be careful, performers of the ritual can be prosecuted under Japanese law.
Translator’s Note
The Ushi no Koku Mairi was a difficult project–difficult in knowing what to leave in, and what to leave out. There are SO many different variations on the ritual it would be impossible to include them all. I tried to add in what I thought was relevant, and appeared in the highest number of resources. But this is by no means a complete account.
This is the second of my trivet-wearing yokai stories. Next up is a direct ancestor of the Ushi no Koku Mairi, the Hashi Hime.
Further Reading
For related kaidan stories, check out
The Mistress of Tonbu and Nezu
When the god Izanagi returned from the Land of Yomi, he purified himself in a bath. As he dried his body, each falling drop of water soaked into the soil and imbued the land with supernatural potential. Thus, the yokai were born.
The story of Izanagi and the origin of yokai comes from the oldest known work of Japanese literature and the basis of Japanese mythology, the 8th century Kojiki (古事記; Record of Ancient Matters). In Japan’s creation myth, the land itself—the rocks, trees, mountains, and rivers—are infused with latent magical energy. This energy needs only a focus to give it life. Just as nebulous gas ignites to form stars, this energy is compressed by events like volcanoes or earthquakes, or strong human emotions like fear or hatred, until it emerges as one of Japan’s menagerie of monsters and phenomena. Yokai take many shapes, and are as varied and complicated as human imagination can make them.
Yokai have not always been a single tradition. In ancient times, small tribes and kingdoms populated the island. Each isolated region gave birth to its own rich folklore, its own gods and monsters. It took the conquering and warlike Yamato clan in the 3rd century to subdue these tribes into a unified nation and culture. As centuries passed, new technologies like the printing press allowed regional folklore to spread. People learned for the first time what scared their neighbors when the lights went out.
The Golden Age of yokai was the Edo period (1603-1868), an unprecedented time of peace and prosperity. Folklorists and artists like Toriyama Sekien (鳥山石燕; 1712 – 1788) scoured the country for obscure legends and half-whispered folktales to populate their Yokai Encyclopedias and illustrated yokai scrolls. As the Brothers Grimm did for Germanic folklore, Toriyama and others rescued these stories from obscurity by putting them on paper at a time when oral traditions were vanishing.
Yokai almost disappeared following the Edo period, when Japan was swept up in a mania for modernization. When meeting with the Western powers, the country was embarrassed of its provincial passion for the supernatural. The government tried to sweep yokai under the carpet in favor of rational thinking and scientific advancement. As the military took over and Japan plunged into the darkness of WWII, the yokai were forgotten.
But one young man remembered. Comic artist Mizuki Shigeru (水木しげる; 1922 – Present) was raised on yokai stories told by his village wise woman. When he came home from the war, he started working in the new manga industry, drawing the stories he had heard as a boy. His comic Ge ge ge no Kitaro (ゲゲゲの鬼太郎) became one of Japan’s most popular comics, and Mizuki taught all of the children of Japan about the country’s mythical past.
Mizuki Shigeru’s influence continues, and yokai are again known throughout Japan. Children who grew up on Mizuki’s comics started creating their own yokai stories. People like Shibashi Hiroshi (椎橋寛; 1980 – present) created comics like Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan (ぬらりひょんの孫), which were then translated into other languages and spread the yokai phenomenon across the world.
Further Reading:
What Does Yokai Mean in English?
Secrets of the Yokai – Types of Yokai
Translator’s Note
I have been consulting on a Yokai Art exhibition that is being held at the Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. This is a short little piece I wrote about this history of yokai and its connection with modern manga, that will be used as an introduction to the exhibition. Just thought I would share it with everyone.
But don’t worry–I am still working on Hashihime for my next post!
Born March 8th, 1922, today is the 91st birthday of the man who brought yokai back to Japan, and created the comics that have entertained and educated succeeding generations of people.
Happy birthday Sensei!!!
So, I haven’t had as much time to work on new translations for Hyakumonogatari.com, and I can finally tell you why. I have been working on translating Drawn & Quarterly’s new Mizuki Shigeru comic Showa 1926-1939: A History of Japan.
This is an epic, monolithic comic that combines the best of Mizuki Shigeru—his yokai comics, his autobiographical comics, and his war comics. It is a history of the Showa period (1926-1989), covering both his personal story growing up during the period, as well as the heady back story of politics, finance, and culture that transformed Japan from the promising flower of Taisho Democracy into the monster of WWII and back to the Economic Miracle that reconstructed the nation.
The entire series is narrated by Nezumi Otoko, and features sporadic appearances by other yokai. It’s the kind of comic you could never see in the U.S.—I like to think of it as “What if Carl Barks had written Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States but done it as a comic book using Donald Duck as the narrator?” The depth of history is incredible. I had some knowledge of the Japanese side of WWII, but when translating this I found that many of my long-held beliefs were entirely incorrect. It also puts into perspective all of the dealings that are still going on in Asia today. Or as my wife said when she read the comic—“I finally understand why China hates Japan so much.”
It’s an amazing comic and I feel honored to bring it an English-speaking audience. The comic was originally an 8-volume series in Japan, but Drawn and Quarterly is combining two volumes into one book, so it will be a 4-volume set in total.
You can pre-order the comic here:
Showa 1926-1939: A History of Japan
When I am finished with the translation, I do some more translations for Hyakumonogatari. I am planning to do a series on the yokai featured in Showa, so you can look forward to that!
Oh, and if there are any Twitter folks on here, I am also translating Mizuki Shigeru’s official Twitter posts (@mizukipro) so you can follow me @zackdavisson and see what Mizuki Shigeru has to say!
