WINDOWS ONTO THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE EDO PERIOD: FROM THE GAZU HYAKKI YAGYŌ (1776) BY TORIYAMA SEKIEN TO THE E-HON HYAKU MONOGATARI (1841) BY TAKEHARA SHUNSEN (original) (raw)
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2024
Japanese native ethnographers, such as Yanagita Kunio and Minakata Kumagusu, were concerned with the loss of tradition in the face of rapid modernization and societal change. They studied the lives and customs of rural villages, the peculiarities of regional dialects, and tales of Japanese monsters. As markers of the old, the authentic, the nostalgic and reminders of childhood's belief in flights of fancy, monsters were indispensable for these folklorists. This chapter analyzes Urushibara Yuki's Mushishi, a manga (1998-2008) and animated series (2005-2006 and 2014), to uncover how monsters became key signifiers in imagining the Japanese countryside. Moreover, this chapter argues that Urushibara re-imagines folklore and its practitioners through the creation of mushi, a new kind of monster. Rather than relying on yokai 1 or other creatures of Japanese folklore, Urushibara has recreated the monsters of everyday life to remedy the alienating effects of Japanese folk studies as a discipline premised on loss. 1 Matthew Meyer, "Introduction to Yōkai", Yokai.com: https://yokai.com/introduction/. Meyers says of Yōkai (妖怪) that they "are strange, supernatural creatures and phenomena from Japanese folklore. The word is a combination of the characters 妖 (yō-attractive, bewitching, calamity) and 怪 (kai-mystery, wonder). Over the years, many different English words have been used as translations. Yōkai can be translated as monster, demon, spirit, or goblin, but it encompasses all of that and more. The world of yōkai also includes ghosts, gods, transformed humans and animals, spirit possession, urban legends, and other strange phenomena. It is a broad and vague term, and nothing exists in the English language that quite describes it. Yōkai is one of those words-like samurai, geisha, ninja, and sushi-that is best left in its native tongue". a u t h o r p r o o f s 100 Chapter 4
The Yōkai in the Database Supernatural Creatures and Folklore in Manga and Anime
Marvels & Tales, 2013
Many anime and manga narratives draw on Japanese folklore, re-imagining tales for a modern audience, and contain references to or examples of supernatural creatures, or yōkai. Yōkai, a general term which might be translated as monsters, spirits, or demons, are a rich source of material for contemporary pop culture narratives, especially for stories in science fiction, fantasy, action, and adventure genres. There are many websites and books for non-Japanese fans listing the references to folktales and yōkai in popular manga and anime, to help make them accessible to foreign audiences. But how else can we talk about them besides simply explaining the references to traditional culture? What is the deeper connection between yōkai and anime, or between modes of anime and yōkai discourse? Popular discourse on both anime and yōkai seem to have an affinity for the creation of databases, or vast compendiums of knowledge, wherein each data point is equally important. This essay explores the tendency towards the creation of databases in both yōkai and anime, and how the database makes yōkai available for modern narratives. I begin with discussion of Mizuki Shigeru's updating of Toriyama Sekien's yokai encyclopedia in Gegege no Kitaro and related publications, and continue with analysis of Inuyasha by Takahashi Rumiko, one of the most popular recent manga/anime series to draw extensively on folklore. The database is one way to talk about both anime and yōkai more productively, and also to expand the ways we talk about how texts are produced and consumed.
The Figures and Meanings of Tengu: Semiotic Study of Mythological Creatures in Japanese Folklore
Humanus
Japan is famous as an advanced manufacturing industrial country as a result of the high rationality in their works, however in daily life Japanese people still highly believe in the existence of Youkai, mythological creatures. This study examined the figures and meanings of Tengu, mythological creatures that are classified as Youkai which one of them is, as described in the Japanese folklore, having long nose and fully-red colored body. The data for this study are the folklore taken from the anthology book Nihon Mukashi Banashi 101 edited by Sayumi Kawauchi (2007). The figures and existence of Tengu in the folklore were practically analyzed using the Peirce's semiotic theory, with the focus on the meaning of icons, indexes, and symbols of Tengu in the folklore and the Japanese belief system. Moreover, this study revealed two figure types of Tengu namely daitengu, is a tengu whose long nose and kotengu whose eagle-like wings. In the Japanese belief system, it is believed that Ten...
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This study engages in a discussion of yōkai (preternatural monsters in Japanese folklore) characters in Mizuki Shigeru’s manga and their transmedia expansion not as an expression of Japanese cultural tradition, but as an outcome of transmedia adaptation practices (known as “media mix” in Japan) in the modern period by creators, media companies, and other social agents. This study argues that recent Japanese transmedia practices are principally propelled by the specific style of character drawing found in the manga medium and the character-centric multimedia production scheme, which makes manga(-originated) characters—including yōkai characters—versatile for moving across different media platforms. Although transmedia practices can enhance the potential for producing synergies among previously discrete cultural industries and media companies to attain more profits, such a close relationship undermines the autonomy of each media industry, company, and other actors, which can attenuate...
Guest Editors’ Introduction: Spirits and Modern Japanese Literature
Japanese Studies, 2019
Part of the appeal of storytellingbe it literary, oral, or in any of the multiple forms in betweencomes from its ability to take uncomfortable and complex social issues and render them more palatable to the reading public. Tales of the supernatural use otherworldly elements to confront social anxieties and explore possible futures, not only through content but also through compositional form. The articles in this issue focus on imaginative internal and transcendent horizons of fear, change, knowledge, and despair in modern Japanese literature: the spiritual, the spooky, and the spuriously scientific. These articles broadly address the ways in which spirits intersect with modern ideas that structure society. The central problem for the authors is how different notions of the supernatural or the spiritual are mobilized in modern Japanese literature to question assumptions about the nature of literature, gender, Japanese society, or modernity itself. Collectively, these articles address a number of Japanese authors, including giants of Japanese literature such as Kōda Rohan (Kōda Shigeyuki, 1867-1947), Mori Ōgai (Mori Rintarō, 1862-1922), and Kawabata Yasunari (1899-1972), 1 but shine a new light on their work, demonstrating how they ventured into unempirical territory with experiments in ghost stories, religious poetry, and temporal lapses. These authors, as well as the lesser-known ones, overturn the perception of modern writers as either generally embracing formal and stylistic innovations or romanticizing an invented past. Further, they engaged with the political, technological, and artistic issues of their time, questioning received social and aesthetic values or certainties, exploring and learning to accept innovative uncertainties. Ghosts, spirits, and other metaphors for manifestations of the uncanny as they appear in 'weird' fiction have all enjoyed an evergreen status in both popular culture and 'pure literature' from early-modern to contemporary Japan. The Tokugawa period saw a boom in the popularity of spirits in various forms, such as ghost-storytelling parties (hyaku monogatari) and elaborately painted picture scrolls depicting parades of monsters (hyakki yagyō). 2 During the rapid modernization and democratization of the Meiji and Taishō eras, writers like Izumi Kyōka (Izumi Kyōtarō, 1873-1939) and Uchida Hyakken (1889-1971), and later authors of popular detective fiction authors like Edogawa Ranpō (Hirai Tarō, 1894-1965), used uncanny stories to grapple with the CONTACT Kathryn M. Tanaka
Monsters and the Monstrous: Ancient Expressions of Cultural Anxieties
A Cultural History of Fairy Tales in Antiquity, 2021
Many of the most recognizable monsters in Western culture, such as Medusa, Cerberus, and the Cyclopes, started to appear in literature and art nearly three thousand years ago. Other, more generic types of monstrous or uncanny entities, such as dragons and ghosts, are even older and appear in art and literature across the globe. This chapter covers such creatures in the earliest folk and fairy tales of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean areas, keeping in mind that much of our information comes from tales, or, in most cases, prototypes for tales, embedded within the larger context of Near Eastern and Greek myths. The chapter first considers what the concept of "monster" might have meant for people in those geographical regions thousands of years ago. The chapter then examines what tales from antiquity survive that incorporated monsters, what kinds of monster predominate in these tales, and what the presence and roles of monsters in the tales might have meant.