Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide by Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt, illustrated by Tatsuya Morino (Kodansha)

Ghost stories have been around for a long time. They are told around campfires or at slumber parties. A number of movies have featured a wide array of ghosts as well. Ghost stories are not always horror stories as some may believe. In Japan, ghost stories and other stories of the supernatural are called kaidan. They became popular with the publication of Lafcadio Hearn’s book Kwaidan which is a play on the words “kowai” which means scary and “dan” which means “stories”, published in 1904. 

Many books in English have translated the term “yokai” from demon to ghost to spectre. However, none of these translations are fitting to the Japanese term. For Japanese, “yokai” are “yokai”. The kanji is written as 妖怪 which more closely translates to “other worldly”. 

In this book, the term yokai refers to “mythical, supernatural creatures that have populated generations of Japanese fairy tales and folk stories”. They are the things that “go bump in the night, the faces behind inexplicable phenomena, the personalities that fate often deals us”.

The authors have done extensive research into the history of yokai. One of their references they often use and has the most comprehensive illustrations of yokai are from Sekien Toriyama’s Gazu Hyakki Yakko, translated into English as The Illustrated Demons’ Night Parade which he drew in 1776. 

Another major reference the authors used was Tono Monogatari (Tales of Tono) which was written by Kunio Yanagita. It is a collection of folktales and yokai stories from the Tohoku region of Japan and was originally published in 1912 and remains in print today. 

In the 1960s, it was due to the comic series Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro by Shigeru Mizuki that sparked another fad in all things yokai. The mang would be adapted into a popular and successful anime series as well. 

In Yokai Attack! The reader is not only introduced to a number of different types of yokai but also gives you information on what to do in case you encounter one. The Japanese yokai have been around for centuries. They can be seen “in museums worldwide on scrolls, screens, woodblock prints, and other traditional forms of Japanese art”. 

The authors remind readers that this book is not a comprehensive encyclopedia of yokai and is not a scholarly work. It is a collection of conventional wisdom concerning the yokai. It is about what the average Japanese already knows about them. it’s more of an introduction to yokai culture for the novice. 

The authors group the yokai into five specific categories - Ferocious Fiends, “the sorts of creatures you wouldn’t want to encounter in a dark alley (or a bright one, for that matter); Gruesome Gourmets feature yokai with “peculiar eating habits). Annoying Neightbors are the types of yokai you hope never move in next door; The Sexy and Slimy which are yokai that enchant their prey, and finally there are The Wimps which are rather self-explanatory. The kind of yokai that are more afraid of you than you are of them. 

The book includes full color illustrations of all the yokai featured. The authors also provide the names of yokai in English, their gender, height, weight, and distinctive personalities. And as the authors state at the beginning of the book, “So forget Godzilla. Forge the giant beasties karate-chopped into oblivion by endless incarnations of Ultram, Kamen Rider,and the Power Rangers. Forget the Pocket Monsters. Forget Sadako from The Ring and that creepy all-white kid from The Grudge. Forget everything you know about Japanese tales of terror”. 

“If you want to survive an encounter with a member of Japan’s most fearsome and fascinating bunch of monsters, you’ve got some reading to do”. ~Ernie Hoyt