Introduction to Yokai Culture: Monsters, Ghosts, and Outsiders in Japanese History

Whether you love yokai or curious about how folklore impacts culture then Yokai Culture is a must read. It is a scholarly look at yokai and how they interact with popular culture in their native Japan.

Very informative. Great for monster enthusiasts.

Well written. Good book.

This is a book for serious hard core yokai otaku, not the casual fan. This is not a book like Yokai Attack! or Matthew Meyer's books that catalog a lot of yokai and tell their stories. It's like the first part of Foster's The Book of Yokai but even moreso. This is advanced level stuff - it's more a study of the study of yokai. It talks a lot about how different scholars have studied and analyzed yokai, their theories of their origin and social function, etc. If you're not into discussions of how scholar A said this but scholar B said that, you will find it frustrating. If that's OK with you, this is a good book if you are interested in how people think about yokai and the history that has shaped that thinking. For instance, there are interesting points throughout about the ways the folklorists actually had an effect on what they were studying, determining what versions and interpretations got passed down. It's not a rip-roaring exciting read, but in my opinion it's a lot more readable than most American books by academic scholars - there is a voice and personality to the writing at least some of the time - and it's well translated - it reads quite naturally. It's also a lovely book physically - not heavily illustrated but a number of very nice color images and nicely designed.

I decided to read this because it seemed interesting as an introductory book. I wanted to learn about Yōkai, but it was hard to find a good book, so this book helped me a lot. I knew that Yōkai, Obake, and Yūrei were somehow different, but I did not know how, so now I understand thanks to this book.

I enjoyed reading the book. The book itself is elegant, very nice edition with beautiful artworks. The language is good, clear and concise English.The introduction is also very helpful, for readers new to this topic (which turned out to be much more complex than I thought). As an anthropologist, I appreciated the rich and detailed accounts of stories/legends, as well as the reflections on change from old ages to contemporary society. I consider it a reference book mapping the field and guiding the reader (especially the non-Japanese Studies reader) to a comprehensive literature in Japanese. The author succeeds using advanced theoretical concepts in an easy-accessible style of writing – for instance in the inspiring chapter about Boundaries (Chapter 10)

A excellent book. A good introduction to the world of the Yokai :Japanese not so friendly spirits.