Folklore Yokai

Kosenjōbi fireballs that float over former battlefields.

Folklore yokai. They are shuten dōji tamamo no mae and sutoku tennō. The word yokai is made up of the kanji for otherwordly and weird. Koropokkuru a little person from ainu folklore. Koromodako an octopus like yokai that lives in the waters bordering kyoto and fukui.

Asian folklore studies 57 fall 1998. Within these pages you ll find an ever growing collection of yokai and legends from all parts of japan and all periods of japanese history. Morse ed yanagita kunio and japanese folklore studies in the 21st century 20 35. Konaki jiji this yokai disguises itself as an abandoned baby then cries until someone picks it up.

Konoha tengu a bird like tengu. If you spend any time at all in japan you ll almost certainly see them as masks on restaurant walls or statues at temples and even train stations. Japanese monsters and the culture of yōkai. The word is a combination of the characters 妖 yō attractive bewitching calamity and 怪 kai mystery wonder.

Yōkai range diversely from the malevolent to. Of all the yokai in japanese folklore the tengu are for sure my personal favourites. One such list is the three most evil yokai of japan japanese. Yōkai and yanagita kunio viewed from the 21st century in ronald a.

University of california press 2009. These are the three monsters who according to legend posed the greatest threats to japan s existence. Suspicious they can also be called ayakashi あやかし mononoke 物の怪 or mamono 魔物. Some of them have never appeared in english before while others will be intimately familiar to fans of japanese folklore.

But did you know that there are official top three lists for folklore. Yōkai literally demon spirit or monster are a class of supernatural creatures in japanese folklore.