Yokai

Global Perspectives on Japan (GPJ) is a yearly, Open Access, peer-reviewed multi-disciplinary academic journal on Japanese studies published by FORUM TAURİ Press.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

- Editor’s Note, Erdal Küçükyalçın

Abstracts

ARTICLES

- State, Political Parties, and the Nation: Triangular Political History without a Center of Gravity, Shimizu Yuichirō

- An Ottoman Staff Officer in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905): General Pertev Bey’s Impressions and Evaluations, Doruk Akyüz

- Railroads of the Glorious Empires in the late 19th Century: From the Great Game to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, Semiha Karaoğlu

- Tracing the Royal, Romantic and Demonic Roots of the Nio Warrior Guardian, Jennifer Norris

- Yōkai as the Edge of The World, Kōda Retsu 甲田烈

REVIEWS

- Sinan Levent. Japon Turancılığı (Japanese Turanism) by , Selçuk Esenbel

- Hook, Glenn D. and Gavan McCormack. Japan’s Contested Constitution, Can Öçalan

Yokai is a catchall Japanese word for ghosts, demons, monsters, shape-shifters, tricksters, and other kinds of supernatural beings and mysterious phenomena. Although sometimes scary, these frightening beings are often portrayed as playful, relatable, and even cute; the experience of fear can also be amusing and fun. Explore all kinds of yokai and the ways that they became pop-culture sensations in Japan in this online exhibition.

https://yokai.moifa.org/#/

Yokai, monstruos y fantasmas de Japón es una guía ilustrada de los yokai más importantes: su apariencia física, su carácter, las recetas para de librarse de ellos junto con las leyendas tradicionales de las que son protagonistas. Este libro es la puerta de entrada a un mundo fascinante.


Sinopsis

Desde el principio de los tiempos los japoneses han convivido con increíbles criaturas que pueblan un mundo misterioso y oculto; seres grotescos que, en ocasiones, cruzan la frontera invisible y se adentran en el mundo real. Estas criaturas de infinitas y extrañas formas son los yokai: dioses caídos en desgracia bien por el olvido de los humanos, bien por su propia degeneración.
Pero, a pesar de la primera impresión que puedan causar, los yokai no son necesariamente seres malignos o vengativos. En ocasiones socorren a personas que están en peligro, ayudan a la gente en su trabajo, traen fortuna o se hacen compañeros de juegos de los niños. Los yokai son seres con muchas caras, peligrosos y violentos a veces, divertidos y amigables otras.

Vivid in Japanese art and imagination are creatures that are at once ghastly and humorous. The Japanese word yokai generally refers to a range of supernatural beings such as ghosts, demons, monsters, shapeshifters, tricksters, and other strange kinds of creatures. While their status is commonly described as supernatural, they exist or appear in the natural, human world. Today, yokai are wildly popular in Japan. They are prevalent across contemporary entertainment genres such as manga (“comics”) and anime (“animation”) series, horror movies, and video games, and they also manifest as the subject of related material culture objects like game cards, character t-shirts, cuddly plushies, and collectable gashapon capsule toys. This diverse array of yokai imagery and materiality is deeply rooted in the past. Yokai images and their stories are enduring, and there is no question that what we see in hot commodities today is closely aligned with traditional Japanese folklore. Yokai: Ghosts & Demons of Japan explores yokai and their popularity in Japan through multiple perspectives of yokai: what they are, their associated tales, how people engaged with or interpreted yokai in different contexts, and why they remain so popular in Japan. The contributors to this book are among eminent scholars, creators, and promoters of various aspects of yokai culture. The interdisciplinary nature of this book’s presentation vibrantly illustrates yokai from different angles, allowing for a broad view of their cultural scope in Japan. In addition, the contributors delve into popular culture themes, connecting traditional folklore, folk art, and imagery to trends in Japan as well as in the United States.
Contributors: Felicia Katz-Harris, Komatsu Kazuhiko, Noriko Tsunoda Reider, Satoko Shimazaki, Michael Dylan Foster, Adam Kabat, Kagawa Masanobu, Zack Davisson, Yumoto Koichi, & Kono Junya.

Esse trabalho busca analisar o estudo de Lafcadio Hearn sobre a mitologia das raposas (kitsune) e os seus impactos na sociedade japonesa da Era Meiji, principalmente na prefeitura de Shimane, dando especial atenção aos aspectos de culto e formas de discriminação social geradas por essa mitologia, para ao final tecermos considerações sobre as conclusões do autor acerca desse assunto.

Todas las sociedades modernas se asientan sobre una base mitológica que acompaña su evolución socio-cultural. Estos mitos se revelan a día de hoy como claves antropológicas que nos permiten entender el trasfondo que define los comportamientos de sus individuos. Por ello, la tradición oral y los mitos que la conforman han de entenderse como parte intrínseca de la idiosincrasia de grupo.

Dentro de la sociedad japonesa actual subyace un imaginario que desde antiguo caracteriza la singularidad propia de este colectivo, subyugado por un entorno hostil y condicionado por la naturaleza exuberante que la envuelve. Es dentro de este patrimonio cultural intangible, donde se enmarcan leyendas que permanecen ancladas en la cultura popular japonesa. Como ejemplo significativo encontramos los Kappa (河童), Yōkai (妖怪), etc

Tōno Monogatari se presenta como la primera recopilación y acercamiento serio a estas fábulas; en él se plasman los elementos que conforman la realidad japonesa desde hace siglos. A través del estudio e interpretación del folclore y sus múltiples expresiones, se consigue comprender el desarrollo y pervivencia actual del carácter tradicional en que la sociedad se mueve y cómo mantiene claves que la definen como única en el mundo.

Elementi macabri e soprannaturali hanno permeato tutte le forme di espressione artistica giapponese e sono oggigiorno inglobati nella più moderna espressione di "genere horror". La presente tesi prende in analisi la loro rappresentazione nelle varie tipologie di arti visive in Giappone, in particolar modo quelle illustrate, con numerosi riferimenti alla letteratura, al teatro e soprattutto al cinema, e si sviluppa principalmente attorno all’analisi delle raffigurazioni ed illustrazioni nelle arti dei soggetti presi in esame, come gli yūrei o gli yōkai. L’opera riporta degli accenni ad epoche precedenti, essenziale per analizzarne l’evoluzione, per poi concentrarsi sui lavori prodotti in epoca pre-moderna e sui cambiamenti accaduti con l’avvento dei media in periodo moderno e contemporaneo. Un ulteriore intento, infatti, è di dimostrare come l'horror sia un genere molto più profondo e complesso di ciò che può sembrare e di come sia stato utilizzato in Giappone soprattutto per riprodurre la realtà circostante e particolari sentimenti legati ad essa.
A fini sia artistici che informativi, si tratterà altresì di shinie, stampe di epoca Edo assimilabili ai moderni necrologi occidentali e argomento per lo più sconosciuto, del quale persino in Giappone ne esiste una letteratura estremamente esigua a riguardo.

This presentation compares contemporary popular culture versions of Japanese yôkai, ‘goblins’ to their historical forbears, and examines how the portrayal of their relationships to humans has changed. Many historical goblins emerged from the improper behavior of humans. Other yôkai emerged from folklore about wildlife (e.g., foxes and badgers) or imaginary creatures such as kappa ‘water sprite/s’. Narratives of popular consumer culture have expanded the yôkai category, changed their modes of origin and of behavior, and reworked earlier characters. Specifically, these contemporary goblins are found in two anime series, Gegege no Kitaro and Yôkai Watch. Comparing these two sets of narratives reveals further differences largely attributable to a shift of focus. In Gegege no Kitaro, yôkai still emerge to seek retribution for societal misdeeds. However, in Yôkai Watch the goblins perpetrate or mitigate personal problems, interpersonal relationships and communication difficulties. The latter has emerged in a much more heavily commercialized popular cultural context than the former. Yet its narrative also includes elements of schoolyard folklore that prove useful in the everyday lives of children who consume it. Yôkai have therefore become a powerful explanatory mechanism and evolved from persecutors into helpers.

The present paper investigates the Japanese manga production dedicated to monster girls. In recent years, ecchi (erotic) products such as the Monster Musume series by Okayado have spread even in the Western market. In these products there's often a male protagonist, involved in a series of erotic gags, generated by his relationships with non-human girls. The article reflects on the internal differentiations in the representations of monster girls, through some case studies. What is highlighted, in particular, is the degree of monstrosity of the girls, related to the exploitation of their monstrous bodies for erotic-comic situations.

戦国期以降のキリシタン文献において、「天狗」といえば現代でいう「悪魔」のことであった。一方で、江戸後期の蘭学文献において「天狗」と呼ばれたのは、現代でいう「天使」のことであった。天使と悪魔は、少なくとも概念的には両極に位置する。しかしどういうわけか、日本の妖怪「天狗」は両義的な意味を担うことができてしまった。その背景には、キリスト教神学と語学辞書というテクストジャンルの違いや、反宗教的でも異類的でもある天狗の多義的属性があったと考えられる。本発表では、二つの時代における翻訳実践それぞれの論理をたどっていくとともに、その違いが異類研究のグローバルな展開にどのような可能性をもつのかを論じてみる。

O presente trabalho se  propõe a  analisar  a construção do tanuki, enquanto  personagem  em traduções de histórias folclóricas japonesas para o inglês, o francês e o português. O tanuki é um animal que existe naturalmente somente na Ásia e com forte folclore no Japão enquanto um yōkai. Como o tanuki faz parte de memória cultural própria do Oriente, existe uma problemática de tradução para o Ocidente de textos  com a presença  desse  folclore.    Após  situar  o  leitor  em  relação  aos  contextos biológicos  e  folclóricos  do tanuki,  minha  reflexão segue a  perspectiva  da  Análise  do  Discurso pecheutiana,  especialmente do conceito  de memória  discursiva, sobre a trajetória e os caminhos da tradução  de  histórias  folclóricas  japonesas.  Finalmente,  analiso trechos  de  traduções  de  dois tradicionais e relevantes contos folclóricos japoneses que contam coma presença do tanuki enquanto personagem principal: Kachi Kachi Yama e Bunbuku Chagama, possibilitando a análise em mais de um  contexto.O  objetivo  é compreender  que  elementos  textuais  são  utilizados  para  acessar  outros discursos que contribuam com a construção do personagem na história e de sua memória no ocidente.

The "Light on the Tokaido. The symbolic transformation of «Tengu» (天狗)" part of the conference introduces to the public the main context of the Edo period art and also presents an example of iconographical and iconological transformation,  using the example of the "Tengu", the celestial dog. Its journey, from archaic characteristcs, to its integration into religious beliefs and its posterior return to the profane world in the Edo period, illustrates the richness of japanese folklore.

[Title translation] Yukionna: the modern reworkings of a myth

In this work, we intend to make a comparative analysis between the Japanese fairytale Yukionna (" The Woman of the Snow "), by Lafcadio Hearn and two modern film adaptations, Masaki Kobayashi's Kaidan (1964), and Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990). With that, we would like to investigate how each director envisions the classical tale, and how these interpretations are portrayed on their movies. As theoretical reference we used the instruments of analysis proposed by João Batista de Brito (2006). As a preliminary observation, we can conclude that the 1964 movie has more similarities with Hearn's tale, while the 1990 movie shows a somewhat more free interpretation of the story.

This article proposes eco-intermediality as a cross-fertilization between what has been the hitherto predominantly thematic orientation of ecocriticism and the more form-oriented concerns of intermediality studies. To explore the transformative potential of this eco-intermedial conceptual framework, I focus on the 2013 manga adaptation of Hōjōki by the Japanese visual artist Mizuki Shigeru. Hōjōki (1212) is a medieval essay written by the Japanese poet-monk Kamo no Chōmei and bearing witness to a string of environmental disasters that overtook Kyoto at around the end of the twelfth century. The combination of a poignant environmental theme with a long history of translations and adaptations makes this work particularly amenable to an eco-intermedial approach. My main argument is that the post-Fukushima adaptation by Mizuki is a game-changer in such history, inasmuch as the artist brings his unique environmental imaginary and the distinctive formal affordances of manga to bear on Chōmei's text, so as to convey the sense of a world where objects and phenomena are endowed with agency and thus outside full human control. The ultimate aim of the present article is to highlight the far-reaching ecological implications of the intermedial textures that Mizuki creates in his manga Hōjōki to express an environmental imaginary hinged on material agency and empathy.

Animated television programs have been considered an integral element of the 'media mix' or transmedia in Japan. In multiple contexts, the place of such television shows has been framed as a '30-minute commercial' or 'program length commercial'. This article examines the 2014 anime and media mix Yo-kai Watch as an example of the animation episode as something else: part of a call towards total mobilization. Taking seriously the incendiary remarks by one of Japan's media mix pioneers – Kadokawa Haruki – who claimed that his model for the media mix was taken from Hitler's 'total mobilization' of fashion, sound, and image for a nationalist endgame, this article considers the Yo-kai Watch media mix in light of the concept of total mobilization. Through a close analysis of the objects, games and animation of Yo-Kai Watch, the author suggests that the endgame of this media mix geared towards very young audiences is their total mobilization towards collection-based consumption. This means thinking a 'logistics of consumption' that requires in part an examination of the circulation of objects as well as the function of the anime as an incitement and manual to play. A frenzy overtook Japan in the opening months of 2014. Children, parents, grandparents all went in search of merchandise from a new 'media mix' franchise, Yo-kai Watch, that had suddenly taken the nation by storm. They scoured the toy aisles of department stores and toy stores in search for watches, medals and other items from this new, suddenly all-encompassing franchise whose merchandise was as ephemeral and hard to track down as the in-game and in-animation yokai or 'ghosts' around which the franchise was based. Considered in the context of the recent logistical turn in media studies – in which supply chains are often depicted as alternatively all-powerful and extremely fragile – we can say that the supply chain management of Yo-kai Watch failed, but that this failure only increased children's desire for the media mix's wares. (The other explanation popular at the time was that this was a manufactured rarity, a deliberate underproduction; while equally interesting as an explanation, the prevailing

Hybrid bodies in pre-modern Japan: a study based on literary sources and bestiaries Abstract The hybrid body is an extremely popular theme in Japan's literature and visual arts that we can find in many genres and eras. Traces can be found in fairy tales, as well as in the early writings of the eighth century, the historiographies Kojiki (Records of ancient matters, 712) and Nihon shoki (The Chronicles of Japan, 720) and throughout all cultural history. In particular, it finds a high level of expression in the bestiary of the late Tokugawa period (1600-1867). Some hybrids derive from the cultural context of continental Asia, while others derive from the indigenous culture. There is also a huge number of typologies, from human / animal and human / vegetable hybrids to others that include non-organic elements. In this article we intend to provide an insight into this cultural heritage, focusing on the representations of hybrid bodies through the main literary and pictorial sources of pre-modern Japan.

Considerando a atual popularidade da temática yokai, proponho uma compreensão a respeito de suas origens históricas. A partir de Foster (2009; 2015a) e Kazuhiko (2017), discutirei inicialmente o que entendemos pela palavra yokai, identificando suas aparições em produtos culturais antigos e atuais. Para melhor compreender a temática, abordarei o assunto passando por questões de folclore e do imaginário fantástico e sobrenatural no Japão e fora dele (KAWAI, 1995; TODOROV, 2007; JACKSON, 1981; CASAL, 1959). Em seguida, observarei elementos folclóricos dos períodos Kamakura e Muromachi que apresentam essas narrativas do sobrenatural e que são constantemente retomados desde o período Edo até hoje, na cultural popular e também no meio acadêmico através dos Estudos Yokai (FOSTER, 2015). Nesse aspecto me dedicarei especialmente aos registros conhecidos como setsuwa, emaki e otogizoshi (TYLER, 2002; SHIRANE, 2010; VISSER, 1908), observando alguns exemplos e algumas de suas traduções modernas para inglês e português. Assim, será possível observar de que formas esses períodos foram embrionários para a chamada "cultural yokai" conforme a conhecemos hoje.

The analysis conducted on Kyōgoku Natsuhiko's (b. 1963) literary production denoted a
close connection with Japanese classical cultural heritage. In particular his works can be
considered ipertexts derived from ipotexts like the Edo-period kaidan (ghost stories) and the
oral tradition of hyaku monogatari (one hundred stories), as well as from the sashi-e
(illustration) that accompany the narrations. Starting from Genette's theories about second
degree literature, my report aims to make clear Kyōgoku's rewriting modalities, concentrating
on three pieces of his production, the hyakki yagyō series, the hyaku monogatari series and the
ghost stories anthology Furui kaidan. Special attention will be payed on the rhetoric developed
around the supernatural creatures portrayed by the author, trying to highlight their interaction
with the narrative structure and the value of content.

Низшие мифологические персонажи - лешие, домовые, банники, полевики, овинники и многие другие - являются традиционным объектом изучения этнографической науки. В большей части русскоязычных публикаций речь идет о низших персонажах славянской мифопоэтической традиции. В данной работе автор попытается представить аналогичные материалы из области японистики.

This transversal and transilient thought-experiment explores the application and significance of Japanese animism for environmental education and environmental philosophy. Through the exploration of indigenous knowledge found in Japanese folklore and Japanese Buddhism, the thought-experiment offers a critique of a certain strand of contemporary fatalistic and nihilistic thinking regarding the Anthropocene. At its simplest it questions the trend toward mysticism and obfuscation in environmental education and demands a response to the environmental crisis precisely through reason and rationality. How shall this be undertaken? On one level, the hauntings of 妖怪 (Yōkai) and 幽霊 (Yūrei) in Japanese folklore shall act as a prism through which to understand the impact of the fantastical on the contemporary imagination, and on another level, I shall critique the fantastical as such to question the so-called inaccessibility of the hyperobject (Morton, 2014), which in the end leaves us despairingly passive and without the possibility of response. It is in the work of the Japanese philosopher 井上円了 (Inoue Enryō) and especially his defence of Western Enlightenment beliefs during Japan’s modernisation period (1868–1912) that a curious method and heuristic tool is found that may be used to address not only the problem of mystification in Japanese philosophy but also the obfuscation of the ecological object of recent Western thought. Seemingly sacrilegiously, it is through reason and at the limits of the rational that one may approach the hyperobject-in-itself, which is to say, the unfathomable as such.