Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai

Portada
University of California Press, 3 nov 2008 - 312 páginas
Water sprites, mountain goblins, shape-shifting animals, and the monsters known as yôkai have long haunted the Japanese cultural landscape. This history of the strange and mysterious in Japan seeks out these creatures in folklore, encyclopedias, literature, art, science, games, manga, magazines, and movies, exploring their meanings in the Japanese cultural imagination and offering an abundance of valuable and, until now, understudied material. Michael Dylan Foster tracks yôkai over three centuries, from their appearance in seventeenth-century natural histories to their starring role in twentieth-century popular media. Focusing on the intertwining of belief and commodification, fear and pleasure, horror and humor, he illuminates different conceptions of the "natural" and the "ordinary" and sheds light on broader social and historical paradigms—and ultimately on the construction of Japan as a nation.
 

Índice

Introduction to the Weird
1
Natural History of the Weird Encyclopedias Spooky Stories and the Bestiaries of Toriyama Sekiem
30
Science of the Weird Inome Enryo Kokkuri and Human Electricity
77
Museum of the Weird Modernity Minzokugaku and the Discovery of Yokai
115
Media of the Weird Mizuki Shegeru and Kuchisakeonna
160
Yokai Culture Past Present Future
204
Notes
217
Bibliography
259
Index
277
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Sobre el autor (2008)

Michael Dylan Foster is Professor of Japanese, Department Chair of East Asian Languages and Cultures at University of California, Davis. He is the author of The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore (California).

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