A.H. Nielsen

27 de agosto de 2022

An Essential Book for Anyone Interested In Yokai

After discovering the existence of this book through the yokai.com website during the course of some research I was doing on Japanese folklore for a personal project, I decided it might be an essential resource to have. Of course it turned out a lot of the information contained in the book was available on the earlier-mentioned website. So the question is, is this book really worth getting?In regards to content the answer is yes. As I said, many of the entries in this encyclopedia are available on the yokai.com website, but I've quickly come to view the website as more of a quick reference guide for stuff I already know but wish to refresh my memory on. With this book there's more of a chance to discover something you didn't know about. When I first got the book I spent a few hours just thumbing through it, and in doing so I'd come upon an entry with an interesting illustration for a yokai I didn't know about. I'd ask myself, "what the heck is this thing?" And then I'd just read the entry for it and I'd know.For someone who doesn't know the first thing about the mythical yokai, this book is an especially good introduction to the creatures. I should also point out that when compared to the yokai.com website, the information for some of the entries has been expanded a little bit. For example the book entry on kitsune (foxes) has just a little more info in it than the website version.I should mention however that while this is a great book to have, I strongly recommend getting the e-book version over the physical version, and I say this as someone who prefers physical books over reading books on a screen. The reason I say this is because the price for the physical version of the book is rather steep. It's been worth every penny, but if you want to save money the best move would be to just read it on a tablet.Ver más

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John J. Meszaros

17 de marzo de 2016

An Excellent Encyclopedia of Yokai

Okay, full disclosure: Matt did the cover for my first novel.However, the reason I approached him to do my cover in the first place was because I loved his artwork so much.Matt's illustrations perfectly captures the look of classic yokai ukiyo-e (many of his works even have faint impressions of wood grain, a common feature of actual block-printed ukiyo-e) while still possessing a style unique to him.He's clearly put hundreds of hours into researching even the most minute details of the yokai he presents, making this one of the definitive guides to Japanese monsters.I particularly like that this book presents the creatures "in scene" rather than isolating them on a white page as many field guides to monsters often do. You get a sense of how they would actually look and behave as actual creatures in the countryside of Japan.The only small quibble I have is that the cover of the book is rather plain and the words a bit hard to read. I get that Matt wanted it to look like an old bound tome-- something you might dig out from a pile of moldy tatami mats in the back of a forgotten temple. But if I saw this cover in a store, I would probably breeze right by. Again, though, that's a very, very small complaint about a gorgeous, well written encyclopedia of yokai lore.Ver más

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Mark Davis

17 de mayo de 2012

Amazing and Unique guide to a hidden world

This is the result of a Kickstarter crowdfunding project that I backed in a small way so I would receive a copy when it was published. I liked it so much I bought one as a gift for my friend. It's an illustrated field guide to Japanese folklore spirits. Each page is a fully rendered color panel of unique art from the author with a description on the facing page. The art is great Japanese wood-cut 2D sort of style (I'm not really a arty so I'm sure there is a better term for it) and the subject matter is really interesting. Being a westerner, we don't have as rich and diverse a set of boogie-men (and women and animals) in our folklore. It's a great gift as well as a conversation piece or coffee table book.Ver más

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Barrendur

25 de octubre de 2013

Excellent and Entertaining

Splendid introduction to some of the best-known Yokai, Japanese entities that we (in the West) call monsters/ghosts/spirits/gods - or some combination of all of the preceding. The book is softcover, with full-page, original illustrations of each Yokai following their description, and clever, artistic "touches" throughout to make the book appear old (faux foxing, yellowing/discolouration on margins, "mould spots" that are actually printed on the page). These little touches never interfere with the writing or the pictures, appearing only in margins and "gutter space."The pictures are wonderful, bright, clear and lively. They're all coloured pictures in the Western style, with strongly depicted central characters, but settings and backgrounds deliberately reproduce traditional Japanese styles; lots of misty watercolour-like effects, trees, mountains and water with stylised designs and patterns. Most of the human (or once-human) characters depicted look Japanese.The text is generally clear, with a little bit of humour gleaming through. Some of the Yokai _are_ funny, to say nothing of absurd! The sections are neatly arranged and easy to follow, with the "header" on each page listing the Yokai's vital statistics (Translation, Alternate Names, Habitat and Diet) helping the reader determine what (or who) they're looking at. The divisions of the book seem natural, not forced, and the introductory material (Contents, Map of Japan, Language Notes and Introduction) is all very helpful in the effort to understand the mindset of the creators, the time and place in which they lived.These Yokai all represent an on-going effort by humans to control the things they don't understand by explaining and demystifying them (*Those footsteps you hear behind you late at night, and there's never anybody there? It's just the Betobeto. It doesn't do any harm, and all you have to do to get rid of it is move aside and say, "After you, Betobeto-san."*) If the Yokai seem bizarre or ridiculous, just remember that they represent explanations a culture completely different from our own came up with.There are several text errors scattered throughout the book - spelling mistakes, misprints, missing text - which give the book (to me, anyway, but I have a real problem with editorial mistakes) a bit of an amateurish air. It's half the reason I took one star off the rating... but while annoying, the text errors don't significantly interfere with the pleasure of reading this book - and looking at the pictures! I'm very sorry this book is only 223 pages long; I'd have liked more of the same!I do understand this book is only an introduction to the fascinating world of the Yokai, but I do feel that the Behaviour, Interactions and Other Forms sections on each Yokai could have been expanded, specifically with info on how/why the description of the Yokai has has changed over time (eg. the Kasha going from funeral carriage to fiery catlike demon), and how each Yokai is perceived by humans; how the Japanese of earlier eras regarded it and how the modern Japanese feel about it now (eg. the Kerakeraonna going from a beloved bringer of joy and mirth to a cruel, scathing old whore who brings only mockery and distress).And this is the other half of the reason I took off a star, making my rating a 4-star rather than a 5-star.Overall, though, this is a very entertaining (and quite informative) book that's a pleasure to read through or even just flip through, looking at the pictures!

K. Watson

30 de abril de 2013

The Night Parade, as seen by a student

I got this book because I am studying Japanese in college and wanted to write my final paper on Japanese yokai, or supernatural creatures. I had several sources, but by far this was the most helpful one I had. Meyer went into fantastic detail about over two hundred separate yokai - their behaviours, their habitats, and their physical descriptions. The art was also incredibly lovely; you can tell how much effort he put into making the yokai as accurate as possible. The other books on yokai that I've seen barely skim the surface of the incredible history these creatures have, so I was absolutely thrilled to find someone else in the world who loved yokai as much as I did!I ended up presenting that paper, and I got full marks for it. I'm sure it's because I had such wonderful source material to help me out.Highly recommended for hardcore yokai enthusiasts, and people just looking for a fun look into an entire realm of supernatural creatures they may not have known existed!Ver más

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K. R. Lunak

26 de agosto de 2024

Fascinating folklore

I follow the writer on Kickstarter where he first puts up his books. All his books deal with Japanese folklore and ghost/monster stories. He does his own drawings and they are fantastic.