12. Conclusion

     Japanese people created yokai, and have lived with them. Yokai are not just supernatural monsters, or animated characters for our entertainment. Yokai reflects our minds, our culture, and our history. Young people tend to forget their own important culture. We have to learn and maintain our culture’s background, and it leads that we can learn ourselves. Please remember your identity, or your important culture. It’s not always new things are important.

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11. Social phenomenon and Yokai

     It is said that yokai get popular when a period change over, and there are two factors.

1.    The social dislocations, social disorder, corruption

2.    The darkness inside of human’s mind

     Those things are thought that Oni(ogre) of social or mind. The darkness in our social and our minds produce yokai. These days, we face sever social phenomena, for example, modification because of global warming, economic stagnation, suicide, illness, etc…. We create yokai, and yokai reflect our mind. We ourselves may be yokai or yokai are alive in our minds.

10. The development of media and Yokai

     Today, the folklore and the pictures of yokai are passed down by media. Because of the development of media, yokai are devided from tales and traditional context, and they are just represented visually. Yokai culture has been developing as common-people based culture and that makes yokai animated characters.

     As the media were developed, television, radio and mobile phones come into wide use, and yokai or ghost are changing because of that. Some yokai and ghost appear and spread from TV, or mobile phone. Yokai are adaptable to the change of culture.

9. Shigeru MIZUKI , a Japanese manga cartoonist

     It is said that youkai as animated characters were spread through Japanese culture by Shigeru Mizuki’s cartoons. Shigeru Mizuki, who was born in 1922 and he lost his left arm in World War II, is a Japanese manga cartoonist, a specialist in stories of yokai. He is considered a master of the genre. He is also known for his World War II memoirs, and his work as a biographer.

     His famous manga is “GeGeGe no Kitaro” that were written in 1965, and it is still popular with every generation. Mizuki has won numerous awards and accolades for his works, especially GeGeGe no Kitaro. It’s about a yōkai boy with a missing left eye and a large number of strange powers, who fights to keep peace between monsters and humans. His father, though dead, reanimated himself as an anthropomorphic version of his own remaining eyeball, and often guides Kitaro by riding around in his hair or empty eye socket.

 

8. The changing of drawing Yokai

     In the Edo period(1603-1867), yokai were becoming entertainment for common people. Until then, people were just afraid of yokai. However, people made horror stories about yokai, told each other, and began to draw yokai for their entertainment. In the present day, yokai have become the mascot or animated characters. People don’t draw yokai only fearful and evil but also cute and good.

 

 
 
 

7. Kappa

     If you’ve heard of any one yokai, it’s probably the kappa. Early the single most famous yokai in Japan, this amphibious creature has long been feared as vicious scourge of Japan’s rivers, swamps, coastlines, and other bodies of water. They are also known to take refuge in man-made structures such as cisterns and garden ponds. They are occasionally encountered on land in mountainous areas during the winter, when their watery homes freeze over. They can be tracked by their pungent body odor, said to be reminiscent of rotting compost. Kappa are traditional “bogeymen” invoked by Japanese parents to frighten young children away from playing near lakes and rivers unattended. According to one story, some nine thousands of the creatures swam en masse from China to Japan around the fifth century. Whatever their true origin, they have become the signature yokai of the Japanese folk pantheon.

 

6. Funny Yokai

There are many strange Yokai, and we will introduce some of them here.

*Azuki Arai

A furtive little fellow, often heard but only very rarely spotted alongside isolated streams and riverbanks, the Azuki Arai(literally, “Red Bean Washer”) is an unassuming sort of creature that is believed to resemble an odd-looking little human. It is preternaturally engaged in the act of washing azuki beans in the basket it carries for that very purpose, quietly mumbling a weird little tune all the while. When hikers or travelers curious as to the source of the sound make a closer approach, they can make out the words to the Azuki Arai song: “Wash me beans, or human to eat…..Shoki-shoki! Shoki-shoki!” (The last bit being onomatopoeia for the sound of azuki beans tumbling over one another as they are washed.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Tofu Kozo

Tofu Kozo is a small boy dressed in traditional clothes, armed with but a single weapon; a jiggly block of tofu on a plate. Encounters invariably take the same form. Someone is taking a walk on a pleasant, uneventful night. Ahead in distance, they can just make out what appears to be a tiny figure wearing a traditional straw hat. As they approach, they see that it is only a boy bearing a plate quivers what appears to be an expertly prepared and delicious-looking block of fresh tofu, adorned with a momiji(Japanese maple) leaf. If anyone tastes the tofu, they’ve fallen into the otherwise unassuming Tofu Kozo’s trap. Results vary. In some cases, those who eat the tofu walk away with absolutely no ill effects. In others, however, once even a morsel of the tofu is consumed, a virulent fungus begin to grow within the victim’s body, its fetid spores eventually draining it of all life.