At one point I was looking for (and finally found) a book of woodblock prints of Japanese monsters.
I have since gotten a great book that my friend Sandy brought from Japan: it’s called(図説)日本妖快大全 （which MAY be read “[zusetsu] nippon youkai taizen” ??) which translates to (Illustrated) encyclopedia of japanese bewitching monsters I think. The book is by Shigeru Mizuki ( 水木　ã—ã’ã‚‹).
The problem is I have no idea how to say the title, since there aren’t any furigana and my vocabulary isn’t very extensive, and my dictionaries don’t have any of these words in them. I had to piece it together by looking up the kanji, then finding all the readings for each, then looking up those phrases I built in my dictionary. Agh!
Searching for information, it’s the 妖快 part which is giving me problems. It seems to be associated with a lot of anime porn… maybe it means “fantastical” ?Okay I did a little research on the author- he is pretty famous, having done:
- Gegege no Kitaro – they made a Nintendo game out of this one, and a TV show. If you see a Japanese action figure of a boy with long hair combed over one eye, or a eyeball with legs (yes they are related!) then you have seen paraphernalia from this series.
- Akuma-kun
- Kappa no sanpei youkai daisakusen – I’ve never seen this one, but it has a kappa in it, so it must be good!
According to a post by “August Ragone”:
Shigeru Mizuki who lost his right arm in the Pacific War, and trained himself to draw with his left. He came to national attention in Japan in the mid-1960s with his striking and unusual style, and several of his manga were transformed into television seriess.
There seems to be a distinction between youkai, which are more like weird creatures like the Loch Ness Monster, from obake, which are more “abomination” type monsters, like undead things. I found an essay by Robert Jay Gould which was pretty informative.
EWH!