The , also called the is a book of ''

yōkai are a class of supernatural entities and spirits in Japanese folklore. The word is composed of the kanji for "attractive; calamity" and "apparition; mystery; suspicious." are also referred to as , or . Despite often being translated as suc ...

'' illustrated by Japanese artist Takehara Shunsensai, published about 1841. The book was intended as a followup to

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's ''

Gazu Hyakki Yagyō is the first book of Japanese artist Toriyama Sekien's famous ''Gazu Hyakki Yagyō'' e-hon tetralogy, published in 1776. A version of the tetralogy translated and annotated in English was published in 2016. Although the title translates to "The ...

'' series. Like those books, it is a supernatural

bestiary A bestiary (from ''bestiarum vocabulum'') is a compendium of beasts. Originating in the ancient world, bestiaries were made popular in the Middle Ages in illustrated volumes that described various animals and even rocks. The natural history ...

of ghosts, monsters, and spirits which has had a profound influence on subsequent yōkai imagery in Japan. The author's pen name is ; however, in the preface it is written as . According to the '' Kokusho Sōmokuroku'' (

Iwanami Shoten is a Japanese publishing company based in Tokyo.Louis Frédéric, ''Japan Encyclopedia'', Harvard University Press, 2005, p. 409. Iwanami Shoten was founded in 1913 by Iwanami Shigeo. Its first major publication was Natsume Sōseki's novel '' ...

) this is considered to be a

gesaku is an alternative style, genre, or school of Japanese literature. In the simplest contemporary sense, any literary work of a playful, mocking, joking, silly or frivolous nature may be called gesaku. Unlike predecessors in the literary field, gesak ...

author from the latter half of the

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characte ...

, . It can be said that this is a kind of hundred-tale ''

kaidan is a Japanese word consisting of two kanji: 怪 (''kai'') meaning "strange, mysterious, rare, or bewitching apparition" and 談 (''dan'') meaning "talk" or "recited narrative". Overall meaning and usage In its broadest sense, ''kaidan'' refers ...

'' (ghost story) book popular in the Edo period, as "100 Tales" is part of the title, but rather than being tales with story titles, yōkai names are printed with illustrations of yōkai, so it could be said that this work is a fusion of kaidan book and picture book. This book is also known by the title ''Tōsanjin Yawa'' because the title on the first page of each volume is "Tōsanjin Yawa, Volume " Scholar of Japanese manners and customs Ema Tsutomu (''Nihon Yōkai Henka-shi'', 1923) and folklorist Fujisawa Morihiko (''Hentai Densetsu-shi'', 1926), as well as magazines at that time, introduced this book by the name ''Tōsanjin Yawa'', and so this title became famous. On the other hand, Mizuki Shigeru, in his 1979 ''Yōkai 100 Monogatari'' describes it in his references as "''Ehon Hyaku Monogatari (Author: Tōsanjin, Year of publication: Unknown)."

Ehon is the Japanese term for picture books. It may be applied in the general sense, or may refer specifically to a type of woodblock printed illustrated volume published in the Edo period (1603–1867). The first were religious items with images ...

have a 1,230 year long tradition in Japan. Beginning with the first ehon, a short prayer book, being published in the eighth century as a votive offering. The name ehon translates from Japanese as picture book. The main focus of these books were pictures or more specifically hand drawn paintings or wood-block printings (of which were popularized during the Edo period between 1603 and 1868) depending on the contents of the book itself and the reasons as to why it was printed. Often there would be such texts as essays, short stories, poems etc. that would accompany these pictures, although they would not necessarily be related to the illustrations. Most books in Japan would have been a collaboration between several people, all contributing to a different aspect of the book: the author to write the story, an artist to paint or cut and print the wood-blocks, paper makers, and book binders.

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Born 1712 as Sano Toyofusa,

being a pen name he would commonly use. His family were of a hereditary class of the Shogun’s high-ranking servants known as obozu. With this position his family was able to afford to give him a high-level education under master artists Kano Gyokuen and Kano Chikanobu, both members of the state-sanctioned Kano School of art. Throughout his life he was accredited with over a dozen books, either as an author or contributing artist. Despite this proliferation of writing, his best known works are his Compendiums of Yokai. According to

Hiroko Yoda Hiroko Yoda is a Japanese entrepreneur, translator, writer, folklorist, and president of the localization company AltJapan Co., Ltd. She was also a Tokyo city editor for the CNN travel website CNNGo. She is a translator of video games and the aut ...

and Matt Alt, authors/translators of “Japandemonium” (2013),

’s four works, Gazu Hyakki Yagyo (1776),

Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki is the second book of Japanese artist Toriyama Sekien's famous ''Gazu Hyakki Yagyō'' tetralogy, published c. 1779. A version of the tetralogy translated and annotated in English was published in 2016. These books are supernatural bestiaries, col ...

(1779), Konjaku Hyakki Shui (1781), Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro (1784), represent the, “...first mass produced illustrated compendiums of these wonderfully weird creatures.”

Yokai

Yokai can be at first thought of as monsters from Japanese folklore and legend. These are the things that are being depicted by both Takehara Shunsensai with his Ehon Hyaku Monogatari and in the original work by

with their illustrations and codified through the small text accompanying each picture. According to Michael Dylan Foster in his article, “Yokai: Fantastic Creatures of Japanese Folklore” (2022) Yokai once were invoked to try and explain any unknown phenomena, “such as eerie sounds in the night or fireballs flitting around a graveyard.” In more recent times you can find Yokai depicted in the modern media of Japanese folklore, anime and manga. According to Deborah Shamoon in her article, “The Yokai in the Database: Supernatural Creatures and Folklore in Manga and Anime” (2013), Sekien’s original text Gazu Hyakki Yagyo and Takehara Shunsensai’s Ehon Hyaku Monogatari that followed, allowed for a codification of what had originally been a vague set of beliefs and would be one of the major contributing factors for the continuity of stories with still familiar Yokai that we enjoy today.

List of creatures

The illustrations below are numbered by volume and appearance order. For example, the third illustration in the first volume is 1–3, and so on.

First Volume

File:ShunsenHakuzosu.jpg, File:ShunsenHienma.jpg, File:ShunsenKowai.jpg, File:ShunsenShionoChoji.jpg, File:Ehon_Hyaku_Monogatari_Isonade.jpg, * 1-1 * 1–2 * 1–3 * 1–4 * 1–5 File:ShunsenShinigami.jpg, File:ShunsenNojukubi.jpg, File:ShunsenNebutori.jpg, File:ShunsenOgama.jpg, * 1–6 * 1–7 * 1–8 * 1–9

Second Volume

File:ShunsenMamedanuki.jpg, File:ShunsenYamachichi.jpg, File:ShunsenYanagi-onna.jpg, File:ShunsenRojinnohi.jpg, File:ShunsenTearaioni.jpg, * 2-1 * 2-2 * 2–3 * 2–4 * 2–5 File:ShunsenShussebora.jpg, File:ShunsenKyuso.jpg, File:Ehon Hyaku Monogatari Futakuchi-onna.jpg, File:ShunsenMizoidashi.jpg, * 2–6 * 2–7 * 2–8 * 2–9

Third Volume

File:ShunsenKuzunoha.jpg, File:ShunsenShibaemontanuki.jpg, File:ShunsenBasan.jpg, File:ShunsenKatabiragatsuji.jpg, * 3-1 * 3-2 * 3-3 * 3–4 File:ShunsenHagurobettari.jpg, File:ShunsenAkaeinouo.jpg, File:ShunsenFunayurei.jpg, File:ShunsenYurei.jpg, * 3–5 * 3–6 * 3–7 * 3–8

Fourth Volume

File:ShunsenTeoi-hebi.jpg, File:ShunsenGoinohikari.jpg, File:ShunsenKasane.jpg, File:ShunsenOkikumushi.jpg, File:ShunsenNodeppou.jpg, * 4-1 * 4-2 * 4-3 * 4-4 * 4–5 File:ShunsenTenka.jpg, File:ShunsenNogitsune.jpg, File:ShunsenOniguma.jpg, File:ShunsenKaminari.jpg, * 4–6 * 4–7 * 4–8 * 4–9

Fifth Volume

File:ShunsenAzukiarai.jpg, File:ShunsenYamaotoko.jpg, File:ShunsenTsutsugamushi.jpg, File:ShunsenKazenokami.jpg, File:ShunsenKajigababa.jpg, * 5-1 * 5-2 * 5-3 * 5-4 * 5-5 File:ShunsenYanagibaba.jpg, File:ShunsenKatsuraotoko.jpg, File:ShunsenYoru-no-gakuya.jpg, File:ShunsenMaikubi.jpg, * 5–6 * 5–7 * 5–8 * 5–9

References

Ehon Hyaku Monogatari books
*Foster, Michael Dylan, “Yokai: Fantastic Creatures of Japanese Folklore”, Japan Society (2022). https://aboutjapan.japansociety.org/yokai-fantastic-creatures-of-japanese-folklore *Fujisawa Moriko, “Hentai Densetsushi: Zen”, (Japan): Bungei Shiryo Kenkyukai, 1926? *Keyes, Roger, “Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan”, University of Washington Press, September 14, 2006 *Shamoon, Deborah, “The Yokai in the Database: Supernatural Creatures and Folklore in Manga and Anime”, Marvel & Tales, Vol. 27, No. 2, The Fairy Tale in Japan (2013), pp. 276–289, Wayne State University Press https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13110/marvelstales.27.2.0276 *Tsutomu Ema, “Nihon Yokai Henge Shi”, Kyoto: Chugai Shuppan, 1923 *Yoda, Hiroko and Alt, Matt, “Japandemonium: Illustrated The Yokai Encyclopedias of Toriyama Sekien”, Dover Publications, 202

{{Authority control Yōkai Japanese books 1841 books Bestiaries