Behind the Paper Screen / 'Yokai' folklore boom grips Japan
Sawa Kurotani / Special to The Daily Yomiuri
Every year when I visit Japan, I spend quite a bit of time in bookstores. Some of that time is spent in the social science section of a large bookstore, looking for the most recent publications by Japanese experts on the topics of my research interest as an anthropologist of contemporary Japanese culture. But I spend much, much more time around magazine racks and hirazumi (literally, "stacked flat") tables, where current bestsellers are displayed in short stacks with the front cover up for better visibility.
There my purpose is, first and foremost, entertainment, to stock up on books for my escapist pleasure of sitting down with a good book and a cup of tea. Alas, even as I pick up this and that from the hirazumi table and peek at the pages of popular novels and bestselling nonfiction on the table, I am also looking, out of the corner of my eyes, to see whether I could detect any kind of trend, some clues to what is going on in Japan that is perhaps not immediately apparent.
Anthropologists have long analyzed folklore and oral tradition as a key to understanding the cultural attitude and worldview of a people. But my work centers on a highly industrialized contemporary society of Japan, where folklore and oral tradition are just one possible vehicle of folk sentiment. More often, I turn to popular books and magazines. Relatively speaking, Japan's printed media seems to be much more vibrant than the U.S. counterpart, due, I suspect in no insignificant part, to long commutes on public transportation. While text messaging and other electronic forms of distraction are also popular, you'll still find that reading--newspapers, magazines and comics, as well as books--is the pastime of choice for the great majority of passengers on crowded trains. Books that are intended for mass consumption have to appeal to a broad audience--like those working men and women on commuter trains. Therefore, bestselling books tell us something about the common sentiments and concerns that prevail in Japanese society at a given moment.
The trend that I noticed at bookstores this summer was the flood of books on supernatural beings from Japanese folklore, often called yokai, mononoke or ayakashi. It seemed as though there is a yokai bumu (boom) in Japan right now. While there are many nonfiction books on Japan's yokai tradition, I was particularly intrigued by scores of novels that center on yokai. The premises and plot patterns of these popular yokai books vary and their longevity is also somewhat variable. I will briefly introduce some of the most popular examples here, so that the readers who are unfamiliar with this genre can get a general idea.
Baku Yumemakura's onmyoji series is a good example of this genre. Debuting in 1988, it is probably one of the oldest yokai fiction series that is still ongoing. Situated in the Heian period (794-1185), its protagonist Abe no Seimei is loosely based on the historical character who served as onmyoji, an official title given to technocrats who managed all supernatural matters for the Emperor and his court in the 10th century. Seimei confronts supernatural beings and saves the Emperor and noble men and women from the tatari--the bad effects of angry spirits, both dead and living--with his unique understanding of the connection between the ordinary and the extraordinary, the natural and the supernatural. The series became increasingly popular throughout the 1990s and started an onmyoji boom. It also led to a TV show and a feature film in 2001.
Another prominent writer in the genre is Natsuhiko Kyogoku, who is also known as a yokai researcher. He came on the scene in 1994 with his first mystery novel featuring a bookish armchair detective Akihiko Chuzenji, who is also a Shinto priest and possesses vast archival knowledge of the supernatural. In the chaos of the immediate post-World War II period, he and his motley crew of friends solve mysterious cases that involve supernatural phenomena. His cases are not themselves caused by supernatural beings; however, solving them requires an understanding of the supernatural and its effects on the human psyche. Kyogoku's novels are famously long--each one about 1,000 pages--in large part due to extensive reference to yokai-related archives from the sixth century on and detailed analysis of human psychic response to what seems to be a supernatural occurrence.
Starting out as a manga writer, Megumi Hatakenaka recently joined the ranks of popular yokai writers in 2001. In her series, yokai do not only live close to humans; they live with them, and even have children with them. The main character, Ichitaro, is the son of a wealthy merchant in the latter days of the Edo period (1603-1867). It turns out he is the offspring of a passionate love affair between a yokai (his grandmother) and a human (his grandfather). He suffers from ill health and is cloistered in his bedroom by his worried parents. From his bedroom he solves mysteries, some of which are caused by supernatural beings, others by humans, with the help of his yokai assistants. Incomprehensible actions and thoughts of those yokai is the key intrigue here, which constantly surprises Ichitaro, who is one-quarter yokai himself but fully functional member of human society.
And let us not forget Miyuki Miyabe, one of the most popular and versatile Japanese writers today. Among her wide-ranging repertoire is a series of works involving the supernatural in a historical setting, including two collections of short stories, published in the early 1990s, each of which evolves around well-known folk tales and legends of yokai and yurei (ghosts) from the Edo period, and a historical mystery in which the main character with supernatural abilities encounters the agonized spirits of those who were involved in the famous Chushingura incident, in which 47 former retainers avenged the wrongful death of their lord.
Naturally, these "booms" do not appear over night, nor all by themselves. Publishers and retailers obviously have much to do with this, as they often promote books on what they consider to be a relevant subject, by displaying them in a cluster in a visible location in the store. Furthermore, they often bring in older books on the same subject, and group them together with more recent publications, to create an impression of the sudden surge of interest in the topic. As we have seen, many of the currently popular writers of yokai books have been around for as long as two decades and had a loyal fan base prior to the boom, but are now receiving attention from a much broader audience in the current yokai boom.
A powerful agent of trend-making, publishers and retailers, nonetheless, cannot simply manufacture relevance, which can only be established and sustained with the consensus of the majority of the readers. So the sudden prominence of yokai novels on hirazumi tables in bookstores everywhere must in some way reflect latent public interest in the world of yokai--which I will discuss in more detail in the next installment.
Kurotani is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Redlands in California, and the author of "Home Away from Home: Japanese Corporate Wives in the United States" (Duke University Press, 2005).
(Nov. 13, 2007)
Sawa Kurotani / Special to The Daily Yomiuri
Every year when I visit Japan, I spend quite a bit of time in bookstores. Some of that time is spent in the social science section of a large bookstore, looking for the most recent publications by Japanese experts on the topics of my research interest as an anthropologist of contemporary Japanese culture. But I spend much, much more time around magazine racks and hirazumi (literally, "stacked flat") tables, where current bestsellers are displayed in short stacks with the front cover up for better visibility.
There my purpose is, first and foremost, entertainment, to stock up on books for my escapist pleasure of sitting down with a good book and a cup of tea. Alas, even as I pick up this and that from the hirazumi table and peek at the pages of popular novels and bestselling nonfiction on the table, I am also looking, out of the corner of my eyes, to see whether I could detect any kind of trend, some clues to what is going on in Japan that is perhaps not immediately apparent.
Anthropologists have long analyzed folklore and oral tradition as a key to understanding the cultural attitude and worldview of a people. But my work centers on a highly industrialized contemporary society of Japan, where folklore and oral tradition are just one possible vehicle of folk sentiment. More often, I turn to popular books and magazines. Relatively speaking, Japan's printed media seems to be much more vibrant than the U.S. counterpart, due, I suspect in no insignificant part, to long commutes on public transportation. While text messaging and other electronic forms of distraction are also popular, you'll still find that reading--newspapers, magazines and comics, as well as books--is the pastime of choice for the great majority of passengers on crowded trains. Books that are intended for mass consumption have to appeal to a broad audience--like those working men and women on commuter trains. Therefore, bestselling books tell us something about the common sentiments and concerns that prevail in Japanese society at a given moment.
The trend that I noticed at bookstores this summer was the flood of books on supernatural beings from Japanese folklore, often called yokai, mononoke or ayakashi. It seemed as though there is a yokai bumu (boom) in Japan right now. While there are many nonfiction books on Japan's yokai tradition, I was particularly intrigued by scores of novels that center on yokai. The premises and plot patterns of these popular yokai books vary and their longevity is also somewhat variable. I will briefly introduce some of the most popular examples here, so that the readers who are unfamiliar with this genre can get a general idea.
Baku Yumemakura's onmyoji series is a good example of this genre. Debuting in 1988, it is probably one of the oldest yokai fiction series that is still ongoing. Situated in the Heian period (794-1185), its protagonist Abe no Seimei is loosely based on the historical character who served as onmyoji, an official title given to technocrats who managed all supernatural matters for the Emperor and his court in the 10th century. Seimei confronts supernatural beings and saves the Emperor and noble men and women from the tatari--the bad effects of angry spirits, both dead and living--with his unique understanding of the connection between the ordinary and the extraordinary, the natural and the supernatural. The series became increasingly popular throughout the 1990s and started an onmyoji boom. It also led to a TV show and a feature film in 2001.
Another prominent writer in the genre is Natsuhiko Kyogoku, who is also known as a yokai researcher. He came on the scene in 1994 with his first mystery novel featuring a bookish armchair detective Akihiko Chuzenji, who is also a Shinto priest and possesses vast archival knowledge of the supernatural. In the chaos of the immediate post-World War II period, he and his motley crew of friends solve mysterious cases that involve supernatural phenomena. His cases are not themselves caused by supernatural beings; however, solving them requires an understanding of the supernatural and its effects on the human psyche. Kyogoku's novels are famously long--each one about 1,000 pages--in large part due to extensive reference to yokai-related archives from the sixth century on and detailed analysis of human psychic response to what seems to be a supernatural occurrence.
Starting out as a manga writer, Megumi Hatakenaka recently joined the ranks of popular yokai writers in 2001. In her series, yokai do not only live close to humans; they live with them, and even have children with them. The main character, Ichitaro, is the son of a wealthy merchant in the latter days of the Edo period (1603-1867). It turns out he is the offspring of a passionate love affair between a yokai (his grandmother) and a human (his grandfather). He suffers from ill health and is cloistered in his bedroom by his worried parents. From his bedroom he solves mysteries, some of which are caused by supernatural beings, others by humans, with the help of his yokai assistants. Incomprehensible actions and thoughts of those yokai is the key intrigue here, which constantly surprises Ichitaro, who is one-quarter yokai himself but fully functional member of human society.
And let us not forget Miyuki Miyabe, one of the most popular and versatile Japanese writers today. Among her wide-ranging repertoire is a series of works involving the supernatural in a historical setting, including two collections of short stories, published in the early 1990s, each of which evolves around well-known folk tales and legends of yokai and yurei (ghosts) from the Edo period, and a historical mystery in which the main character with supernatural abilities encounters the agonized spirits of those who were involved in the famous Chushingura incident, in which 47 former retainers avenged the wrongful death of their lord.
Naturally, these "booms" do not appear over night, nor all by themselves. Publishers and retailers obviously have much to do with this, as they often promote books on what they consider to be a relevant subject, by displaying them in a cluster in a visible location in the store. Furthermore, they often bring in older books on the same subject, and group them together with more recent publications, to create an impression of the sudden surge of interest in the topic. As we have seen, many of the currently popular writers of yokai books have been around for as long as two decades and had a loyal fan base prior to the boom, but are now receiving attention from a much broader audience in the current yokai boom.
A powerful agent of trend-making, publishers and retailers, nonetheless, cannot simply manufacture relevance, which can only be established and sustained with the consensus of the majority of the readers. So the sudden prominence of yokai novels on hirazumi tables in bookstores everywhere must in some way reflect latent public interest in the world of yokai--which I will discuss in more detail in the next installment.
Kurotani is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Redlands in California, and the author of "Home Away from Home: Japanese Corporate Wives in the United States" (Duke University Press, 2005).
(Nov. 13, 2007)