page_title: Yōkai
section_title: Post-classical history
hierarchical_section_title: Yōkai / History / Post-classical history
caption_attribution_description: Tsukumogami (付喪神, artifact spirits) from the Hyakki-Yagyō-Emaki (百鬼夜行絵巻, the picture scroll of the demons' night parade)
context_page_description: Yōkai are a class of supernatural monsters and spirits in Japanese folklore. The word yōkai is made up of the kanji for "bewitching; attractive; calamity" and "spectre; apparition; mystery; suspicious." They can also be called ayakashi, mononoke or mamono. Yōkai range diversely from the malevolent to the mischievous, or occasionally bring good fortune to those who encounter them.
  Yōkai often possess animal features, yet others appear mostly human like kuchisake-onna. Some yōkai look like inanimate objects, while others have no discernible shape. Yōkai usually have spiritual or supernatural abilities, with shapeshifting being the most common. Yōkai that shapeshift are called bakemono or obake.
  Japanese folklorists and historians explain yōkai as personifications of "supernatural or unaccountable phenomena to their informants." In the Edo period, many artists, such as Toriyama Sekien, invented new yōkai by taking inspiration from folk tales or purely from their own imagination. Today, several such yōkai are mistaken to originate in more traditional folklore.
context_section_description: Medieval Japan was a time period where publications such as Emakimono, Otogizōshi, and other visual depictions of yōkai started to appear. While there were religious publications such as the Jisha Engi (寺社縁起), others, such as the Otogizōshi, were intended more for entertainment, starting the trend where yōkai became more and more seen as subjects of entertainment. For examples, tales of yōkai extermination could be said to be a result of emphasizing the superior status of human society over yōkai. Publications included:
  The Ooe-yama Shuten-doji Emaki (about an oni), the Zegaibou Emaki (about a tengu), the Tawara no Touta Emaki (俵藤太絵巻) (about a giant snake and a centipede), the Tsuchigumo Zoshi (土蜘蛛草紙) (about tsuchigumo), and the Dojo-ji Engi Emaki (about a giant snake). These emaki were about yōkai that come from even older times.
  The Kitano Tenjin Engi Emaki, in which Sugawara no Michizane was a lightning god who took on the form of an oni, and despite attacking people after doing this, he was still deified as a god in the end.
  The Junirui Emaki, the Tamamono Soshi, (both about Tamamo-no-Mae), and the Fujibukuro Soushi Emaki (about a monkey). These emaki told of yōkai mutations of animals.
  The Tsukumogami Emaki, which told tales of thrown away none-too-precious objects that come to have a spirit residing in them planning evil deeds against humans, and ultimately get exorcised and sent to peace.
  The Hyakki Yagyō Emaki, depicting many different kinds of yōkai all marching together
  In this way, yōkai that were mentioned only in writing were given a visual appearance in the Middle Ages. In the Otogizōshi, familiar tales such as Urashima Tarō and Issun-bōshi also appeared.
  The next major change in yōkai came after the period of warring states, in the Edo period.
caption: The Hyakki Yagyo Emaki, author unknown. It comes from the Muromachi period.
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