The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons: A Field Guide to Japanese Yokai

For a while now I've been very intrigued by the supernatural beasties, ghouls and strange creatures of the world. I started this interest from reading world mythologies and following up on references to specific creatures mentioned in films/books/music and also the bible etc. Over time I have collected quite a few books on the subject of imaginary creepy things. It is the collective beliefs of primitive minds attempting to explain the natural world around them that give rise to monstrous personifications of their own worst fears and nightmares. This fear of the unknown manifests creatively in human minds as a combination of the fantastical qualities of beast, human, and/or object. There are so many varieties of wacky critters in the world that each country will have its own encyclopedias on the subject. Fellow fans will be familiar with the more popular creatures such as the Sphinx, Baba Yaga, Golem, Cyclops, Manticore, Wendigo etc. Those who live in the western world will have come into contact with quite a few of these in mass market entertainment. But other than vengeful female ghosts, westerners probably haven't heard much of the supernatural of the East. "The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons" is one of the best when it comes to Japanese Monsterology. The name is taken from a legend that says; each year during a summer night, there will be a parade of one hundred different Yokai haunting the streets of Japan, terrorizing and bringing death to those who happen to cross them. There is a famous painting of this scene referred to as 百鬼夜行圖. I encourage anyone who is interested to check out the images available online. This book takes each of the one hundred Yokai and turns them into the prettiest collection of drawings I have seen, compared to any other monster encyclopedia I own. There is a back-story written for each and despite some complaints I have read online about them being too brief, I think they are quite detailed and satisfactory. The book itself is printed very well - inside. The pages are a mock old-tome style, but the one annoyance I have is that the cover is only available as a Paperback. It feels very fragile for a reference book which I'm not too happy about. But given the quality of the content, if a Hardback edition ever presents itself online I'll be the first to snap one up.

This is a beautifully illustrated and expertly researched encyclopedia of Yokai (an umbrella term for all Japanese Spooky beings) that is incredibly interesting, spooky and entertaining. Not really suitable for young kids as some of the pictures are pretty scary, but a great first volume! Can't wait to get the second book!!

Yokai, the collective ghost and monsters of Japanese folklore have always held a fascination for me, due in the main to their sheer weirdness. Some years ago I wrote The Great Yokai Encyclopaedia: An A to Z of Japanese Monsters. I had more fun writing and researching that book than any other. If I had one regret about the book it was that the illustrations were in black and white. In Matt Myer’s remarkable book there are no such complaints. The book began life as a Kickstarter project and it has come into a wonderful fruition. The book takes its name from a tome of the same name dating to 1776 by the famous ukiyo-e artist Toriyama Sekien (1712-1788). Sekien is best known for four collections of yokai depicted in woodblock prints and published between 1776 and 1784. Matthew Meyer has created an excellent new collection in full colour with dazzling illustrations worthy of Sekien himself. The book is impressive in its look, feel and attention to detail. The binding has been made to look like ancient leather and indeed reminds me of the ancient Japanese books I was lucky enough to peruse at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum Exeter whilst researching my own work. The pages inside have been given a yellow look darkening towards to make an illusion of age. It works wonderfully well. The draughtsmanship is exquisite with the phantoms and beasts rendered in a dramatic and exotic manner. In the parade of demons we see the familiar such as the tatsu the god-like Japanese dragon, the kappa, the frog/ turtle / monkey hybrid addicted to cucumbers and human rectums and the tengu warrior bird men as well as the less well known and, well, odder. In the latter camp we find Ittan-momen, a predatory roll of living cloth that hunts like a phantom anaconda, nuppeppo, a mass of animated flesh like a Hammer version of Humpty Dumpty, Gasha-dokuro a kind of colony ghost, a 90 foot cannibalistic skeleton made from the spirits of people who died of famine and Bake-kujira, a zombie whale! The demons are sorted into locations in which they are found, the wilds, the seas, urban areas and domestic settings. Yokai themselves cover a number of categories, animals with supernatural powers (such as dogs with shape shifting testicles and blood sucking weasels), mutated humans (such as snake necked women and with extendable tongues), inanimate objects brought to life (monster umbrellas and ghostly sandals), ghosts (succubus like women of ice and undead sailors) and monsters that have always been monsters (dragons, demons, sea monsters). We have seen some of the less eccentric Japanese monsters in recent films but with the horror genre in the West becoming so stale and repetitive it’s a shame more of these Eastern horrors don’t feature in film and television. Matt Meyer is already working on a second volume and I for one can’t wait to read it. It will be interesting to see just how much yokai will seep into our culture.

Interesting book, good for research purposes.

I've been interested in Japanese legends and stories for ages now, and most of the myth, legends and monster books I already had were the same few stories told slightly differently, and the same basic yokai again and again. This book was an utter delight in that it had such a wide variety of yokai, that most of them I'd never heard of! It has the basic tanuki and kitsune and yuki-onna, but then a whole chapter on water dwelling yokai, and another on ones that wander around town! Their is a picture for each and every yokai, and all of them are beautifully drawn, if a bit grim at times. A lot of care has been put into this book, both in the research and the making, which I think makes it more than worth the price tag!

Any one who is into folklore or mythology should have this book, it gives many examples of Japanese Yokai (Ghosts) but its easy to see them as demons such as the Kappa or Oni. Each listed Yokai is given a very colourful drawing showing what it looks like as well as describing its habits, appearance and possible threat to humans. It's an overall great and interesting read, you'd enjoy it if you've read the Yokai survival guide, which is a similar book to this. I'm honestly hoping for another book because the number of figures in Japanese folklore make it a possibility and it would be interesting to see one for the gods being done.

I have developed a curiosity about yokai through watching anime ... starting with Natsumes Book of Friends and GeGeGe No Kitaro. One can understand the anime better by understanding the yokai referred to. There isn't a Western term for yokai, they are essentially Japanese. This book is an invaluable reference, I may consider buying a dead tree version

This is exactly what I was looking for. Even if it was not intended for this purpose it is by far the best sourcebook of monsters for roleplaying in a Japanese set. The pictures are very nice (though ghastly and horrible sometimes, not for children) and illustrative and are made in a style quite close to more modern woodblock prints. Actually if your not an expert you really can't tell them from real woodblock prints if it weren't that they miss the red stamp. I recommend it highly for anyone interested in Japanese culture, history, mythology, folklore, manga or roleplaying.

Comprei a versão para Kindle que estava bem barata em relação a versão física do livro. O livro é basicamente uma enciclopédia de Yokai. Mostra a escrita original do nome de cada Yokai. Habitat, do que se alimentam, como se comportam, quais são suas vítimas, se são agressivos ou dóceis. Enfim é bem detalhado.

I find this book great. Meyer has obvious experiance with the culture and through out gives cultural hints regarding names and places, factoids that don't directly relate to the beings themselves but help to flesh them out. The book is colourful, well layed out, and incredibly accessible. If I were to compare it to any other book out there, I would say it reminds me a lot in both style and vibrancy to the Start Wars: Essential Guide to Alien Species. This subject matter, unfortunately, does not have enough written about it and those books about yokai usually are from a purely artistic focus. The nice thing was, I contacted Meyer through his website and he replied to me! I would definitely buy a copy as a gift for a friend.

Me ha encantado, Mi nivel de ingles no es perfecto todavia, pero tampoco me ha resultado dificil de comprender, quitando el idioma que para mi no representa ningun problema, el precio esta bastante justificado, son muy pocas las enciclopedias de yokais que puedas comprar, esta sin duda recopila cerca de 100 de ellos. Si te gustan mucho el folklore japones y quieres aprender mas de los yokais, bestias sagradas etc. este es tu libro. yo lo recomiendo sin duda!

After discovering the existence of this book through the yokai.com website during the course of some research I was doing on Japanese folklore for a personal project, I decided it might be an essential resource to have. Of course it turned out a lot of the information contained in the book was available on the earlier-mentioned website. So the question is, is this book really worth getting? In regards to content the answer is yes. As I said, many of the entries in this encyclopedia are available on the yokai.com website, but I've quickly come to view the website as more of a quick reference guide for stuff I already know but wish to refresh my memory on. With this book there's more of a chance to discover something you didn't know about. When I first got the book I spent a few hours just thumbing through it, and in doing so I'd come upon an entry with an interesting illustration for a yokai I didn't know about. I'd ask myself, "what the heck is this thing?" And then I'd just read the entry for it and I'd know. For someone who doesn't know the first thing about the mythical yokai, this book is an especially good introduction to the creatures. I should also point out that when compared to the yokai.com website, the information for some of the entries has been expanded a little bit. For example the book entry on kitsune (foxes) has just a little more info in it than the website version. I should mention however that while this is a great book to have, I strongly recommend getting the e-book version over the physical version, and I say this as someone who prefers physical books over reading books on a screen. The reason I say this is because the price for the physical version of the book is rather steep. It's been worth every penny, but if you want to save money the best move would be to just read it on a tablet.

Questo libro è stato una splendida sorpresa. Descrive in modo semplice ma esaustivo i vari yokai, suddividendoli per habitat e tipologia, inoltre ognuno di essi viene rappresentato con immagini che rendono il tutto ancor più interessante. Consigliatissimo a chi è curioso di saperne di più sui numerosi e straordinari spiriti del Giappone!