Expect more yokai

OK I have to confess I have a thing for yokai. They are just so cool, too bad it is almost impossible to find out much information on them in English.

I'll just have to get back into studying Japanese so I can read about them and use the great database that is online,

http://www.nichibun.ac.jp/youkaidb/

I have heard it has over 13,000 entries.

Anyway several weeks ago I picked up the first volume of Kon Kon Kokon by Koge-Donbo, pub in the US by Broccoli Books. This cute little manga is full of yokai, after all the main character is a high school kid who is a yokai fanatic. Not only is it full of yokai it has a small 'yokai encyclopedia' in the back.

I'll be mining this and other sources for more yokai entries. In fact soon the Anime Companion Supplement will be one of the largest English resources on yokai. Kinda pathetic as it will be so only as there is so little else out there.

Robot, yokai, yokai

More yokai this week, also Japan's first robot which was anthropomorphic and made in the 1920s. The original still exists in a museum somewhere.

Gakutensoku

kamaitachi (weasel slash)

nurikabe (wall bakemono)

Yokai, yokai, yokai!

Yokai, also known as bakemono, are any of a large range of unusual supernatural critters. Not all are dangerous, some are just strange and all are uncanny. There is almost no information available in English on yokai so my entries are few and often short.

However this week I have three more to add with others coming soon.

Hanako-san

Suna-kake-baba (sand throwing old woman)

tsukumogami (spirit of a made object)

If you are interested in yokai I highly recommend the movie The Great Yokai War.

For other entries on yokai see: Culture - Supernatural Beings/Yôkai in the Topical Index

Anime Companion Topical Index Launched

I have now created a topical index for both of the published Anime Companion books as well as the web based Anime Companion Supplement.

You can see it at:

Topical Index

Please spread the word on this. I want more people to know of this improvement.

A Yawara sweet, martial arts and news

I've had the flu this week so I have done nothing with uploading new images.

However I did putter on the Anime Companion Supplement entries, it helped that some were already done before I got sick.

The new entries are:

daifuku

Tenshin Shôden Katori Shintô-ryû

Yomiuri Shimbun

Plus an update to the mononoke entry.

I also found a new source of information on yokai, hence the update on mononoke, This is Michael Dylan Foster's dissertation Morphologies of Mystery: Yôkai and Discources of the Supernatural in Japan 1666-1999. The yokai entries will be short ones as the information is scant, but it is something for an area where little is written about in English.

Pork bun, sweet bun and a national award

Using the preview disc from AnimEigo I recently took notes on the first four episodes of the Yawara! the Fashionable Judo Girl anime series. This show is plenty of fun and I'm really happy it will be released as box sets rather than a DVD each other month as most companies release their anime.

While I rarely focus on one show I have a special fondness for this series and so this week have three entries for items found in it.

anman (sweet filled bun)

Kokumin Eiyo Shô (People's Honor Award)

nikuman (pork filled bun)

The two bun entries are rather short, I had considered putting them up on separate weeks, however the source has both together so I uploaded both today,

A fish, a modern yokai and another ku

This week I have another food entry, The yokai entry is a modern one dating from the late 1970s and referred to in Pom Poko, and another of Tokyo's 23 ku has an entry.

aji (saurel, horse mackerel)

kuchi-sake-onna (slit-mouthed woman)

Sumida-ku