The Book of Yokai

Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore

By: Michael Dylan Foster

Narrated by: Tim Campbell

Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

Monsters, ghosts, fantastic beings, and supernatural phenomena of all sorts haunt the folklore and popular culture of Japan. Broadly labeled yokai, these creatures come in infinite shapes and sizes, from tengu mountain goblins and kappa water spirits to shape-shifting foxes and long-tongued ceiling-lickers. Currently popular in anime, manga, film, and computer games, many yokai originated in local legends, folktales, and regional ghost stories.

Drawing on years of research in Japan, Michael Dylan Foster unpacks the history and cultural context of yokai, tracing their roots, interpreting their meanings, and introducing people who have hunted them through the ages. In this delightful and accessible narrative, listeners will explore the roles played by these mysterious beings within Japanese culture and will also learn of their abundance and variety through detailed entries on more than 50 individual creatures. The Book of Yokai provides a lively excursion into Japanese folklore and its ever-expanding influence on global popular culture. It also invites listeners to examine how people create, transmit, and collect folklore, and how they make sense of the mysteries in the world around them. By exploring yokai as a concept, we can better understand broader processes of tradition, innovation, storytelling, and individual and communal creativity.

©2015 The Regents of the University of California (P)2018 Tantor

wish it was longer

lovely book about a fascinating subject. just wish it was longer. overall a very enjoyable experience

informative but uneven

a decent resource for the academic history of Yokai as covered by the first half of the book, however I found the second half to be weaker and much more of a surface level look at actual Yokai mythology and lore

So good

I loved this book. The personal accounts, the research, the insight this author brings is great! The narrator has a wonderful voice too!

A great supplementary book for japanese history.

Incredible pronunciation, and stellar performance. Tim Campbell must have studied before he read this one.

Foster's research is definitely not for the beginner. this book is at least at the intermediate level. very good for people who have a grasp on part of japanese history and culture.

a scholarly work

it reads very much like a research paper, but it's very informative. I was not as fond of the narration

interesting to listen to, but the codex drags ...

I thought the first half, which talked about the studies of yokai and the way the impacted Japanese thought and society, was interesting. Some of the individual yokai descriptions in the codex may have dragged on longer than they needed to, but a listing like that wasn't really designed to be read out loud, I guess.

Pt 2 was delightful (+no cringey pronunciations!!)

I think one's opinion on this entire book as a whole will be based on on how much you already know about Yokai before reading this book and/or what you want out of the listening experience.

Personally, I'm fascinated with Yokai and knew a fair amount about them, so I really wanted a book compiling different Yokai and the lore/tales associated with them.

I would say the 2nd part of this audiobook (The Yokai Codex) delivered on this. The author gives brief summaries of each Yokai, usually including what they're believed to look like, their behavior/purpose, and if they've been portrayed in any famous media (books/anime/video games/a LOT of Studio Ghibli/etc.). I really loved how the Yokai were separated into different categories of where they were known to occur (Wilds, Water, Countryside, Village & City), it really organized them and kind of installed a curiosity of how these Yokai might interact with one another!

The 1st part of the book (Yokai Culture) was much more focused on... something else? I would say if you've never been exposed to Yokai or Japanese culture in any shape or form, the first part of the book will really help you understand the cultural reasoning/merit behind Yokai. Most of this section is just the author talking about his experiences in researching this book, which (no offense intended to Foster because he did a GREAT job compiling and translating this rather isolated lore) was kind of boring and dry at times.
To be honest, I definitely would've skipped the 1st half of this book had I known the actual Yokai stories were in the 2nd half.



All in all, this book was a nice summary of Yokai! My only comments are
1) For one or two Yokai, I really wish there had been more in-depth information provided. Some had too brief of summaries to really understand their "character" or purpose within the world of Yokai. It also would've been interesting to hear about the relationships between different Yokai, in the same vein as Roman/Greek mythology (assuming there's any evidence of hypothetical interactions)
2) It would've been convenient if Audible had bookmarks within the audiobook to be able to locate each individual Yokai for future re-listening


P.S. Last note- The narrator did an AMAZING job, thank you SO MUCH for getting someone who could actually pronounce Japanese!! It saved the listener from 9 hours of cringe (& it even helped me realize a few puns/connections between yokai names and certain characters/product names because of the correct pronunciation!)

One of the most scholarly books on Yokai!

Dr. Foster provides excellent scholarship and insight into the world of Yokai! Must read!

Almost complete

I really quite enjoyed this audiobook, and have no criticism of it, except that there is so much description of the yokai that it would have been VERY, VERY nice to have had a supplemental attached PDF with pictures.

A top notch study on Yokai

This book is more than a encyclopedia of yokai, but a insight into their nature