The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore

Michael Dylan Foster is a folklorist specializing in Japanese studies, and this book, published by University of California Press, is an academic study of yokai, the supernatural creatures of Japanese folklore, examining both the historical tradition of yokai belief and its modern transformation into popular culture and commercial entertainment. Its strength is treating yokai across that full span, from serious folk belief to contemporary media, rather than only cataloging creatures as curiosities, grounding the discussion in Japanese folklore scholarship. Its limit is that, aimed at a general academic readership rather than specialists in Japanese language sources, it works substantially through existing scholarship and translated material rather than presenting large amounts of untranslated primary fieldwork of its own.