YOKAI

Good and bad spirits, devils, monsters and ghosts of all kinds have ceased to haunt the imagination of men across time and cultures. Japan, after having drawn inspiration from China, India and later from The West has managed to create a fantastic world where the supernatural, the strange, the marvelous, the mythical are one. This fantastic world, populated by ancestral and animist beliefs, has never been as present as today in the archipelago. Manga and cartoons, Video game and action figure creators aren't the only ones captivating the public with works on this subject. Exhibitions on yôkai, oni and yûrei have never been so numerous in the archipelago and Japanese artists Renowned contemporaries do not hesitate to draw their inspiration from the sources of the ancestral and traditional culture of their country. This book will take the reader into the fantastic and wonderful world of Japanese art through illuminated scrolls, screens, prints, then contemporary pictorial works.