Tokyo, 14 May, /AJMEDIA/
Japan has a long history of making art out of yokai, the ghouls and monsters that were believed to lurk in the shadows, but perhaps the most famous modern examples of yokai art are those created by the late Shigeru Mizuki. With his manga “Gegege no Kitaro,” whose starring yokai have been influential in many unusual ways, he became known as the modern master of the yokai genre and is remembered for his whimsical, creepy-cute art style.
2022 marks 100 years since Mizuki’s birth, and his yokai art will be memorialized with a special exhibition on the 52nd floor of the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, a space known as Tokyo City View. Titled “The Yokai of Shigeru Mizuki: Nightly Procession of Monsters ~This is How the Monsters were Born~”, the exhibition will open on July 8 and last until Sept 4 of this year, throughout the season of spooky story-telling (which, in Japan, is in the summer).
In addition to art by Mizuki, precious yokai literature owned by Mizuki himself will be displayed for the first time ever, including a famous book of yokai art and folklore known as “The Illustrated Night Parade of a Hundred Demons” (Gazu Hyakki Yagyo) by Edo era ukiyo-e artist Sekien Toriyama, and “A Discourse on Yokai” (Yokai Dangi), by the father of Japanese folklore studies, Kunio Yanagita.
