Glossary of Yokai Terms

Words and ideas

Ayakashi あやかし: A sailors' word for a strange thing met at sea; now a loose word for spirits in general.
Bakemono 化け物: The old everyday word for a monster: a thing that changes its shape.
Gakkō no kaidan 学校の怪談: School ghost stories: the yokai of corridors, toilets and the music room.
Henge 変化: Shapeshifting; above all the animals that take human form.
Hyakki Yagyō 百鬼夜行: The night parade of a hundred demons, and the name of this site.
Hyakumonogatari 百物語: The game of a hundred ghost stories, one candle put out after each.
Kaidan 怪談: Strange tales: the ghost-story genre of the Edo period and after.
Kami 神: The gods and spirits of Shinto, from a great shrine to the spirit of a rock or a river.
Kamikakushi 神隠し: Spiriting away: a sudden disappearance blamed on a god, a tengu or the mountain.
Kitsunebi 狐火: Fox fire: lights without a source on night fields, and the other ghost-lights beside them.
Mononoke 物の怪: A Heian word for an unseen spirit that causes illness; later, a word for monsters in general.
Ofuda お札: A paper talisman, and the printed pictures that worked the same way.
Onryō 怨霊: A vengeful spirit, of the dead or sometimes of the living, that brings harm.
Raihōshin 来訪神: Visiting deities: masked figures who come to the houses of a village at the turn of the year.
Ryūgū 竜宮: The Dragon Palace under the sea, and the beings that come from it.
Tatari 祟り: Harm sent by an offended spirit or god: a curse that follows a wrong.
Toshi densetsu 都市伝説: Urban legend: the rumours that spread through schools and media from the 1970s.
Tsuina 追儺: The year-end rite of driving out demons, which became the bean-throwing of Setsubun.
Tsukimono 憑き物: Possession by an animal spirit, and the families said to keep one.
Tsukumogami 付喪神: A household object that has lived long enough to gain a spirit.
Yōkai 妖怪: The general word for the strange beings and happenings of Japanese folklore.
Yūrei 幽霊: A ghost: the spirit of a particular dead person who has not gone on.

Texts, pictures and people

Ehon Hyaku Monogatari 絵本百物語: The illustrated hundred tales of 1841, which gave its yokai a place and a story each.
Emaki 絵巻: Horizontal picture scrolls, where yokai were first drawn in numbers.
Gazu Hyakki Yagyō 画図百鬼夜行: Sekien's first yokai book, 1776: the illustrated night parade.
Hyakkai Zukan 百怪図巻: A 1737 scroll of thirty yokai by Sawaki Sūshi, the model Sekien worked from.
Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro 百鬼徒然袋: Sekien's fourth book, 1784: the tool spirits.
Kawaraban 瓦版: Single-sheet news prints of the Edo period: disasters, wonders and prophecies to pin on the wall.
Kibyōshi 黄表紙: The yellow-covered comic booklets of Edo, where monsters became characters.
Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki 今昔画図続百鬼: Sekien's second book, 1779: the night parade continued, now with notes.
Konjaku Hyakki Shūi 今昔百鬼拾遺: Sekien's third book, 1781: gleanings, with more borrowed from Chinese texts.
Lafcadio Hearn 小泉八雲: The writer (1850–1904) who carried Japanese ghost stories into English as Kwaidan.
Minzokugaku 民俗学: Folklore studies: the journals, dictionaries and prefectural histories where the records were printed.
Mizuki Shigeru 水木しげる: The manga artist (1922–2015) whose GeGeGe no Kitarō gave the yokai their modern faces.
Nichibunken yokai database 怪異・妖怪伝承データベース: The online card index of folklore records kept by the International Research Center for Japanese Studies.
Noh and kabuki 能・歌舞伎: The stage: where monsters were played, and where several got their final form.
Otogi-zōshi 御伽草子: Short illustrated tales of the Muromachi and early Edo periods, the home of the monster-slaying legends.
Setsuwa 説話: The short tale collections of Heian and Kamakura Japan, where oni, tengu and foxes first have stories.
Tōno Monogatari 遠野物語: The 1910 book of tales from Tōno, Iwate, and the beginning of Japanese folklore studies.
Toriyama Sekien 鳥山石燕: The Edo artist (1712–1788) whose four picture books fixed the look of over two hundred yokai.
Ukiyo-e 浮世絵: Woodblock prints, and the artists who gave the yokai their most famous faces.
Wakan Sansai Zue 和漢三才図会: The illustrated encyclopaedia of 1712, where strange animals sit beside ordinary ones.
Yanagita Kunio 柳田国男: The founder of Japanese folklore studies (1875–1962), who collected the names of yokai from the countryside.
Yōkaigaku 妖怪学: Yokai studies: begun in the 1890s to explain the strange away, continued today to understand it.

How this site works

Danger rating 危険度: The one-to-five scale on each article, and what it is not.
Documented tradition and later imagery 伝承と後世の表現: The distinction every article on this site is built around.
Folklore record 伝承記録: One telling from one place in one year: the unit this site is built from.
Periods of Japanese history 時代区分: The era names used across the site, with their dates.