Yokai Night Parade 百鬼夜行

Yokai in Manga

Most people meet their first yokai in a manga, not in a folklore journal. These pages introduce the titles that put yokai on the page, say which of the creatures in our articles appear in each, and measure how far the work has walked from the recorded tradition. Every title links back to the articles, and every article links forward to the manga its yokai appear in.

12 titles

Reading lists

All titles

  • Dandadan ダンダダン Yokai-adjacent: urban legends and mixed lore Ghosts versus aliens: urban-legend yokai, cryptids and UFO lore thrown together at full speed.
  • GeGeGe no Kitarō ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 Keeps the traditional forms, invents the stories The manga that gave Japan's yokai their modern faces: a one-eyed boy and his friends against the monsters of the picture scrolls.
  • Hozuki's Coolheadedness 鬼灯の冷徹 Uses the names, reinvents the rest Office comedy in the Buddhist hell: the king's chief of staff, his rival the hakutaku, and a cast drawn from every corner of Japanese folklore.
  • In/Spectre 虚構推理 Uses the names, reinvents the rest A one-eyed, one-legged goddess of wisdom solves the cases the yokai bring her, with a boyfriend who ate a kudan and a mermaid.
  • Inuyasha 犬夜叉 Uses the names, reinvents the rest A half-dog-demon and a schoolgirl from 1996 hunt the shards of a jewel through a Sengoku Japan full of yokai.
  • Kamisama Kiss 神様はじめました Uses the names, reinvents the rest A schoolgirl inherits a shrine and its fox familiar, and the gods and spirits of Japan become the cast of a romance.
  • Mononoke モノノ怪 Uses the names, reinvents the rest The Medicine Seller's inquests, redrawn from the anime: each yokai is the name of a human wrong.
  • Natsume's Book of Friends 夏目友人帳 Keeps the traditional forms, invents the stories A boy who sees spirits inherits his grandmother's ledger of their names and gives them back, one yokai at a time.
  • Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan ぬらりひょんの孫 Uses the names, reinvents the rest The grandson of the supreme commander of the yokai is a schoolboy by day and the heir to the Night Parade by night.
  • Toilet-bound Hanako-kun 地縛少年花子くん Yokai-adjacent: urban legends and mixed lore The toilet ghost of the school legends is a boy, and he rules the Seven Mysteries of Kamome Academy.
  • Tono Monogatari 水木しげるの遠野物語 Keeps to the recorded tales Mizuki Shigeru draws the 1910 book of Tōno's tales, kappa and house spirits and mountain women, and walks into it himself.
  • Yo-kai Watch 妖怪ウォッチ Uses the names, reinvents the rest The children's gag manga of the game franchise: a boy, a ghost butler and a cat hit by a truck, with a few old names among hundreds of new ones.

Fidelity is an editorial summary of how the work treats the recorded folklore. It is not a judgement of quality.