Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan

What it is

Rikuo Nura is three-quarters human and would like to stay that way, but his grandfather is Nurarihyon, lord of the Nura clan and supreme commander of all yokai, and the clan expects an heir. By night Rikuo becomes his yokai self and leads the Hundred Demons’ Night Parade. Shiibashi Hiroshi drew it for Weekly Shōnen Jump from 2008 to 2012 as a gang saga with the yokai of the dictionaries as its soldiers: a snow woman as his attendant, a kappa and a crow-tengu in the household, an ox-demon as the elder who tests him, and against them the eight hundred tanuki of Shikoku, the nine-tailed fox who rules Kyoto, and the nue. Few manga put more recorded names on the page.

Yokai that appear

• Nurarihyon 滑瓢 — The title character's grandfather: the old man of the Edo scrolls made lord of the Nura clan and supreme commander of all yokai, the modern rank taken literally; the Night Parade of the whole series is his.
• Yuki-onna 雪女 — Tsurara Oikawa, Rikuo's attendant and the female lead, through the whole series; her mother Setsura in the flashbacks; Reira of the Tōno yokai.
• Kappa 河童 — A guardian of the Nura clan from volume 1; the kappa of Tōno, including their chief, in volumes 8–9.
• Tengu 天狗 — Karasu-Tengu, Nurarihyon's crow-tengu adviser, and his three children; the great tengu of Mount Kurama in the Kyoto arc.
• Ushi-oni 牛鬼 — Gyūki, the ox-headed, spider-bodied clan elder who tests Rikuo in volumes 2–3 and becomes his adviser.
• Hihi 狒々 — The great ape who leads the Kantō yokai, killed in the Shikoku war (volumes 4–5); father of Shōei.
• Bake-danuki 化け狸 — Tamazuki, the Inugami Gyōbu tanuki of Matsuyama, leader of the eighty-eight demons of Shikoku (volumes 4–6).
• Inugami 犬神 — A man turned dog-spirit among Tamazuki's seven, in the Shikoku arc (volumes 4–5).
• Kamaitachi 鎌鼬 — Itaku of Tōno, Rikuo's sparring partner from volume 8, and Muchi of Shikoku.
• Zashiki-warashi 座敷童子 — Yukari, one of the Tōno yokai (volumes 8–9 onward).
• Kitsune 狐 — Hagoromo-Gitsune, the nine-tailed fox who rules Kyoto by possessing court women, mother of Abe no Seimei (volumes 9–16).
• Oni 鬼 — Ibaraki-dōji and the half-oni Kidōmaru in the Kyoto arc; the hand-washing oni of Shikoku.
• Shōkera — Hagoromo-Gitsune's pious insect assassin in the Kyoto arc (volume 13).
• Gashadokuro — The giant skeleton sealed beneath Kyoto's fourth seal (volumes 12–14).
• Tsuchigumo 土蜘蛛 — The enormous brawler of the Kyoto arc (volume 11), later an ally in Kyushu.
• Nue 鵺 — Abe no Seimei reborn as a pure yokai, the final antagonist (volumes 16–25).
• Kudan 件 — The human-faced calf of the Hundred Tales clan, in volume 19.
• Nekomata 猫又 — Ryōta-neko, who runs the Bakeneko-ya and the cat clan of Ukiyoe Town in the early volumes.
• Satori 覚 — A mind-reader of the Kyoto yokai, in volume 14.
• Ōmukade 大百足 — A minor member of the Nura clan, and the thousand-handed centipede of Kyoto.
• Namahage — Two of the Tōno yokai, in passing.

How far from the record

The premise stands on a twentieth-century image. In the Edo pictures the nurarihyon is an old man with a long head who slips into a house as if he belonged there, and nothing more; the title “supreme commander of the yokai” was attached to that picture by a 1929 caption and spread by the reference books and the 1985 Kitarō anime. The manga makes it literal and builds a clan around it. The Kyoto arc ties the nine-tailed Hagoromo-Gitsune to the fox of Shinoda forest who mothered Abe no Seimei, and then makes the nue, the creature of the Heike tale that no text ever named a person, into Seimei reborn. The tanuki lord Inugami Gyōbu is moved from his Matsuyama legend, where a human sealed him, to a war with a Tokyo schoolboy. The ox-demon keeps the scroll’s shape, ox head and spider body, and gains a human past. The author has said he knew little about yokai when a publisher suggested the subject and learned as the series ran; what he learned was the shapes, and the shapes are right.

Where to read it

English

Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan (external link) — VIZ Media (Shonen Jump), 25 volumes (2011–2015), complete

Spanish

Nura: el señor de los yokai (external link) — Norma Editorial, 25 volumes, complete

Indonesian

Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan (external link) — m&c!, 25 volumes (2013–2018), complete