Mizuki Shigeru Road

What is there

The road runs east from Sakaiminato station for about eight hundred metres and is lined on both sides with bronze statues of the yokai Mizuki Shigeru drew. It opened in 1993 with twenty-three of them and has been added to ever since; after the rebuilding of 2018 there are more than a hundred and seventy, each with a nameplate, lit at night. Shops sell the yokai in every form, the trains on the branch line are painted with the characters, and partway along stands the Yōkai Shrine, founded in 2000, with a wheel of water for the eyeball father. The memorial museum is at the far end.

Why here

Most of the yokai on this road were words before they were pictures. The wall that blocks a night road was recorded in Fukuoka in 1938 without a face; the bolt of cotton that flies in Kagoshima and the old man who cries in the Tokushima mountains were recorded the same year. Mizuki, who grew up in this town, gave them the faces the whole country now knows, and set beside them the creatures of the Edo picture scrolls. The road is the record of that work, in bronze, with the recorded yokai and the drawn ones standing side by side.

Yokai you will meet

• Nurikabe 塗り壁 — The wall recorded on an Onga road in 1938, given a face here.
• Ittan-momen 一反木綿 — The flying bolt of cotton of the Kagoshima records, in bronze.
• Konaki-jiji 児啼爺 — The crying old man of the Tokushima mountains.
• Nurarihyon 滑瓢 — The slippery old gentleman of the Edo scrolls, as Mizuki drew him.
• Azuki-arai 小豆洗い — The bean-washer at his stream.
• Betobeto-san べとべとさん — The following footsteps, given a grinning face.
• Kappa 河童 — The river child among the statues.
• Tengu 天狗 — The mountain creature of the tales among the statues.

In manga: GeGeGe no Kitarō

Getting there

Sakaiminato Station (JR Sakai Line). The road begins at the station forecourt and runs east for about 800 m.

• Open in Google Maps (external link)
• Open in OpenStreetMap (external link)
• Official site (external link)