Yokai Museums in Japan
Eleven collections, from a scholar's five thousand scrolls to a hall of yokai made by artists today
11 places
There is no single national yokai museum. What exists is eleven collections in ten towns, each built around one kind of record: the picture scrolls and prints collected by a scholar, the drawings of the artist who gave the yokai their modern faces, the masks of one peninsula’s rite, the oni of one mountain’s tale, the desk of the writer who carried the ghost stories abroad, the farm, the town museum and the storytellers’ hall where the tales of Tōno are still told, the festival floats of the village of the demon woman, the figures a gorge’s villagers made of their own yokai, and the nine hundred new ones artists have sent to an island in the Inland Sea. Visited together they cover the whole history of how the yokai were recorded, and where they are going next.
Miyoshi Mononoke Museum 三次もののけミュージアム
A museum of yokai pictures and objects in the town where a sixteen-year-old was haunted for thirty nights in 1749.
Yokai you will meet: Ōkubi
Mizuki Shigeru Memorial Museum 水木しげる記念館
The museum at the end of the road: the artist's life, his original drawings and the yokai gallery, rebuilt and reopened in 2024.
Yokai you will meet: Nurikabe, Ittan-momen, Konaki-jiji, Nurarihyon
Namahage Museum and Shinzan Folklore Museum なまはげ館・男鹿真山伝承館
The masks of every district of the Oga peninsula in one hall, and next door a farmhouse where the New Year's Eve visit is performed for those who cannot be there on the night.
Japan Oni Exchange Museum 日本の鬼の交流博物館
A museum of oni at the foot of Mount Ōe, where the oni king's fortress stood in the tale, with a roof tile five metres high outside.
Yokai you will meet: Shuten-dōji, Oni
Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum and Former Residence 小泉八雲記念館・小泉八雲旧居
The samurai house where the writer of Kwaidan lived in Matsue, and the museum beside it with his desk and manuscripts.
Yokai you will meet: Yuki-onna, Noppera-bō, Rokurokubi, Samebito
Denshōen 伝承園
A folk park built around an old L-shaped farmhouse, with a hall of a thousand silkworm deities and a room for the storyteller whose tales became Tōno Monogatari.
Yokai you will meet: Zashiki-warashi, Kappa
Tōno Municipal Museum 遠野市立博物館
The town museum of the valley whose tales were written down in 1910, with the oshira-sama, the kappa and the storytellers of Tōno Monogatari.
Yokai you will meet: Zashiki-warashi, Kappa, Yamauba, Tengu
Kinasa Folk Museum and the Demon Woman Momiji 鬼無里ふるさと資料館と鬼女紅葉の里
A mountain village named "no demons", with a museum of its festival floats and the grave of the woman the capital called a demon.
Yokai Yashiki at Ōboke 妖怪屋敷と石の博物館（道の駅大歩危）
A hall of some seventy yokai figures made by the people of the Ōboke valleys from their own tales, at the roadside station in the gorge.
Yokai you will meet: Konaki-jiji, Yamauba, Tengu
Tōno Folktale Museum とおの物語の館
A sake storehouse turned into a hall of tales, with the inn where the folklorist stayed and a stage where storytellers tell the tales in the dialect they were told in.
Yokai you will meet: Zashiki-warashi, Kappa, Yamauba, Tengu
Yokai Art Museum, Shōdoshima 妖怪美術館（小豆島）
Four old buildings in a maze of lanes on an island of the Inland Sea, holding nine hundred yokai made by artists of today.
Yokai you will meet: Kappa
Hours, admission and closing days change, and this site does not list them. The link goes to the place's own page, with the date we last checked it.