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yōkai influences of the Night Parade art

art references part 2, Mitsunobu Tosa, Toriyama Sekien, Shigeru Mizuki  

Written July 27th, 2013, covering art from May 2021 -  July 2023

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･✧･ﾟ

I heavily relied on the work of two "historical" Japanese artists/scholars-- Mitsunobu Tosa and Toriyama Sekien, and one more contemporary 'father' of yōkai-- manga artist Shigeru Mizuki. Their illustrations greatly informed how I would render my yōkai, what features, clothing, or textures to include, as well as what kind of settings I would put them in.

For the Night Parade paintings, I adapted the scenery to my life experiences, but some of the traditional Japanese items I would reference these ppls works.  

HYAKKI YAGYO

Mitsunobu Tosa's 14th century emaki // picture scroll is the earliest known rendering of the Hyakki Yagyo // Night Parade of 100 demons. I spent so much time pouring through both the Hyakki Yagyo Emaki as well as the Tsukumogami Emaki, which shows the parade of tool yōkai. 

I love this sentient lobster braiser!!! 

Oni!

TORIYAMA SEKIEN

18th century yōkai encyclopedias by Toriyama Sekien !! I read the translated versions via Japandemonium Illustrated: The Yokai Encyclopedias of Toriyama Sekien Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt.

 

I also referenced this book heavily: YOKAI
Ghosts, Demons & Monsters of Japan edited by Felicia Katz-Harris. It had lots of really great historical context on yōkai cultural formation, and artifacts showing how the perception of yōkai shifts overtime. 

SHIGERU MIZUKI

father of modern yōkai!!!

The way i understand it, yōkai fell out of popular fashion after the war, as there was a push to become more "modern." But around the 60's manga artist Shigeru Mizuki started a manga about yōkai, based on stories that he had been told as a child by his old nanny, Nonoba. I love Nonoba!!! I thanked her in my illustrator credits!! Nonoba kept the stories of the spirits alive by passing them on to a curious child in a world on the brink of war, and then that child went on to create a global sensation manga then show: gegege no kitaro! That show then that sparked a "yōkai wave" or national interest/fascination with yokai again!!! While reading up for this blog post, i found this on Mizuki's wikipedia page that references an interview he did in his 80s, when he was talking about how deeply being conscripted into the Japanese Imperial Army influenced him:

"His wartime experiences affected him greatly, as he contracted malaria, watched friends die from battle wounds and disease, and dealt with other horrors of war. Finally, in an Allied air raid, he was caught in an explosion and lost his left arm... The result of Mizuki's wartime experience was a concurrent sense of pacifism and goodwill. In the same interview, he explained that his Yōkai characters can be seen only in times of peace, not war..."

mangas from like the 60s-80s

video game? from 2008

All of this because Nonnoba knew the stories of the yōkai and passed them on!!