I remember my younger days when my grandma would warn me against hiding in dark corners because of strange spectres. She will remind me to announce and excuse myself before peeing in the Malayan forest and apologise afterwards. I also grew up watching Japanese shows like Ultraman (ウルトラマン), Kamen Riders (仮面ライダーシリーズ) and the anime, Doraemon (ドラえもん). These multi-cultural interactions between my grandma, the supernatural world and Japanese culture has evolved into my love for yokai.

The term yokai (also spelled as yōkai or youkai) is very broad and covers many things. Describing them as monsters or ghosts is like calling the Irish leprechaun a fairy and the Malayan pontianak a vampire. It oversimplies the creature into a delusive sound bite. It ignores the many generations of cultural evolution and regional interactions.

The kanji for yokai (妖怪) is made up of 妖 (yō) meaning attractive, bewitching and/or calamity, and 怪 (kai) meaning mysterious. They are not just monsters, demons and ghosts but also includes, and not limited to, other-worldly phenomena and inexplicable feelings. My best one-liner (not most accurate) description for yokai is the supernaturals of Japan.

The yokai of Japan are to explain the unexplainable, to describe the indescribable . They include many types such as yurei, bakemono, henge, ayakashi, tsukumogami, mononoke, kaiju and many, many more. These Japanese terms will be used as subcategories to better describe each yokai as ghosts, changelings, demons, or animated objects. Some yokai may have multiple categories based on different regional accounts.

I hope you will join me in this enchanting journey to learn more about Japanese yokai and culture. Please input your thoughts or strange stories you have in the related comments. Write them in the language that you are most comfortable with. I love to hear and learn more. Be respectful to others and one another.