Yokai Zine – Hyakki Yagyo – Night Parade of 100 Demons – PART 2

Description

• What are yokai? •
“yōkai” 妖怪, – are supernatural monsters, ghosts, spirits & demons from Japanese folklore. – The combination of two different words roughly meaning “bewitching; attractive; calamity”; and “spectre; apparition; mysterious; suspicious”. – The term “yokai” can cover just about anything from ghosts, demons, to the generally unexplained, emotional, paranormal to even divine phenomena!! – Sometimes modern day Cryptids & UMA (Unidentified mysterious animals.) also fall under this umbrella term. – Youkai can be horrific terrors or even just plain silly or sweet, sometimes they’ll even bring good fortune to those that cross their paths!

• Hyakki Yagyo: or “The Night Parade of 100 demons” is a Japanese Legend when all the Yokai (demons, ghosts and monsters) parade through town causing mayhem, mischief and chaos. It’s said that the monsters can only be stopped when you say a magical spell: KA-TA-SHI-HA-YA, E-KA-SE-NI-KU-RI-NI, TA-ME-RU-SA-KE, TE-E-HI, A-SHI-E-HI, WA-RE-SHI-KO-NI-KE-RI (カタシハヤ, エカセニクリニ, タメルサケ, テエヒ, アシエヒ, ワレシコ) – it has been interpreted dozens of times over the ages, with well over 1000 years of history and dozens of ancient picture scrolls, books, etc – My ‘zine series was largely inspired by Toriyama Sekiens: The Illustrated Night Parade of a Hundred Demons” (1776) – but this zine covers yokai and legends not included in those books as well, (so its more of a general bestiary.)

• Issue #2 of my 6 part zine series includes 20 more Yōkai biographies, Charm Time & Did you Noh?
Tofu-Kozo. – “The Tofu Kid.”
Rokurokubi. – “Pully Necked dreamer.”
Mikoshi-Nyudo. – “The Anticipating priest.”
Garappa. – “Kyushu’s Lanky Kappa!”
Kawauso. – “River Otters in Disguise.”
Kitsune: Yako. – “Naughty Field Foxes.”
Kitsune: Tenko. – “Inari’s Spirit Foxes.”
Tanuki. – “we are /Not/ Raccoons!!”
Maneki Neko. – “a very fortunate kitty.”
Bake Neko+Nekomusume. – “Changing cats & The Cat Daughter.”
Nekomata. – “Twin tailed, Bad bad kitty.”
Kameosa & Chokuboron. – “Drink and be merry!”
Ningyo. – “Dont eat the mermaid meat.”
Jinja-hime. – “Shrine Priestess of Ryugu!”
Amabie. – “The Healing Mermaid!”
Heikegani. – “Samurai Ghost Crabs!”
Yukinbo. – “The little Mountain Boy!”
Yamabiko. – “Echo! Echo! Echooo-Ya-HOO!!”
AzukiArai. – “The red bean grinder.”
Charm time: TeruTeruBozu. – Sunshine Monk.
Did you Noh? – ‘popular festival masks.’

• My Goal: For this series of Zines is to draw and interpret as many Monsters, Ghosts, Demons, Myths, Legends, Cryptids (and adjacent subjects), as I possibly can and have a lot of fun doing so! – I eventually plan to expand and draw from other folklore and myths, modern day paranormal and cryptozoology as well, but I decided to start with Japans Night parade of 100 yokai because it is what interested me the most, 100 seemed like a good goal to get me going (and to be blunt, I just think youkai are neat!!!) – You can expect a new issue of my Night parade zine to come out every 20 or so yokai, as I complete them!