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Japanese animation and comics (called anime and manga, respectively) may not have quite the immense popularity they had just a short while ago among teenagers in the West, but they're still an important part of the cultural landscape. As our world becomes increasingly international, it certainly doesn't hurt to learn something about the other cultures we share the planet with, and one way to do that is through popular culture.

What Yokai Attack! does is describe a selection of the monsters that appear in Japanese popular culture and put them in their cultural context.

Publication Details

• Full Title:Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide
• Author: Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt
• Illustrator: Tatsuya Morino
• Publisher: Kodansha International; reprint by Tuttle
• Publication Date: 2008; reprint 2012
• ISBN: 978-4-7700-3070-2 (1st edition); 978-4805312193 (reprint)

The Folklore of Popular Culture

Monsters, ogres, ghosts, and other supernatural beings are important components in the makeup of pretty much every culture in the world. All cultures, as much as we may pride ourselves on our rationality, are full of vengeful spirits, mischievous sprites, and the unexplained. Shinto, the official religion of Japan, is an animistic religion, in which nearly everything that exists has a spirit, and some of those vaguely-defined essences have, over time (sometimes over millennia), become more defined presences. Japanese popular culture is full of them.

Although the subject matter of Yokai Attack! is fictional (but walk through a dark, lonely forest and see how unreal you think spirits are then), this book is a work of non-fiction that categorizes and describes components of Japanese folklore. For anyone who is interested in Japanese culture, whether it's anime, manga, literature, or "J-horror" movies, a guide like this offers a deeper understanding of the context and meaning of Japanese folklore.

A Field Guide to Japanese Monsters

Yokai Attack! is formatted much like a field guide or perhaps an encyclopedia. Each section is devoted to a specific monster (or "yokai" in Japanese), and includes quick basic facts listed first, followed by more detailed information on origins, folk stories, and what it might be like if the creature were real and you ran into one in the woods, or a dark alley, or wherever the yokai in question lives.

It seems a little gimmicky to structure what is essentially a folklore text this way, but it actually works well with the subject matter. A reader can skip to a favorite monster, or read from beginning to end, and the information is broken up into small, easily-digestible, and easily-scannable, chunks. This makes it a good choice for more reluctant readers, though avid readers will enjoy it, too, as it's written in a style that's accessible, but not at all dumbed-down.

About the Creators

Authors Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt are a wife-and-husband team who have built their business around bringing Japanese popular culture to western audiences. They're based in Tokyo and run a company that provides English translations for Japanese comics, video games, and books. They've also written other books of their own, from a history of Japanese toy robots (Super #1 Robot by Matt Alt) to one about cute characters in Japan (Hello Please! Very Helpful Super Kawaii Characters from Japan by both authors).

Illustrator Tatsuya Morino started his artistic career as an assistant to Shigeru Mizuki, one of Japan's most loved creators of manga (who also wrote an encyclopedia of yokai, which is sadly not available in English translation). He went on to become a comics creator in his own right, as well as a character designer for Japanese anime and video game studio Gainax.

Purchase or Run Away?

Yokai Attack! would be a good choice for anyone, young or not-so-young, who is interested in learning more about Japanese culture. Fans of anime, manga, and other products of Japanese pop culture will especially get a lot out of it. When I first started read this book, I was worried that the field guide format might simplify the subject matter too much -- like any other cultural product, folklore is seldom as simple as listing characters and defining their characteristics. But the authors have done a good job of showing the complexity of the stories these monsters come from, while avoiding the kind of confusion that can result from trying to fit too much information into one slender volume.

I would have preferred the historical art to be bigger and more prominent, but at least it's included for nearly every entry in the book. This gives a place to start a discussion of Japanese art as well as folklore -- and the two have long been entwined, anyway. The focus on illustrations by a contemporary comics artist was probably a good choice for attracting an audience of pop-culture enthusiasts.

I was pretty sure I would like Yokai Attack! from the beginning -- as a former folklorist and a long-time anime fan, it hits two of my interests -- but I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. With one minor warning about content -- there is some very mild sexual content and considerable mention of violence, but both necessitated by the subject matter and not at all gratuitous -- I would not hesitate to recommend Yokai Attack! for teen (and adult) readers.



Disclosure: A copy of this book was purchased by the reviewer. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.