Yōkai: the Japanese ghost stories that inspired Pokémon
Every country has its own cultural traditions and folklore passed down throughout the centuries. In many parts of Europe, the folklore encompasses goblins, fairies, mermaids and more. These often comical characters have been woven into popular culture since our childhood.
From the very first forms of literature we are introduced to, we learn to identify gremlin-looking creatures as spooky and evil, whereas handsome or beautiful characters are identified as good and the “heroes”. Many examples of folklore and stories that involve these archetypal characters hold powerful and constructive moral messages that parents teach their children, which stay with us throughout our lives. Think of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Rumpelstiltskin, or Aesop’s fables like The Lion and The Mouse, for example. Indeed, these seemingly simple forms of popular culture have inspired generations around the world.
That’s the case with Japanese Yōkai, a series of mischievous supernatural spirit characters that have long flooded Japanese pop culture and beyond. From as early as the Edo period (which began in the 1600s), Yōkai began to emerge in drawings, woodblock engravings, and oral history. They became so popular, even among adults, that people began hosting gatherings to tell each other spooky stories of Yōkai. Strangers and friends would congregate, typically in a dark, candlelit room and would take turns sharing a story of a Yōkai. Sometimes, it would be one that was specific to their hometown, re-enacting the Yōkai as if they had truly witnessed it.
This hybrid form of role-play and performance theatre became a way for people to build connections through cultural exchange and pass down what became an integral part of Japanese artistic culture to the next generations.
It became tradition that each guest would mark the end of their story by extinguishing a candle until, eventually, only one flickering flame would remain. It’s said that when that final flame was blown out, a spirit from one of the evening’s tales would appear in the room. I imagine the moment to be as thrilling as a Halloween night spent playing with an Ouija board in the dark.
In the 18th century, Yōkai flourished with the prints by Toriyama Sekien and his Yōkai dictionaries that depict different iconic Yōkai. They range from anthropomorphic flying figures with talons and fur to objects with human-like features, like lamps with hands. People began to identify them depending on their appearance, and each developed a cult of its own.
As a result, a huge market for picture scrolls depicting Yōkai evolved, and the culture began to bleed into other facets of society—from the spiritual practices of Shinto priests to urban legends of contemporary Tokyo.
News about Yōkai also spread to Europe, where the Impressionists began to take the art world by storm, breaking all traditional artistic codes of the Western canon. The Impressionists were inspired by the Japanese woodblock prints, particularly those of Hokusai, which became popular among Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec and Renoir.
These artists took inspiration from signature elements of Yōkai, like close, cropped compositions, unusual angles, flat compositions and domestic, everyday scenes, which in the West became known as ‘Japonisme’.
Even in our times, the influence of Yōkai is ever-present. Satoshi Tajiri, a video game designer, was inspired by Yōkai in his drawings and storylines for Pokémon in the mid-1990s. The same goes for the animator Hayao Miyazaki and his popular Studio Ghibli productions. These are examples of how ancient folklore continues to be relevant to a global 21st-century audience.
Just like Aesop’s fables live on today through children’s novels, school plays, and lessons at home, Yōkai remains fundamental to culture for it connects Japanese people to their past through traditional art forms that inform their value systems.
