October

Halloween is all about spooky stuff, right? There are various bone-chilling tales coming out of medieval Europe for its origins – the dead returning, devils punishing Irishmen, ghosts, spooks, and witches. But the west isn’t the only place with these traditions. Japan too has plenty of things that go bump in the night. ‘Yōkai’, a motley crew of phantoms, specters and supernatural beings, are spoken of in folklore from all over the country. The word yōkai is made up of the kanji for “bewitching; attractive; calamity;” and “spectre; apparition; mystery; suspicious”, and their origin can be found in the animism and nature worship of Shintoism, and the concept that gods, or kami, can be found all around us. As yōkai reside on the very border of our realm and the “other world” they are most likely to be found at twilight, a time when the boundaries between our world and the astral planes are most blurred. Some are malevolent, some are naughty, some bring good luck, and some are just downright weird. Here are a few that you wouldn’t like to bump into in a dark alley at night. Tengu As Japan is 80 per cent mountainous, it’s going to be…