Mystical systems
Yōkai
Direct answer
Yōkai are the strange beings and uncanny happenings of Japanese folklore, a broad class that takes in river imps, mountain goblins, shape-shifting foxes and haunted household objects.
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At a glance
- Also called
- yokai, japanese yokai, what is a yokai, japanese spirits and monsters
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Kami, Fairy, Ghost, Demon
Yōkai are the strange beings and uncanny happenings of Japanese folklore, a broad class that takes in river imps, mountain goblins, shape-shifting foxes and haunted household objects.
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What is a yōkai?
Yōkai is written with two characters that both mean something like bewitching, strange or suspicious. The word covers creatures and events alike: an odd sound in the mountains can be a yōkai as much as the being blamed for it. Well known kinds include the kappa, a water imp with a dish of water on its head; the tengu, a winged mountain goblin; the kitsune and tanuki, the fox and the raccoon dog that change shape; the oni, a horned ogre; and the tsukumogami, tools that come alive after long use.
Yōkai are not simply evil. Many are dangerous, some are comic, and a few bring luck. The line between a yōkai and a kami is thin, and a troublesome being that is given a shrine and offerings may become a protector.
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What sets Yōkai apart
Yōkai are catalogued, which is unusual for folk monsters. From the eighteenth century Japanese artists gave each one a name, a portrait and a habitat, in the manner of a natural history, and the genre still grows. The category is also defined by ambiguity. A yōkai is whatever cannot be placed: neither human nor animal, neither god nor ghost, often met at dusk, at bridges and crossroads, the edges of the ordinary day.
- Written: 妖怪, two characters meaning bewitching and strange
- Well known kinds: kappa, tengu, kitsune, tanuki, oni, tsukumogami
- First catalogue: Toriyama Sekien, Gazu Hyakki Yagyō, 1776
- Scholarship: Inoue Enryō from the 1880s; Yanagita Kunio, Tōno Monogatari, 1910
- Modern revival: Mizuki Shigeru's manga GeGeGe no Kitarō, 1960s
Often mistaken for something else: An oni is one kind of yōkai, the horned ogre of Japanese tales; yōkai is the whole class, which also holds harmless and even lucky beings.
The story behind Yōkai
Strange beings appear in Japanese writing from the earliest chronicles, and medieval picture scrolls show a night parade of a hundred demons. In the Edo period artists catalogued them; Toriyama Sekien published the first of his illustrated yōkai books in 1776. The philosopher Inoue Enryō studied them from the 1880s in order to explain them away, and Yanagita Kunio collected rural accounts in Tōno Monogatari (1910). Mizuki Shigeru's manga made them popular again from the 1960s.
Why Yōkai matters
Yōkai show how a culture can name and picture the uncanny in fine detail without sorting it into angels and demons.
How to read Yōkai
Folklorists use it for the whole field of Japanese monster lore; in daily life the creatures appear in festivals, local mascots, comics and games.
Yōkai in practice: an example
Children by a river might be told that a kappa lives in the deep pool, which is one way of saying do not swim there.
Where readings of Yōkai go wrong
Popular lists often mix old folklore with characters invented by modern artists, so the age of a given yōkai needs checking.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- yokai meaning, yokai, japanese yokai, what is a yokai, japanese spirits and monsters, types of yokai
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What is a yōkai?
It is a Japanese term for supernatural creatures and unexplained happenings of folklore. It includes monsters, tricksters, shape-shifters and haunted objects, and is wider than the English word monster.
Are yōkai evil?
Not as a class. Some harm people, some play tricks, some help, and the same being can do all three in different stories. They are better thought of as strange than as wicked.
What is the difference between yōkai and yūrei?
A yūrei is the ghost of a dead person, usually tied to a grievance. Yōkai are non-human beings or phenomena. Some writers count yūrei as one kind of yōkai, others keep them apart.
