The Brooklyn Rail

Many monsters of Japanese fiction are globally recognizable, from the myth-turned-cartoon of the kappa to the nuclear devastation of Godzilla. Yet, obake (monster) culture is not only a major entertainment export, but something baked into the traditions and history of Japan.

Though the world of yokai (monsters, ghosts, etc.) can be a bit dense for a newcomer due to the constantly changing nature of the storytelling form, it’s well worth the journey for fans of horror comics, anime, art, and history alike. Fortunately, Adam Kabat, professor emeritus of Japanese literature at Musashi University, acts as a guide in The River Imp and the Stinky Jewel and Other Tales, a new collection of translated Japanese image and text stories, known as kibyōshi. Presenting five kibyoshi stories in their first English-language translations, Kabat’s book goes to some lengths to add historical and cultural context to these tales from Edo-era Japan. Though they are rooted in the now-distant past, the obake have lived up to the meaning of their name as a “thing that changes” by evolving significantly over the years.

The book begins with the charming “A Monster Catalogue,” a collection of parables about different monsters explaining their raison d'être. Walking us through an encyclopedia of Japan’s many obake, this works more as a series of single-page observances in regard to the nature of these monsters rather than a cohesive tale. While the kappa river monsters were once relegated to the realm of the cautionary tale, these stories show a vital step in their progression into child-friendly cultural touchstones. This journey may sound somewhat familiar to audiences who have witnessed Godzilla’s evolution from a monster movie star to a globally recognized blockbuster antihero.

Each tale is presented in black-and-white reprints complete with original Japanese lettering printed as part of the imagery alongside translations. In “The Monster Takes a Bride,” written by kibyōshi superstar Jippensha Ikku and illustrated by Katsukawa Shun’ei, the grotesquerie of monsters serves to parody marriage guides, giving comedic allegories for monsters seeking that special someone. As humans might be specifically interested in finding an attractive partner, the monsters in question are looking for someone particularly horrific. In “Monsters to the Rescue,” a group of monsters are forced to band together in search of their missing offspring, with a series of hilarious visual gags and off-the-wall puns unfolding along the way.

While the missives themselves are fairly short, the added pages of commentary from Kabat make this a hefty collection clocking in at over four hundred pages. While readers looking for “just the stories” may find this disjointing, the format lends to careful dissection of the themes at play, regardless of how over-the-top they may be. To that end, Kabat starts out the book with a cute anecdote about his first years in Japan, meeting a neighbor’s child, who pointed at him and yelled, “Obake, obake!” This spurred Kabat to figure out exactly what the word meant. Years down the line, we have this book to show for it. As an aside, Kabat notes that he and the child ultimately became great friends.

As such, these parables about monsters, ghosts, and demons are joined by Kabat’s interest in including real-world details, both historical and contemporary. If presented on their own, these tales may be a bit harder to understand, which makes Kabat essential as an unobtrusive narrator. When the drawings might otherwise seem like a simple series of scary beasts, context clues from Kabat provide essential background.

This is particularly useful in “A Monster Catalogue,” where explanations about each monster are to understanding the text. For instance, in two images where groups of priests are being attacked by a sea monster, Kabat explains that this monster is in fact the umi bōzu, aka the “sea priest,” noting that they are usually covered in black scales but here appear light-colored. Further, we learn that the sea monster has only appeared because having only one single woman on a ship was not allowed due to the customs of the time, she has caused the monster to appear, and her sacrifice is what, in turn, drives it away.

In the story from which the book takes its name, the river imp is a kappa who hopes to steal the shirikodama, a mythical jewel said to contain a person’s soul, from the butt of a handsome young man. Embracing both the somber and the silly, Kabat invites readers to laugh along as the more chaotic moments unfold. Indeed, scatological humor abounds in this collection, be it from the titular river imp or the many fart jokes that come from its attempts to procure the jewel.

Still, there are plenty of moments of genuine horror in these old-time monster comics. In the “Catalogue,” haunting images like a dutiful monk worriedly ringing a bell at night as a mournful ghost floats above him unnoticed are as unsettling as any of the gruesome, one-eyed monsters lurking on the page. The final tale, “The Demon Girl Comes to Edo,” takes a real-world sideshow attraction as its muse, with the demon girl in question apparently having terrified audiences by sporting misshapen horns sprouting from her head as well as a gash across her throat. While “The Demon Girl” is impressively frightening as well as fun, taking a real-life person as its subject shows a kind of self-referential metacommentary. In this, it shows an analog counterpart to today's viral horror campaigns.

This collection makes its now-ancient subject matter seem fresh, in part through the insight of its assembler. Yet, the stories themselves present an interesting context for the way that monsters have evolved with time, not only as entities to inspire dread but as figures now embedded in popular culture.