Drawing on experience

Was it also during your childhood that you became interested in yokai ghouls?

Yes, yes . . . (Non-non-ba) knew a lot about yokai . . . but my knowledge of ghouls mostly came later, from reading the works of [folklore researcher] Kunio Yanagida. The ones I heard about from Non-non-ba were limited to traditional ghouls like akaname (a monster who would appear and lick the scum off wooden bathtubs if they were not well cleaned) . . . yokai were much more active back in the Edo Period.

They say yokai disappeared as electric lights came in. Monsters prospered in the pre-electricity days, when people used andon (a standing lantern with a wooden frame and paper shade) and oil lamps. Electricity was too bright for yokai to survive. The darkness, with a touch of light like that of paper lanterns and oil lamps, was great for yokai, and it inspired people to imagine yokai.

In New Guinea, old people believed yokai were really alive because there was no electricity. In fact, when I was there I asked the people to let me see “the head yokai,” who supposedly lived in the river. They were dead serious as they woke me up in the middle of the night and took me there, pointing to a certain location, shouting “there it is!” I couldn’t see anything. Electricity is dangerous. Not many people say this, but it’s absolutely the electricity that made yokai vanish.

While I wrote some promotional articles, interviewing such officials as the ambassador of Papua New Guinea to Japan, much of my work was editing copy at The Japan Times, including this interesting interview with the late Shigeru Mizuki, the creator of the manga series GeGeGe no Kitaro.

Location: Tokyo, Japan

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