Mythical Beasts of Japan: From Evil Creatures to Sacred Beings Paperback – April 6, 2010

This book does have an introduction in Japanese and English, along with a two page foreword about the book. The table of contents are in English as well. The book is just a collection of pictures of various wall art paintings, watercolors, inks, and towards the end some pottery/dishes and assorted three dimensional objects (as opposed to paper not the computer generated variety mind you). I am an artist and was just looking for good book showing imagery of old Japanese creatures and so on from myths and legends. My only gripe with the book, is while each of the works does have the title (in Japanese only), there is nothing denoting the exact type of creature I am looking at. Of course some like the widely known phoenix and tengu are pretty obvious, but would have liked to know what some of the others are. So if you are looking for some nicely taken pictures of old Japanese art displaying various Japanese mythological beings then I would recommend this book. If you are looking for something with a lot of explanation and delves into the various types of deities, monsters, demons, and so on....then this isn't the book for you.

My edition has a different cover, but almost everything in the book is translated in one place or another (sometimes you have to dig a little in the index to find the title you're looking for, that sort of thing). The pictures are lovely and the detail is very good for the size of the book. The paper is thinner and lighter than, say, a Phaidon edition of this size might be, but the publishers have shoved almost 400 pages of art into a very portable and easily referenced piece, so I simply can't complain about that.Very good way to prime one's self on the visual interpretations of Japan's plethora of monsters and myths. Highly recommended as a companion to the works of Lafcadio Hearn.

"Mythical Beasts: From Evil Creatures to Sacred Beings" presents several hundred pages of art featuring bestial creatures popular in Japan of the 17th through 19th centuries. The reproductions themselves are labeled in Japanese, but mini-photo references at the end of the book provide identifications in both English and Japanese. In addition, there is at the book's end nine pages of material--again presented bilingually--that very briefly explains the meaning of beasts such as the earth spider, fox, tiger, and god of thunder. To access a more encyclopedic population of beasts and interpretive material with far more historical and cultural context, i would recommend Henri Joly's "Legend in Japanese Art" and my own "Symbols of Japan: Thematic Motifs in Art and Design."

The book is beautiful. The images are interesting and the lithography is high quality. The seller kept me up to date with shipping emails. As they say in Japanese, Yoku dekimashite (well done)

BE ADVISED: This book is NOT in English, its written totally in Japanese Kanji. ONLY the dust jacket is printed in English, the whole of the books contents are Japanese. Would have been nice to have known that before I ordered it. Very good photos and art reproductions. The photos on this page are also TOTALLY wrong, the book looks nothing like these photos.

this is a most have amazing book, the images are all inspiring and beautiful, if you don't have it get it now!!

The heart of this book is a collection of pictures of mythical animals and semi-human creatures drawn from Japanese art primarily from the 16th through 19th centuries (Momoyama, Edo and early Meiji periods). Most of the pictures are details from larger works, including folding screens, hanging scrolls and handscrolls, though there are some woodblock prints and also (gathered at the end) a number of decorated objects including ceramics, lacquerware, metalwork and textile, some of them very old. My impression is that about 2/3 of the pictures are in color and 1/3 in black and white (occasionally including both color and black and white reproductions of the same work on different pages).There is relatively little continuous text in the book. There are three short pieces, each of which appears in both original Japanese and English translations: (1) a one-page introduction (Jap p. 4 Eng p. 5); (2) a two-page essay by Kano Hiroyuki entitled in English ‘The imaginative power of Japanese art’ (which is actually mostly about the original 1954 version of the movie Godzilla) (Jap pp. 10,14 Eng pp. 18,22); and (3) a four-page essay by Yumoto Koichi entitled in English ‘The spread of Yokai culture’ (Jap pp. 164-167 Eng pp. 168-171). I cannot read the Japanese originals, but all the translations are readable and coherent, though not always as well proofread as they could have been.The illustrations are captioned in Japanese only. The captions include title, artist if known, date if known, and owning institution (which is almost always Japanese). Most also include the indication (部分), which means detail.All the captions are repeated, with added size information and English translation, in the section at the end of the book entitled in English Description of Works (pp. 365-381). The information is keyed by pages and includes black and white thumbnails of the illustrations, and it is relatively easy for an English reader to find the English language caption for any given illustration.(But note that not all pages are always given, so that for example you will not be able to find the reference for the amazing picture of an old man with a white toad on his back on p. 156 unless you happen to spot the scene in a second thumbnail included for a picture on p. 86 – both are from Soga Shōhaku’s famous pair of six-panel folding screens depicting the eight Chinese Immortals, 1764, which are featured on the cover of the book).This section also includes descriptions of the illustrations including subject matter, and these descriptions DO NOT have English translations. This means, among other things, that it is not possible to tell what mythical creatures are shown in the illustrations unless they happen to be indicated in the titles.Fortunately there is another section at the end of the book entitled in English Imagenary [sic] Creatures (pp. 356-364), which includes capsule accounts of 25 creatures in both Japanese and English together with black and white thumbnails taken from the illustrations. If these accounts included page numbers of illustrations of the creatures it would be easy to go from the accounts to the illustrations, but they don’t.The Japanese names for the creatures in this section are given in both kanji and hiragana, which makes it possible for English readers who know hiragana or are willing to look up the symbols to find out their Japanese names as pronounced. Here’s the whole list as best as I can decipher it:karajishi (Chinese lion), kirin (Chinese unicorn), hōō (Chinese phoenix), ryū (dragon), tora (tiger), hakuzō (white elephant), shika (deer), hakutaku [wise animal-form creature], baku [lucky animal-form creature], kame (tortoise), karyobinga [bird-like creature], fujin (god of wind), raijin (god of thunder), gohōdōji [Buddhist child messenger], kenzoku [Buddhist minion], oni [demon], tengu [long-nosed goblin], namazu (catfish), kitsune (fox), kakurezato (entrance to the spirit world), tsuchigumo [supernatural spider], kappa [river-dwelling creature], bakeneko [supernatural cat], daija (monster serpent), tsukumogami [animated object].Finally, there is a section entitled in English Painter Profile, which includes short accounts of about 45 artists to whom illustrations in the book are attributed. Unfortunately only the names and dates are translated into English, but this is enough to be able to look them up in another source such as Wikipedia. There are also references to pages where illustrations appear that an English reader will have no trouble understanding.With a little more work put into translating and editing this beautiful book would have ranked a 5, but due to its limitations, at least for English readers, the most I can give it is a 4.

Packed with page after page of colorful creatures. A feast for the eye and a joy for the imagination - amazing.

Bellissimo libro edito dalla piebook! Per amanti della mitologia giapponese e non.

極彩色がシッカリ伝わって来た。出典元が明記してあるので資料探しに適しています。全体の写真を写してもらいたい作品もありました。

A nicely produced book with many illustrations to delight the eye and stir the imagination. The topic of the Yokai is quite popular with several books to choose from. The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons: a field guide by Matthew Meyer should be consulted for proper identification during local yokai attacks.

Absolutely awesome. One of the ultimate Japanese reference books for art.

Perfect reference book