Ehon Hyaku Monogatari

What it is

The Ehon Hyaku Monogatari is a Japanese picture book of yōkai, the ghosts, monsters and spirits of Japanese folklore, published around 1841. The artist Takehara Shunsensai drew its pictures, and the writing carries the pen name Tōsanjin. It was meant as a companion to Toriyama Sekien's Gazu Hyakki Yagyō series, and like those books it works as a supernatural bestiary: creatures are named, drawn and given short notes. Its title promises a hundred stories in the manner of Edo-period kaidan, or ghost-story books, yet the entries are pictures rather than tales, so the work sits between a ghost-story collection and a picture book. Writers on folklore credit it, alongside Sekien's volumes, with fixing the look and names of yōkai that circulate in Japan today.

Where it comes from

The book appeared in Japan around 1841, in the closing stretch of the Edo period, when wood-block picture books were widespread. It presented itself as a sequel to Toriyama Sekien's Gazu Hyakki Yagyō series of the late eighteenth century, which Yoda and Alt describe as the first mass-produced yōkai compendiums. The ehon form itself was old: the earliest known example was a short prayer book of the eighth century, made as a votive offering, a religious gift. The author is known only through pen names, Tōsanjin on the title and Tōka Sanjin in the preface, and the Kokusho Sōmokuroku catalogue takes this to be Tōkaen Michimaro, a gesaku, or popular-fiction, writer of the later Edo period. Early folklorists knew the book as Tōsanjin Yawa, the name printed on each volume's first page.

How it is done

Japanese book-making was a shared trade. A writer composed the text, an artist painted pictures or cut and printed wood-blocks, and paper makers and binders finished the object. The Ehon Hyaku Monogatari keeps to that pattern but lets pictures lead. Each of its five volumes opens with the title Tōsanjin Yawa and offers a numbered run of illustrations. There are no story titles or tales: each image carries a yōkai's name, such as Hakuzōsu, Isonade or Futakuchi-onna, with a few words of text beneath. The numbering runs volume by volume, so the third picture of the first volume is marked 1-3.

Tools and materials

Ehon were built on pictures, either hand-painted or printed from wood-blocks, with printing becoming widespread during the Edo period between 1603 and 1868. Words came second: essays, short stories or poems might accompany the images, though they did not have to relate to them. Paper makers and binders were needed alongside the writer and artist. In this book the picture is the entry, and the small text under each image fixes the creature's name.

What it is for

As a gesaku production, a piece of popular fiction, it answered the Edo appetite for ghost stories, and the hundred tales of its title point to the kaidan story-telling fashion of the day. The creatures it records belong to a wider habit of belief: Foster notes that yōkai were once invoked to account for things people could not explain, strange sounds after dark or fireballs drifting near graveyards among them. Shamoon credits this book, with Sekien's series, with giving a settled shape to a set of beliefs that had been loosely defined, which helped the same figures stay current.

Who does it

An ehon was rarely one person's work: a writer composed, an artist painted or cut the wood-blocks, and paper makers and binders finished the object. Here the pictures came from Takehara Shunsensai, while the text carries the pen name Tōsanjin, given as Tōka Sanjin in the preface. The Kokusho Sōmokuroku catalogue takes this to be Tōkaen Michimaro, a writer of gesaku popular fiction in the later Edo period. Their model was Toriyama Sekien, born Sano Toyofusa in 1712 into a family of obozu, hereditary high-ranking servants of the shogun, and trained in the state-sanctioned Kano school of art under Kano Gyokuen and Kano Chikanobu.

Peoples and places

The book belongs to Japan and to the Edo-period world of printed kaidan and yōkai pictures. Early readers met it as Tōsanjin Yawa: Ema Tsutomu, a scholar of manners and customs, and the folklorist Fujisawa Morihiko both used that name in the 1920s, and so did the magazines of the time, which is how it became famous. In 1979 Mizuki Shigeru listed it as Ehon Hyaku Monogatari in his Yōkai 100 Monogatari. Its reach runs into the present: Shamoon traces the continuity of familiar yōkai in anime and manga back to the codification this book and Sekien's series supplied.

What people believe

Yōkai sit at the centre of the book's world: the monsters of Japanese folklore and legend, which Foster says were once invoked to account for whatever could not be explained, strange noises in the night and fireballs drifting near graveyards among them. The Edo period supported a whole culture of kaidan, ghost stories, and the hundred-tale format was a popular way of gathering them. In this book the belief appears as a catalogue: each creature is named, drawn and given a few words of text, a form later writers say helped settle the beliefs into a fixed set of figures.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Writers on Japanese folklore treat the book as a turning point. Ema Tsutomu, in his Nihon Yōkai Henka-shi of 1923, and Fujisawa Morihiko, in his Hentai Densetsu-shi of 1926, introduced it to readers as Tōsanjin Yawa; Mizuki Shigeru cited it in 1979. Yoda and Alt, who translated Sekien's compendiums, place the whole line of yōkai books at the head of printed monster imagery in Japan. Shamoon argues that Sekien's series and this follow-up codified a loosely defined body of belief, a continuity that carries through into manga and anime. Foster reads yōkai themselves as explanations once offered for the unexplained.

Compare and confuse

The book is often set beside Toriyama Sekien's four yōkai volumes, the Gazu Hyakki Yagyō of 1776 and its successors of 1779, 1781 and 1784, which it was meant to continue. It is also easily mixed up with kaidan collections: the hundred stories of its title belong to the ghost-story format, yet the entries are pictures with names, not tales. Two titles point to the same work, Ehon Hyaku Monogatari and Tōsanjin Yawa.

Today

The book's creatures still circulate. Shamoon credits it, with Sekien's series, as a major factor in the continuity of yōkai stories into anime and manga, where the same familiar figures appear. Mizuki Shigeru drew on it for his 1979 Yōkai 100 Monogatari, and its list of creatures, from Hakuzōsu to Maikubi, is still counted volume by volume. Both of its titles remain in use in writing about yōkai.

Questions people ask about Ehon Hyaku Monogatari

Good reading and sources

• Ehon Hyaku Monogatari on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data