Manga titan Shigeru Mizuki brings Japan s most entertaining myths to the modern age. As travellers approach a lush, cedar forest the soft floor and woodland scent palpable from Shigeru Mizuki s fecund drawing something falls from the trees with a thud: a human head, twelve times average size. A dozen more heads follow, peering at the travelers with maniacal laughter, before retreating back into the woods. A hallucination? No, this is Tohoku No Tsurubeotoshi. An earthworm, larger than a human, floats in the air, backlit from window lights ensconced by shadowy darkness. Sontsuru majestic on the page in Shigeru Mizuki s delicate ink lines and bold colors is no worm, but a yokai who haunts families across generations, wriggling between their skin and muscles. And then there is Shirime, a city dwelling trickster who shouts, 'A moment, sir!' only to then lift their kimono to reveal their unusual rump a giant, glowing eyeball where one would otherwise expect a crack. Indeed, not all the yokai in the pages of Yokai: Shigeru Mizuki s Supernatural Parade are there to cause fright. Like Mizuki himself, yokai often have a playful spirit, which Mizuki explores with joy in this stunning collection, which contains one hundred new, lavish, full page yokai illustrations, with biographies for each. Yokai: Shigeru Mizuki s Supernatural Parade is the companion book to Yokai: The Art of Shigeru Mizuki, and includes supplementary writing by acclaimed Mizuki scholar and translator Zack Davisson.

Shigeru Mizuki (1922 2015) was one of Japan s most respected artists. A creative prodigy, he lost an arm in World War II. After the war, Mizuki became one of the founders of Japan s latest craze manga. He invented the yokai genre with GeGeGe no Kitaro, his most famous character, who has been adapted for the screen several times, as anime, live action, and video games. In fact, a new anime series has been made every decade since 1968, capturing the imaginations of generations of Japanese children. A researcher of yokai and a real-life ghost hunter, Mizuki traveled to over sixty countries to engage in fieldwork based on spirit folklore. In his hometown of Sakaiminato, one can find Shigeru Mizuki Road, a street decorated with bronze statues of his Kitaro characters.