Water sprites, mountain goblins, shape-shifting animals, and a panoply of other monsters known as yokai have long haunted the Japanese cultural landscape. This lively history of the strange and mysterious in Japan seeks out these fan-tastic creatures in folklore, encyclopedias, literature, art, science, games, manga, magazines, and movies, exploring their diverse meanings in the Japanese cultural imagination and offering the reader an abundance of valuable material. Michael Dylan Foster tracks yokai over three centuries, from their understated appearance in seventeenth-century natural histories to their starring role in twentieth-century popular media. Focusing on the dynamic intertwining of belief and commodifica-tion, fear and pleasure, horror and humor, he illuminates different conceptions of the "weird" and "mysterious," shedding light on broader social and historical paradigms-and ultimately on the construction of Japan as a nation.