Water sprites, mountain goblins, shape-shifting animals, and the monsters known as yokai have long haunted the Japanese cultural landscape. This history of the strange and mysterious in Japan seeks out these creatures in folklore, encyclopedias, literature, art, science, games, manga, magazines, and movies, exploring their meanings in the Japanese cultural imagination and offering an abundance of valuable and, until now, understudied material. Michael Dylan Foster tracks yokai over three centuries, from their appearance in seventeenth-century natural histories to their starring...
Water sprites, mountain goblins, shape-shifting animals, and the monsters known as yokai have long haunted the Japanese cultural landscape. Thi...
For nearly 70 years, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has played a crucial role in developing policies and recommendations for dealing with intangible cultural heritage. What has been the effect of such sweeping global policies on those actually affected by them? How connected is UNESCO with what is happening every day, on the ground, in local communities? Drawing upon six communities ranging across three continents--from India, South Korea, Malawi, Japan, Macedonia and China--and focusing on festival, ritual, and dance, this volume illuminates...
For nearly 70 years, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has played a crucial role in developing policies...
This volume introduces a new concept to explore the dynamic relationship between folklore and popular culture: the folkloresque. With folkloresque, Foster and Tolbert name the product created when popular culture appropriates or reinvents folkloric themes, characters, and images. Such manufactured tropes are traditionally considered outside the purview of academic folklore study, but the folkloresque offers a frame for understanding them that is grounded in the discourse and theory of the discipline.
Fantasy fiction, comic books, anime, video games, literature, professional storytelling...
This volume introduces a new concept to explore the dynamic relationship between folklore and popular culture: the folkloresque. With folkloresque,...
