---
product_id: 4095761
title: "Mythical Beasts of Japan: From Evil Creatures to Sacred Beings"
price: "$164.61"
currency: USD
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reviews_count: 13
url: https://www.desertcart.us/products/4095761-mythical-beasts-of-japan-from-evil-creatures-to-sacred-beings
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---

# Mythical Beasts of Japan: From Evil Creatures to Sacred Beings

**Price:** $164.61
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## Description

Mythical Beasts of Japan: From Evil Creatures to Sacred Beings [Yumoto, Koichi, Kano, Hiroyuki, Taki, Akiko] on desertcart.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Mythical Beasts of Japan: From Evil Creatures to Sacred Beings

Review: Vivid, varied, and detailed. - 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.
Review: Good collection of old paintings - 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.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #3,170,916 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #5,889 in Folklore & Mythology Studies #10,060 in Arts & Photography Criticism |
| Customer Reviews | 4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars (29) |
| Dimensions  | 5.87 x 1.51 x 8.27 inches |
| Edition  | Bilingual |
| ISBN-10  | 4894447886 |
| ISBN-13  | 978-4894447882 |
| Item Weight  | 1.98 pounds |
| Print length  | 392 pages |
| Publication date  | April 6, 2010 |
| Publisher  | PIE Books |

## Images

![Mythical Beasts of Japan: From Evil Creatures to Sacred Beings - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51dFmGigPVL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Vivid, varied, and detailed.
*by L***T on June 2, 2011*

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.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Good collection of old paintings
*by W***H on June 5, 2014*

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.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Great book for Japanese readers, usable but problematic for English ones
*by J***G on January 26, 2014*

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.

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*Store origin: US*
*Last updated: 2026-05-18*