How long does it take to read The Book of Yōkai?
Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore
The Book of Yōkai by Michael Dylan Foster takes about 6 hours 10 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 6 hours 10 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2015. 336 pages, about 92,400 words.
13 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 10 hours 16 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 6 hours 10 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 51 minutes |
The page count is the median across 1 edition, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
>Monsters, ghosts, fantastic beings, and supernatural phenomena of all sorts haunt the folklore and popular culture of Japan. Broadly labeled yōkai, these creatures come in infinite shapes and sizes, from tengu mountain goblins and kappa water spirits to shape-shifting foxes and long-tongued ceiling-lickers. Currently popular in anime, manga, film, and computer games, many yōkai originated in local legends, folktales, and regional ghost stories. >Drawing on years of research in Japan, Michael Dylan Foster unpacks the history and cultural context of yōkai, tracing their roots, interpreting their meanings, and introducing people who have hunted them through the ages. In this delightful and accessible narrative, readers will explore the roles played by these mysterious beings within Japanese culture and will also learn of their abundance and variety through detailed entries, some with original illustrations, on more than fifty individual creatures. The Book of Yōkai provides a lively excursion into Japanese folklore and its ever-expanding influence on global popular culture. It also invites readers to examine how people create, transmit, and collect folklore, and how they make sense of the mysteries in the world around them. By exploring yōkai as a concept, we can better understand broader processes of tradition, innovation, story telling, and individual and communal creativity.
Subjects: Yōkai (Japanese folklore), Folklore (Japan), Mythical Animals, Folklore, Spirits, Social science
