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Japanese Ghosts and Demons: Art of the Supernatural Paperback – January 1, 2005

by Stephen Addiss (Author)

4.4 24 ratings

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From the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century, many of Japan's most brilliant artists, including Hiroshige, Hokusai, Yoshitoshi, and Zeshin, allowed their imaginations free rein in creating images of the supernatural world in woodblocks, paintings, books, wooden sculptures, and on screens. This is the first book devoted to the study of the supernatural world and its renditions in Japanese art. The illustrations show a stunning array of Japan's more fiendish figures. Each of the ten chapters focuses on one of the most important themes in Japanese lore, discussing its anthropological meaning and literary and artistic interpretations. 49 color illustrations, 75 black-and-white illustrations.

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About the Author

Stephen Addiss is professor of art history at the University of Kansas and a specialist in the arts of Japan.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ George Braziller (January 1, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 192 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0807611263
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0807611265
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.75 pounds

Best Sellers Rank: #865,721 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,903 in Arts & Photography Criticism
- #3,402 in Art History by Theme

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4.4 24 ratings

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Stephen Addiss

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Stephen Addiss is Tucker-Boatwright Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Art at the University of Richmond in Virginia, United States. He has exhibited his ink paintings and calligraphy in Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, England, France, Germany, and in many venues in the United States. He is also the author or co-author of more than 30 books and catalogues about East Asian art, including "Old Taoist," "Tao Te Ching." "The Art of Zen," "Tall Mountains and Flowing Waters," "Haiga: Haiku-Painting," "Zen Sourcebook," "and "How to Look at Japanese Art."

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Amazon Customer

Classic reference material.

Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2016

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Essential for tattooers looking to broaden their understanding of the mythology that drives a vast spectrum of our industry. This book has been in every tattoo shop I have ever had the pleasure of working at. And now I have a copy for my shop. Tradition!!!

2 people found this helpful

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Rene L. Santiago

Crimes of Passion, Homasexuality.

Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2015

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Crimes of Passion, Homasexuality.

One person found this helpful

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Clan Lindsey

Gorgeous book AND excellent research

Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2006

I almost hesitate to add a review since there are two other reviews here that do such a fine job. I actually attended the University of Kansas and was therefore able to visit the Spencer Museum of Art and see some of these works on display. I purchased my copy of this book at the museum and used it as part of my source material for a theses I wrote while matriculating at KU, so I am very familiar with this book.

This is a very, very impressive book with loads of gorgeously rendered and reproduced wood-block prints. If you like Japanese art you will wish to have this book simply to look at the pictures. My children actually like to get this book down and look at the pictures, half because it is truly amazing art and half because the art is focused on the creepy-crawly and supernatural. An element of Japanese culture and psychology is viscerally on display in these fine prints and it is easy to see that this form of art is the precursor to the Manga that is so popular today.

This book is much more than a simple visual display though. There is a wealth of information, meticulously researched, presented here on the creatures that make up the pantheon of the eerie and supernatural in medieval Japan. For serious students, or even those with a surfeit of Hobbits just wanting a better grounding in an alternate milieu of the supernatural, this is an excellent tome, well-written, easy-to-follow, and chock-full of information. Buy it for the pictures, buy it for the text, or buy it for both, you won't be disappointed.

28 people found this helpful

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Falle

A Must-Read for Japanese Studies Scholars

Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2015

This was one of the first books I'd ever read in my studies, back when I'd just gotten into the supernatural folklore of Japan. I can't give this book enough stars! It was immensely informative, concise, and very comprehensible. Its rich references and rhetoric distinguish it as a marvelous mandate for anyone pursuing the supernatural sphere of Japan through legend and religiosity.

One person found this helpful

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Morrigan Blackwood

Informational, yet Lacking

Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 2014

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I was expecting more pictures, and some of the prints could have been enlarged to show more detail. Although the information about the Yokai is quite interesting this is by no means encyclopedic. A lot of this art is fairly hard to find, and it is quite a nice reference in English.

Overall, a good book with interesting art. I just wish it could have gone into more detail.

Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2016

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good history - not a lot of prints

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Merrily Baird

a rich feast, both visually and intellectually

Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2003

As the preface to "Japanese Ghosts and Demons" notes, this book is the fruit of interdisciplinary studies undertaken by the Spencer Museum of Art and the University of Kansas at Lawrence. And it is the results of just such an interdisciplinary approach that have lifted this book out of the realm of an ordinary exhibition catalogue and propelled it into the rarified ranks of an art history classic.
In historical terms, the focus of the book is the Edo period. This long (1615-1868) and peaceful period saw a concatenation of several important trends, including the perfection of the woodblock print, a democratization of art that--for the first time in Japan--served the masses, the rise of the kabuki theater, and a diffusion of popular literature and tales that often focused on the ghostly and the supernatural. The fusion of these trends was most clearly seen in the woodblock prints of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Utagawa Kunisada, and Ichiryusai Kuniyoshi, many of which are reproduced here. These three giants of the late woodblock period not only made a major contribution in documenting the theatrical and literary trends of the Edo period but also provided many of the visual models still employed in Japanese-style tattooing.
Apart from the rich feast of art presented in this book, "Japanese Ghosts and Demons" will nourish the souls of those interested more in the fields of anthropology and comparative religion. Even today, when Japan has emerged as one of the most technologically advanced nations on earth, fundamental cultural beliefs are still strongly informed by a sense of mutability. "Japanese Ghosts and Demons" makes an important contribution to explaining this phenomenon, in which the boundaries between the living and the dead, humankind and animals, the animate and the inanimate, and the sacred and profane are far more permeable than is believed to be the case in the modern West. Several thousand years ago, before the rise of the three great monotheistic religions, most of the world's societies believed in a universe more pregnant with magical possibilities, a type of universe that this book helps us better understand.

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Alfredo R. Villanueva

A DEFINITIVE REFERENCE

Reviewed in the United States on October 5, 2011

For those of us interested in the influence of Japanese arts and culture on the West, this book is an essential research tool. I was lucky to have been at a conference in Lawrence at the time the exhibition was on, saw it and bought the catalog. Many years later I have exhumed it from a dusty shelf and found it even more comprehensive that I did the first time. I recommend Siegfried Wichmann's definitive study on Japonisme as a companion volume.

One person found this helpful

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