The Japanese Yokai Handbook is a guide to various Japanese supernatural beings. Most entries consist of only one page, which has a trading card-style image on it with a rarity level, ratings for scariness, danger, immortality, speed, and intelligence, a couple paragraphs of information, and some brief info, if known, about the yokai's origins, size, place it can be found, and general characteristics. Each chapter focuses on a general type of yokai (scary, mysterious, powerful, weird, cute, simple, sad, kind, evil, and stupid). In between chapters, the author answers some basic questions about yokai and gives brief overviews of locations known for particular yokai.

Either this mostly covered yokai I've never heard of, or the author's depictions were so different from what I've seen in manga or anime that I didn't recognize them. Unfortunately, most of the information was so brief that I didn't feel like I learned very much, although some of the yokai covered were definitely intriguing. There was one modern yokai (first mentioned on internet forums in the 21st century), Kunekune, although its information was just as brief as all the rest.

One of my biggest issues with this book was that it was riddled with typos - misspellings, grammatical errors, and even partial sentences. Pages 34-35 had a particularly confusing example. Page 34 ends at the end of the last sentence of its sole paragraph. Page 35 begins with the last two words of a sentence that doesn't exist on page 34.

This is definitely written for younger audiences (one of the questions the author addresses is "There are scary stories of ghosts at school. Are those yokai?"), but they might be even more frustrated and confused with the errors in the text than I was.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )