Gazu Hyakki Yagyō
Japanese book published in 1776 / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Gazu Hyakki Yagyō (画図百鬼夜行, "The Illustrated Night Parade of a Hundred Demons" or The Illustrated Demon Horde's Night Parade) is the first book of Japanese artist Toriyama Sekien's famous Gazu Hyakki Yagyō e-hon tetralogy, published in 1776. A version of the tetralogy translated and annotated in English was published in 2016.[1] Although the title translates to "The Illustrated Night Parade of a Hundred Demons", it is based on an idiom, hyakki yagyō, that is akin to pandemonium in English and implies an uncountable horde.[2] The book is followed by Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki, Konjaku Hyakki Shūi, and Gazu Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro.
The book is a supernatural bestiary, a collection of ghosts, spirits, spooks and monsters from literature, folklore, and other artwork. The art of Gazu Hyakki Yagyō heavily references a 1737 scroll-painting called the Hyakkai Zukan by artist Sawaki Sūshi;[3] Sekien's innovation was preparing the illustrations as woodblock prints that could be mass-produced in a bound book format.[4] Intended as a parody of then-popular reference books such as the Wakan Sansai Zue, it ended up becoming a reference book in its own right, profoundly influencing subsequent yōkai imagery in Japan.[5] The book proved popular enough to be reprinted three times over the course of the Edo era by various book-sellers.[6] The book is compiled in three sub-volumes: Yin, Yang, and Wind. Yin features a foreword by poet Maki Tōei, while Wind ends with an afterword by Sekien.[7]