The Mythical Creatures that Inspired Everyone from Murakami to Miyazaki

Learn the history of the spirits and folklore that continue to inspire Japan's most iconic cultural creations, from Studio Ghibli to Pokemon

Mascots are a feature of everyday life in Japan: neighborhoods, drugstores, the military, and even prisons have their own cuddly characters.

This year, banned from taking to the streets because of COVID-19, many mascots began posting pictures of themselves on social media, adding blue wigs and scales to their typical costumes. These features are a tribute to Amabié, a 174-year-old mythical beast whose image, legend has it, has the power to protect people from plague.

The social media trend started when one illustrator rediscovered Amabié and posted their illustration of the creature online, dubbing it a “new coronavirus countermeasure”. The post went viral, and within no time thousands of other people were sharing their own versions of Amabié.

Amabié is what is known in Japan as a yokai, a sort of supernatural spirit or monster from Japanese folklore. Some are believed to bring luck, while others bring misfortune. Many originate from superstitions, and they can be characterizations of everything from earthquakes and rivers to diseases and cures.

For a long time, these yokai were a way for people to explain the unexplainable. These stories are rooted in the Japanese animistic religion of Shintoism, which views anything as a potential vessel for a soul or spirit.

Scientific advancements would go on to explain many of the mysterious phenomena that first inspired yokai. Nevertheless, their stories persisted. But, it took another crisis to truly bring them back into public consciousness: WWII.

Cheap comics were hugely popular in postwar Japan and, in 1960, yokai inspired artist Mizuki Shigeru to create his iconic Manga series Kitarō of the Graveyard in which a young boy battles to keep peace between the worlds of yokai and mortals.

Mizuki resurrected yokai in pop culture. They would go on to inspire everyone from Murakami to Miyazaki, and even a few Pokemon.

Here are just a few pop culture characters who have ancient origins:

The Pokemon Slowking is based on the friendly Sazae-Oni, which translates to "Turban shell demon", a sea-based yokai who only leaves the ocean to dance in the surf.

Drowzee was inspired by the yokai known as the Baku, a tapir-like creature that can eat the nightmares of children, as well as their hopes and dreams. This latter power explains Drowzee’s darker reputation.

In My Neighbor Totoro, Studio Ghibli’s legendary animator Miyazaki introduced the shapeshifting bakeneko, which literally translates to “changed cat”.

Miyazaki’s version of the cat has morphed, slightly unconventionally, into a feline bus with a wide grin reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland’s Cheshire cat.

Another character Miyazaki borrowed from the yokai was the tanuki, or racoon dog. While these animals do actually exist in the real world, the real ones don’t shape-shift to convince humans to recycle.

However, the tanuki’s transformational powers are well documented in the tales of the Sado Islands of Niigata Prefecture and Shikoku.

As any Studio Ghibli fan will tell you, these tales and illustrations are not just cartoons for kids. These mythical beasts and spirits have become a hallmark of modern animé and Japanese culture and are born of a rich heritage of yokai and a centuries-old history of humans trying to explain the world around them.

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