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Cost: Free; No registration requiredIn this talk, Japanese folklore expert Michael Dylan Foster introduces the creatures known as yōkai and explores how they have been imagined and portrayed through the centuries. With focus on collection, classification, and play, Dr. Foster shows how these historical approaches resonate with contemporary media and games. Along the way, we encounter many individual yōkai, as well as some of the artists, scholars, and writers who have explored what they have to say.
Michael Dylan Foster is a professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of many works on Japanese folklore and media, including Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yōkai (2009) and most recently, The Book of Yōkai, Expanded Second Edition (2024). Among his coedited volumes are The Folkloresque: Reframing Folklore in a Popular Culture World (2016) and Möbius Media: Popular Culture, Folklore, and the Folkloresque (2024). Since 2022, he has been the “Yōkai Navigator” for the NHK World documentary television series YŌKAI: Exploring Hidden Japanese Folklore.
Image: Tsukioka Yoshitoshi / National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Robert O. Muller Collection, S2003.8.2977
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Event Venue
1050 Independence Ave SW, Washington D.C., DC, United States, Washington, District of Columbia 20013
Tickets
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