Thursday, September 2, 2010

Thursday Thirteen - Illustrations by Gōjin Ishihara

The following images are from a book illustrated in 1972. I thank the folks at Pink Tentacle, where you can find more images here:

Macabre Kids Book Art by Gōjin Ishihara

1.

Yamasei, the mountain sprite, just looks like a disagreeable fellow if you ask me

2.

The kappa are river imps
Their behavior goes beyond what I ever would expect from the name
3.

Yūrei are simply ghosts
This depiction is both beautiful and scary


4.

Jorōgumo “whore spider" I own a wonderful rendition by a gifted American artist
Matthew Meyer is currently living in Japan

5.

Kubire-oni is a strangler demon new to me

6.

Kyūbi no kitsune is the nine-tailed fox
I'm not certain of the significance of the woman's face
Nine (kyū) tails is the limit, showing great age and wisdom


7.

Rashōmon no oni is an ogre at the Rashōmon gate
The detachable arm is just creepy

8.

Rokurokubi, the long-necked woman
I've run into her ilk in other renditions of eerie folklore

9.

Onmoraki is a bird demon adapted from Chinese folklore

10.

Nekomata is a cat monster
The neko (cat) being a housept of mine,
I'm rather alarmed that this one went for the jugular


11.

Waira, the mountain-dwelling chimera, gives me another reason to stick to flatlands in Japan

12.

Baku is the dream-eating chimera
This notion scares me more than anything else




















13.

Tenjō-sagari dwells in the ceiling, which is pretty obvious here
I feel sorry for the sleeping young man and at the same time,
it's such an eerily sensual scene I can't look away

10 comments:

  1. Maybe the woman's face appears because sometimes the kyubi appears as a beautiful woman?

    I've always thought that no matter how much my cats like me, if I were small enough they'd eat me.

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  2. Those are cool!

    *hugs*
    Paige

    My TT is at http://paigetylertheauthor.blogspot.com/

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  3. Very cool. My girls would be all over this. Happy T13!

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  4. Good grief. They have a lot of monsters to scare their kids into being good.

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  5. creepy and fascinating. Thanks for sharing!

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  6. Very cool! Kinda creepy-scary, but cool.

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  7. At first, I missed the part about these appearing in books for children. I'll go with others here and say creepy. Using the white backgrounds to contain your comments is very attractive.

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