• Proposed Project Name: Japanese Supernatural Beliefs
• Proposed Field Researcher: Tatsuya
• Proposed Department: Parapsychology
• Proposed Faculty: Social Sciences
• Start Date:
• End Date:
• Assisting Sub-Editor:

Project Description

A collection of pages to aid the intrepid hitchhiker as they deal with Japanese friends, read Japanese books and comics, watch Japanese films, or in case they should a) get lost in the dark while in Japan or b) get lost in the dark somewhere else while within striking distance of a party of Japanese supernatural beings on a package holiday.

Pages currently in progress: None

Pages proposed:

• Japanese Supernatural Bestiary: list and descriptions of common Japanese monsters, sprites etc. that might turn up in other entries.
• Supernatural Japanese Cinema: films available in the west with a significant supernatural content.
• Supernatural Japanese Literature: modern Japanese literature available in translation + Noh/Kabuki etc. you might see, and their historical background.
• Japanese Supernatural Customs: calendrical events and their supernatural connotations, supernatural pasttimes.
• Japanese Superstitions: the Japanese equivalents of throwing salt over ones shoulder, not walking under ladders, not breaking mirrors etc.
• Ainu Supernatural Bestiary: list and descriptions of common Ainu monsters, sprites etc. from the Yukara. This one will be hard to research, but lets start ambitious.

Contributing Researchers

Possibly:

• Jamie of the Portacabin, beast-contributor at large.
• Dave, otaku-in-residence.
• Tatsuya, reader-of-strange-writing.

Hopefully we can pick up some more before the off.

Further Information Required

At the moment I would like to hammer out the scope of the possible project and articles a bit more firmly. If you have suggestions about other topics or a better way of splitting the topics here, please join the Japanese Ghosts thread in Tatsuya's Journal for now, in case the project doesn't get underway or transmogrifies into something else and this page gets deleted.