Once seen as embodying people’s anxieties and fears, yokai -- monsters from Japanese folklore -- are now being embraced in Japan as symbols of diversity and belonging. 

On February 22, a parade of cosplayers made its way through the streets of Tonosho, on the island of Shodoshima in western Japan.

Dressed as ghosts and monsters, the cosplayers embodied the spine-tingling unseen and things that go bump in the night -- yokai.  

The parade was a showpiece event of Yokai Expo 2026, a day of talks, performances, and market stalls in its second year on Shodoshima, drawing an estimated 4,000 visitors.

In 2013, Yagyu spearheaded the Yokai Sculpture Competition, a project which invited people to submit their own yokai including those with an original backstory.

More than 900 works, from Japan and abroad, were sent to Shodoshima during seven competitions held between 2013 and 2023.

The yokai often mirrored the issues of the day. For the 2023 competition, expert judges selected a winner in “Spring Breeze Dragon,” a yokai heralding the coming of spring. It was the unanimous choice at a time when people were emerging from the isolation brought about by the pandemic.  

Yagyu says he is happy to see so many people expressing themselves through yokai. “When I was a child, few people were doing this. Yokai were seen as scary or unpleasant,” he said. 

Yokai submitted to the sculpture competition and other art contests are stored and displayed at the Yokai Art Museum in Tonosho. The museum started out as an art gallery for a town revitalization project in 2011.

After a 2018 revamp, it reopened as the world’s only contemporary yokai art museum, with Yagyu as its director. Spread across four historical buildings, the museum also features art by Yagyu and an introduction to yokai folklore.  

At a current exhibit, museum visitors can vote for their favorite yokai. “Yokai Like! Like!” is proving popular. With ears shaped like birds and a tail curled into the figure “f,” it was imagined as a yokai capable of making social media posts go viral. Once people get bogged down in the need for approval, however, this yokai can do whatever it likes, the creator warns. 

While yokai folklore is driving revitalization initiatives in other parts of Japan, the museum’s focus on contemporary yokai is unique, says Shuji Sato, head of the project committee operating the museum.

“People today have used their imaginations to come up with original yokai, including yokai related to computers and smartphones. They are yokai that could only appear in the modern age, and this is the only museum dedicated to them,” he said.

Despite the current popularity of yokai, academic interest was once concentrated on stamping them out.

During the Meiji period (1868-1912), a time of rapid modernization in Japan, scholars dismissed yokai as superstitions, using reason and science to explain them away. “It was a discipline that taught people not to believe so they could become more modern and rational,” Komatsu said.