I love Japanese folklore, with all the ghosts (yurei), monsters (yokai), paranormal stuff (like ikiryo), but I also consider kaiju to be a modern day addition to all of it. I originally got interested in yokai legends because of Gegege no Kitaro, (a great manga with multiple anime versions produced since the mid-60s). I like Kitaro because they don’t go for scary, but a “monsters are our friends” approach, and that’s kind of the focus of the tv show Yokai Sharehouse as well.
One yokai legend is the Amabie, which I guess you could say is like ground hog day in the US; only on steroids. Instead of popping up and just telling you what the weather will be for six weeks, it climbs out of the ocean and tells you if the harvest is going to be abundant, or if you’re gonna have a plague. Below is one of the first images of it, from the late Edo period. It has long seaweed like hair, a beak, and three legs. The creature has also appeared in both Kitaro, and Yokai Sharehouse, and isn’t played as menacing, but rather intended to be helpful.
The actual prophecy (according to wikipedia) is “Good harvest will continue for six years from the current year; if disease spreads, draw a picture of me and show the picture of me to those who fall ill and they will be cured.”
That in mind, here’s hoping for years of good harvest, and an end to these crappy times.
