Mononoke Museum

The town of Miyoshi in the mountains of Hiroshima Prefecture sits in a basin at the confluence of three rivers. Thanks to this geographical setting, the town is visited by thick nighttime fogs that linger even after sunrise. In the indistinct world this creates in the streets of Miyoshi, people began to believe that worse things than fog also visited the town — goblins of every description.

This belief was crystalised in a story about a samurai youth, sixteen-year old Inō Heitarō, who met all of the goblins (known as yōkai in Japanese). In May 1749, Heitarō and his friend Gonpachi tested their courage with a little séance. They climbed nearby Mt. Higuma, a known power spot, where they lit a hundred candles. Then they took turns telling spooky stories, and after each story, they blew out a candle. When all the candles were out, they waited in the darkness on the mountain to see what might appear. Nothing did, so they went home to bed.

However, a month later, weird things started visiting Heitarō, both day and night. When he was sleeping, a woman with a long serpentine neck started licking his face. He spotted a huge toad peering out of the dark of his closet. As he sat on his veranda in the sunshine, a crowd of the most loathsomely bizarre creatures crashed through his garden fence carrying a palanquin. Heitarō caught only a glimpse of the terrible face of the personage within.

But Heitarō was the brave son of samurai, and he was unperturbed. At night he ignored the licking and the warts, sleeping soundly until morning. During daylight, he merely cast an appraising glance at each new apparition.

After a month of this, the palanquin came again, and the ghastly king of the goblins got out. His horrible Highness congratulated Heitarō on his sangfroid and disappeared.

This story is told in one of Japan’s first manga series, a picture scroll depicting all of the monsters that Heitarō encountered in vivid detail. Numerous editions were produced, and it gained popularity all over Japan.

A version of this scroll is preserved at the Mononoke Museum in Miyoshi. Mononoke is another name for yōkai, a supernatural being. Of course, the tale of Heitarō isn’t the only ghost story in Japan, and the museum has a large collection of other works of spooky art, including prints, drawings, and even netsuke. Some truly horrible monsters have been reproduced as three-dimensional models.

One room of the museum is a digital interaction theatre. You’re given a colouring sheet depicting one of several traditional Japanese ghouls and some crayons, and you can colour it in according to your fancy. It’s then scanned, and your monster appears animated on a huge screen, interacting socially with everybody else’s creation.

This is a unique and highly entertaining museum that documents the Japanese fear and longing for the supernatural, through every available artistic medium.