Gerald Figal, Civilization and Monsters: Spirits of Modernity in Meiji Japan (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999).

Really fun book! I'm admittedly tired of reading about Yanigata Kunio, the 'grandfather' of fokelore studies in Japan (at least, that's always how he's presented - but Figal puts him in a historical context where he was not the ( Read more... )