Yokai first influenced Japanese pop culture during the 8th century Kai Wiesner-Hanks, a representative of the San Francisco\u2019s Consulate General of Japan said,\u201cYokai , put simply, are Japanese monsters.\u201d
\nWiesner-Hanks, a guest speaker for Professor Ikuko Fukui’s Elementary Japanese class, held a lecture titled, \u201cWhat are Yokai,\u201d on March 13, in the business building at 11:00 am. Dr. Tomoko Kozasa, Fresno State coordinator of Japanese minor, said of planning the event, \u201cI asked [Wiesner-Hanks] to have a lecture on something about Japanese culture which covers Japanese history and at the same time attracts our current students’ interest – anime and\/or manga.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wiesner -Hanks explained how Yokai found their origins in three different motivations . Initially, Yokai were either used to explain natural phenomena or were from earlier mythology. He further explained that people then created and imagined new Yokai later on.<\/p>\n
Yokai found their peak popularity during the Edo period, a point in time during the 17th to 19th centuries, during which Japan closed off its borders and economy from the world.<\/p>\n
Wiesner-Hanks, when elaborating on the influence Yokai still have today, used the example of Amabie, a Yokai said to prevent plagues:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Covid[-19] first hit, Amabie exploded in popularity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Jordan Lockwood, a 20-year-old theater major, spoke about how she grew up listening to stories of these monsters and how she is trying to reconnect to her Japanese heritage,\u201cI know about Yokai a little bit because I grew up in a Japanese household.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pointing to a specific instance, she said,\u201c\u2026 there’s this one, [and] her name is Tamamo-no-mae. She turned into this nine-tailed- fox. She became an evil spirit because she was a courtesan to the Emperor and was killed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Students present also compared their own culture to the stories of Yokai.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a lot of similarities [in Mexican mythology], so even if you\u2019re on the other side of the world, there are a lot of similarities for a lot of different things,\u201d said Erika Gomez, a 30-year-old medical major.<\/p>\n
Wiesner-Hanks, when talking about the global spotlight that Yokai have even today, remarked that in his view, \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of belief in powers that we don\u2019t see.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yokai first influenced Japanese pop culture during the 8th century Kai Wiesner-Hanks, a representative of the San Francisco\u2019s Consulate General of Japan said,\u201cYokai , put simply, are Japanese monsters.\u201d Wiesner-Hanks, a guest speaker for Professor Ikuko Fukui’s Elementary Japanese class, held a lecture titled, \u201cWhat are Yokai,\u201d on March 13, in the business building at…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,374],"tags":[],"staff_name":[1716,1764],"class_list":["post-17325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-campus-life","category-reviews","staff_name-jason-torres-iraheta","staff_name-kasandra-arreola"],"yoast_head":"\n