Yokai Japanese Monsters

The word yōkai is composed of two characters, 妖 (yō) and 怪 (kai): the former suggests charm, enchantment; the latter means appearance, mystery. The creatures that fall into this category are virtually innumerable. After all, Japan is the land of eight thousand gods, because every natural element-tree, rock, stream of water-but also every object born of human genius or labor can contain a spark of the divine.

Japanese culture, then, is steeped in a form of spirituality already predisposed to the proliferation of creatures that arise from the intersection of fantasy, religion, and everyday life. The entire exhibition is constructed, then, by giving voice to the places, spaces, feelings and sensations that the yōkai embody in order to get to the heart of the creation of an imagery deeply rooted in Japanese culture and through it explore its innermost folds, in which are hidden feelings, anxieties, fears and desires that are alive, real and material.

The exhibition opens with an immersive room that makes the public relive the experience of the traditional samurai test of courage of the Hundred Candles Ritual. Inspired by this evocative tradition, it has been chosen to have visitors proceed through a route with a narrative layout that presents the various legends of Japanese tradition from time to time in the different exhibition rooms with an enjoyable key for the visitor but rigidly scientific.

The exhibition is rounded out with a selection of contemporary illustrations, posters and playbills created for today's anime, from Son Goku, the iconic protagonist of the Dragon Ball animated series, inspired by the Monkey from the celebrated Chinese classic Journey to the West, to GeGeGe no Kitarō, Pom Poko and the worldwide hit Demon Slayer. The masterpieces of Miyazaki Hayao, Toriyama Akira and other great authors show how the aesthetics of the grotesque and monstrous, which has pervaded Japanese culture since its origins, is still an undisputed protagonist in visual art today, thanks to the incredible vitality of its iconopoeic potential, which allows it to be reincarnated in ever-new images and stories.