This Monday in Japan is Respect for the Aged Day, a very self-explanatory holiday where we remember our elders and (hopefully) spend some quality time with parents and grandparents. Which coincidentally also makes it a perfect day for talking about yokai, as the elderly usually have tons of great stories from their childhood that none of your friends have ever heard.
Speaking of yokai, A Yokai A Day is next month. It’s already mid-September and I can’t believe how fast this month is flying by! I am busy preparing for the Kickstarter which will launch my second yokai book, a second volume of The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons! I have all of the yokai for the book selected and organized, and the overall theme of the book decided. Those of you who have remember when Night Parade was being made may remember that Night Parade is build on a one-year theme, with the sequence of illustrations cycling through all four seasons. This second book will also have a theme, though instead of a year, it will be based on a single night, from dusk to dawn.
Part of the reason for the theme is that I am doing a small focus on onmyoudou, or Japanese sorcery, in the book, and certain times of the night have an auspicious, magical nature to them. For example, dusk is known is oumagatoki, which can be translated a few ways, but one of them is “the hour of meeting evil spirits,” and another one is “the hour of great calamity.”
Another magically-powerful time is ushi no koku, or the hour of the ox. The old Japanese clock was based on the Chinese zodiac, and each hour was named for one zodiacal animal and lasted 120 minutes. 
The hour of the ox lasted from 1-3 am, and was supposed to be the hour when yokai and other demons were most active. Another nickname for this time is kusaki mo nemuru ushi mittsu koku, meaning “the hour when even trees and shrubs are asleep, the third quarter of the hour of the ox” (or, if you like, quarter to rat?) — equivalent to 2 am. It’s the Japanese equivalent of the witching hour, and will serve as the central theme to this book.
So don’t forget to mark your calendars for October 1, when the Kickstarter launches! And if you are still new to yokai, The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons is currently on sale at Amazon.com for almost 80% off! I’m not sure how long Amazon’s sale will last; it could end any day now, or in 2 weeks… but if you have been waiting for a price drop to pick up Night Parade, now is probably the best time to pick up a copy!
Bonus quiz: can anyone name the three yokai portraits in this post? | 今週の月曜日は日本では祝日の一つ、「敬老の日」です。年長者に敬意を払い、両親や祖父母などと共に祝う日です。年長者の語る、長年の人生の経験から紡ぎだされる偉大な思い出話や、今まで誰からも聞いたことがなかったような不可思議な話がきける事でしょう・・・・。「敬老の日」、これは妖怪を語るのにもってこいの日とも言えるのかもしれませんね。
妖怪といえば、もう９月も半ばに入りました。A Yokai A Dayは今年もまた１０月に始まります！
今、私は第２弾目の妖怪本を出版するためのKickstarterプロジェクトを立ち上げる準備に追われています。約１年半前に「The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons：百鬼夜行」を出版しましたが、今回の本はその続編となります。前回のNight Parade:百鬼夜行は一年を通した”四季”がテーマとなっていましたが、今回の本では”一つの夜”をベースに考えています。
このテーマに決めた理由の一つが、″陰陽道″にもフォーカスを当てたものにしようと思ったからです。また、日本にはある特定の不思議な時間帯を表す言葉があるのでそれからも本のイメージを考えています。例えば”逢魔時（大禍時）：”The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits” または “The Hour of Great Calamity”などです。
その他の不可思議な力の宿る時間帯として”丑の刻”があります。昔、日本の時刻は十二支を用いて表されていました。一日は１２分割され、それぞれに干支の名前がついていたのです。丑の刻は深夜１時から３時頃の時間帯を指しており、この時間帯は幽霊など物の怪が最も活動すると言われているのです。この時間帯の別の表現として有名なものには、”草木も眠る丑三刻”という言葉もあります。丑三刻とは大体２時頃を指した時間帯で、英語でいうwitching hourにあたります。今回の本では、この時間帯に特に焦点を当ててメインテーマを考えています。
カレンダーの１０月１日に印をつけておくのを忘れずに！Kickstarter がスタートしますよ！
ボーナスクイズ：今回のブログポストに登場した３種の妖怪画、一体何の妖怪か分かる人はいますか？