One of the coolest mythical Asian animals is the Kirin. You may remember my earlier post on Kirin from last year’s A-Yokai-A-Day entry, so I won’t get into too much detail about what exactly a Kirin is.

You may remember earlier I mentioned how seasons are going to play a theme in this book. Fans of Haiku and other Japanese art may be aware of how important seasonal motifs are. In fact, there is even a specific word for seasonal vocabulary: kigo.

You can often tell the month of a Japanese painting by key flowers, animals, or activities inserted into the image. Hiroshige and Hokusai used seasonal motifs in many of their works, and the detail is so precise that you can almost arrange the paintings of their larger series into specific weeks of the year.

If you pay attention to the yokai in these book, you’ll notice similar clues as to when each picture takes place. (Of course, I’ve been uploading summertime images for the present time, simply because it’s summer. I’ll put up a few different seasonal pieces later on though.)

Kirin