Greetings yokai lovers!

June is here, but we’ve been having plenty of cool, cloudy weather, so the temperature has been cool and very pleasant for the past week. June is one of my favorite months here in Fukui, and I like to call this season “good summer.” It’s warm, often sunny, and perfect outdoor weather. After June comes the rainy season, and after that comes what I call “bad summer,” because July through August in Fukui are unbearably hot. But June is just perfect!

The photo above is from Miyoshi, Hiroshima. I visited there in June of last year to climb Mt. Higuma, the mountain in the Heitaro legend. Climbing that mountain was extremely difficult for someone as out of shape as me, but I’m glad I can say that I did. Of course having experienced that myself helps me appreciate the difficulty of the task that Heitaro endures in the story. Some day I plan to make a detailed English translation of the full legend, but I have to finish my current projects first.

This month I am doing some final touch ups on art for Echizen-Wakasa Kidan, and I am meeting with lacquerware makers, washi producers, and other artisans who are masters of Fukui’s traditional crafts in order to produce unique yokai-themed goods that will tie in with the launch of the new book. I’ll share some of the updated artwork as I complete them.

I will also continue illustrating some of the amazing yokai in Kochi Prefecture’s Tosa obake zoshi, the source of the most recently spirits we’ve been looking at.

Also, this month is Print month for everyone in the Art Collector tier! So if you’re getting art prints and have any preferences for the prints you get, send me a message with your desired prints!

More soon…