Godzilla's Older, Creepier Cousins

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'Yokai' Make for a Scary Halloween in Japan

The Japanese fascination with Halloween is lighthearted, but a long list of "otherwordly" monsters -- 'yokai' -- makes for a much spookier tradition.

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This fall, yokai are featured in a new book, "Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide," by the husband-and-wife team of Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt.

Yoda, 37, grew up in Tokyo, where she says she spent a good part of her elementary school years devising strategies to avoid being mutilated by one of Japan's best-known yokai, Kuchisake Onna, the Slash-Mouth Woman.

This yokai is a shapely and well-dressed but violently insecure young woman who wears a mask over her monstrously disfigured mouth, which reaches from ear to ear and is bursting with teeth.

"First of all, she asks you if she is pretty," Yoda said. "If you say, 'Yes, you're pretty,' she's going to cut your mouth just like hers. But if you say she is not pretty, she is going to cut your mouth anyway."

While Yoda was debating this horrible conundrum in Tokyo schoolyards, Alt was growing up in Potomac, where he was desperate to read Japanese comic books.

"This was during the era of Japan-bashing, when everyone was afraid that Japanese corporations were going to take over the United States," said Alt, 35. "At Walt Whitman High School, the other kids took Japanese-language classes because they wanted an edge in business. I just wanted to read about Godzilla in his native language."

Godzilla is the most famous kaiju, or "strange beast," and is considered to be a younger cousin of yokai.

Alt and Yoda met when she was in graduate school at the University of Maryland and he was working at the U.S. Patent Office, translating Japanese patent applications. He moonlighted translating Japanese video games.

At a party, he asked her to help him with the videos, and their collaboration soon turned into a marriage. In short order, they moved to Tokyo and formed a successful two-person company that specializes in the translation of comic books and video games. Their work includes the English-language version of "Dead or Alive Xtreme 2."

They turned to yokai, they said, because they wanted to do original work and because they love them.

Since she was a child, Yoda has been reading yokai tales of terror and studying yokai art. Alt traces the roots of Japanese pop culture, including anime, manga and films, back to yokai cards that Japanese children played with in the 1800s.

Their book is a breezy summary of what the average Japanese adult probably already knows about yokai.

Such as kappa: a short, green, flatulent monster with a tortoise shell on his back and a cup of water on his head, from which he draws his terrible powers. He likes to eat human entrails. Kappa are said to live in rivers, lakes, swamps and wetlands.

To keep their offspring from playing in these dangerous places, parents over the years have told chilling tales of what an angry kappa can do.

But kappa, like many yokai, have a weakness that is characteristically Japanese.

"They are very polite creatures," Alt said. "If you encounter a kappa, the best way to survive is to bow. He will bow back, and the water will spill out of his head dish, thus rendering him completely harmless."

And what about Slash-Mouth Woman, the one who cuts your face if you are nice and cuts your face if you are not?

"She likes candy," Yoda said. "The best way to escape is to always carry candy, and when she comes near, throw it as far as you can and run like crazy."