Book of Yokai Author Michael Dylan Foster Gives Talk May 27

Michael Dylan Foster, Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at UC Davis, will give a talk on his tome The Book of Yokai at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 27 in UC Santa Cruz’s Humanities 1 Building, Room 210. The lecture, sponsored by the Puknat Literary Studies Endowment and presented by the Center for Monster Studies, is free and open to the public.

Monsters, spirits, fantastic beings, and supernatural creatures haunt the folklore and popular culture of Japan. Broadly labeled yokai, they appear in many forms, from tengu mountain goblins and kappa water sprites, to shape-shifting kitsune foxes and long-tongued ceiling-lickers. Popular today in anime, manga, film, and video games, many yokai originated in local legends, folktales, and regional ghost stories. The Book of Yokai invites readers to examine how people create, transmit, and collect folklore, and how they make sense of the mysteries in the world around them.

A printable map to Humanities 1 and its parking can be found here. For detailed driving directions, please visit maps.ucsc.edu.