Live in Tokyo? Get yourself to the National Science Museum in Ueno. There's a great new exhibition on "monster culture" -- namely, a collection of woodblock prints, scrolls, and even a handful of mummified specimens of mythical "yokai" monsters like tengu (apparently a mix of bird and squirrel bones), a kappa's amputated hand, and mermaids ("Splash" this ain't, as seen above.) It's also chock-full of helpfully detailed info on the creatures, such as the fact that a kappa has not one but three anuses. You learn something new every day.
If this sounds suspiciously like a circus sideshow to you, just remember: it's at the Science Museum, so this shit's real. Actually, it's a total must-see for anyone with even the slightest interest in classical Japanese creatures. You know, the sort of freaky guys that populate fairy tales and even the occasional modern production such as Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro. One item in particular, an Edo-era scroll documenting a group of samurai getting their asses handed to them by giant owls, catfish-headed dragons, and other monsters reads like the feudal prototype for a long-lost Toho flick. And a good chunk of the 17th century illustrated literature on display looks like something you'd find on the shelves of a modern-day manga cafe: stories of human-sized insects terrorizing townspeople, sumo wrestlers supervising bouts between kappa, squads of samurai hunting down giant-sized spiders.
The scientific connection seems tenuous at first, but here's the deal: the yokai and their ilk represent early attempts to explain natural phenomena, so they're basically Japan's first steps towards establishing what we now know as the physical sciences. Sounds a little too educational for ya? They're also widely revered as the predecessors of the Pokemon. Now get in there and get 'em all. The exhibition runs through November 12th.
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