Yokai Monsters
Yokai are strange fantastical creatures/spirits based in Japanese folklore. There is a wide assortment of them, some good, some bad. They generally have a direct resemblance to certain animals. Many artists have depicted Yokai over the past several hundred years. Hayao Miyazaki's recent film "Spirited Away" included a lot of Yokai mythos. Linked here are many galleries showing Yokai in sculpted, painted and drawn variations. I suggest tracking down the 3 films based on Yokai from the late 60's titled "Spook Warfare, 100 Monsters and Along With Ghosts." And 2006 is a good year to be a Yokai fan as Takashi Miike's latest film titled "The Big Spook War" is due out, which is based directly on the Yokai mythology. You can find the trailer for it at this site.

Most of these galleries are in Japanese but the navigation is usually straight forward.

2nd Gallery
3rd Gallery
4th Gallery
5th Gallery
6th Gallery
7th Gallery
8th Gallery
9th Gallery
10th Gallery
11th Gallery
12th Gallery - over 100 Yokai pics in this one, check it out.
13th Gallery - Gallery of creatures from a Yokai inspired videogame.

Shonen Magazine - Yokai

Found thanks to Tokyo Scum Brigade.

Shigeru Mizuki - Yokai / Mythological Creature Illustrations, 2002

Typhon

  Scylla

  Dragon

  Cerberus

  Gremlin

  Glaukos

  Rukh

  Backbeared

  Zunuqua

  Waiwai

  Sea Serpent

  Centaurs

Shigeru Mizuki (1922 - 2015)

Yokai of Sawaki Suushi and Toriyama Sekien


The above two Yokai related paintings were created by Sawaki Suushi and part of a series of picture scrolls titled "Hyakkai Zukkan" completed in 1737. Pink Tentacle has taken some of these paintings as shown at the Wikipedia Commons gallery and created an excellent article detailing the strange creatures from the scroll series. Check it out here.
Thanks to Paul for the link!

The following works are from Toriyama Sekien (1712 – 1788) "An 18th century scholar and ukiyo-e artist of Japanese folklore. He was the teacher of Utamaro, and, before taking up printmaking, a painter of the Kano school. Toriyama is most famous for his attempt to catalogue all species of yokai in the Hyakki Yakō series." Read more info related to the artist at this Wikipedia article. More of the illustrations from his series of Yokai can be found linked to these question marks and across the links on this Wikipedia page.

Shigeru Mizuki's Yokai, 1974

Pages scanned from an August 1974 Yokai themed issue of The Sun which can be downloaded here.

And so begins Yokai week. I have thousands of images to choose from, many strange monsters to show you.

Yokai Illustrations

Bake-kujira

"Long ago, a mysterious sea creature known as the bake-kujira (lit. “ghost whale”) used to appear at night in the waters around an island in Shimane prefecture. The thing looked like the skeleton of a giant whale, and it was usually accompanied by a flock of strange birds when it came drifting in with the tide. Later, when the tide started to recede, peculiar fish would become visible in the water around the monster. Fisherman trying to catch the bake-kujira claimed their harpoons passed through the creature as if it were not there."

Umi-bōzu

"Umi-bōzu are giant black bulbous beings that live in the sea. Sometimes they have glowing eyes and a beak, and other times they have no facial features at all. To survive an umi-bōzu encounter at sea, one should remain quiet and look in the opposite direction. Speaking or looking at the creature may send it into a rage — and that usually ends in tragedy."

Suiko

"The suiko (lit. “water tiger”) is a king-sized variety of kappa living in and around the Chikugo River (Kyushu), Lake Biwa (Shiga prefecture), and other bodies of water across Japan.

In addition to prowling around at night and making mischief, the suiko has the power to possess people. Those possessed by a suiko descend into a temporary state of madness, but they recover quickly after the creature withdraws.

At least once a year, the suiko drags a human victim into the water, sucks out his blood, and returns the body to shore. It is best not to have a funeral for the victim of a suiko attack. Instead, the body should be left on a wooden plank inside a small thatched hut in a field. If done properly, this course of action causes the flesh of the suiko perpetrator to slowly rot until it dies."

Quotes and images taken from a recent article at Pink Tentacle on Yokai illustrations. See more here.

More Yokai illustrations previously mentioned here.