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Depiction of ectrodactyly, sirenomelia and cyclopia in a figure by Hokusai

The fame of the Japanese artist, Katsushika Hokusai, is attributed, in part, to his representations of nature. The most renowned series is the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji from which comes the famous image Under the Wave Off Kanagawa (Great Wave). However, his enormous body of work covered a broad array of topics and themes including images from popular culture, fantasy and mythology. During his time, a fondness for the strange, mysterious, and grotesque flourished, manifesting in the proliferation of horror-based entertainment including a genre of art replete with supernatural imagery of ghosts, monsters, and demons. A popular game developed called Hyaku monogatari (100 Stories) involving evening gatherings during which ghost stories were told. As each story ended, a candle was extinguished, and as the last one was doused—resulting in complete darkness—it was believed monsters would appear and mysterious occurrences would take place. In this woodblock print, One Hundred Ghost Stories in a Haunted House, Hokusai depicted the culmination of such an evening wherein the participants are terrified, beset by a variety of supernatural beings (y okai). While this work is an early example of this genre, the images would have been familiar within the popular culture as many of these fanciful creatures developed names and common characteristics, albeit with countless variations. This richly colored scene is set in a traditional Japanese house. The mood is distressing. There is a vanishing point perspective (J. uki-e) with well-defined foreground and distant landscape (allée of tall trees, streams, hills) with seven humans (male) cowering in fear as at least 10 creatures (y okai) surround them on all sides. Although the creature on the roof seems to have the recognizable features of a rat, the others seem to be chimeras of assorted real and imagined figures. Much has been written about other monsters printed by Hokusai (Addiss, 1985), but less often about the Received: 9 October 2020 Accepted: 16 October 2020