We live in a world of monsters

Yōkai is an umbrella signifier for things we usually associate with terms such as monster, spirit, goblin, demon, phantom, spectre, shapeshifter, and so on.¹1 For a list of equivalent terms, see Michael Dylan Foster, Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore: The Book of Yōkai (Berkeley, CA, and London: University of California Press, 2015), 14.
Originating in local legends in Japan, in folktales and regional ghost stories, yōkai take many forms.²2 Individual yōkai can be found in Japandemonium Illustrated: The Yōkai Encyclopedias of Toriyama Sekien, trans. and ed. Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt (New York: Dover, 2016). This work is a republication in one volume of Sekien's Gazu Hyakki Yagyo (1776); Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (1779); Konjaku Hyakki Shui (1781); and Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro (1784). This resurgence of scholarly interest in them is shown in the reprints and annotations of Sekien's work, Michael Dylan Foster's criticism, and the work of the artist and scholar Hinonome Kijin. Seminal critical works on yōkai include Michael Dylan Foster's Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yōkai (Berkeley, CA, and London: University of California Press, 2009) and The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015). See also popular histories, including Catrien Ross, Haunted Japan: Exploring the World of Japanese Yōkai, Ghosts and the Paranormal (North Clarendon, VT: Tuttle, 2020); Kazuhiko Komatsu, An Introduction to Yōkai Culture: Monsters, Ghosts, and Outsiders in Japanese History, trans. Matt Alt (Tokyo: Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture, 2017).
They are commonly associated with folklore, but they have also long populated literature and visual culture. Toriyama Sekien (1712–88), an eighteenth‐century scholar, poet, and artist, produced the illustrated books of yōkai that appeared in Hyakki Yagyō, or monster parade scrolls. This creation of images is profoundly important to the cultural history of yōkai.³3 Koichi Yumoto, Yōkai Museum: The Art of Japanese Supernatural Beings from Yumoto Koichi Collection (Tokyo: P‐I‐E Books, 2013).
It has meant that the depictions of certain yōkai have become fixed.⁴4 Michael Dylan Foster argues that, ‘as image making continued through the years, many of the yōkai pictured did not come from local beliefs: rather, they were invented for purposes of recreation, pleasure and amusement’ (Book of Yokai, 29).
Sekien's compendia of everyday demons was translated into English and published as Japandemonium in 2016, triggering a resurgence of scholarly interest in yōkai and their visual representation. Today yōkai are found in anime, manga, film, video games, and role‐playing entertainments.⁵5 The stand‐out series being Mizuki Shigeru's Kitaro comic series, the best‐selling suspense novels of Kyōgoku Natsuhiko, and the videogame‐based Yo‐kai Watch (Yoda and Alt, Japandemonium, 1x).
This essay will focus on one yōkai, Amabie, a mer‐monster from Japan's Edo period (1603–1868), who is being revived to ward off the Covid‐19 virus in 2020. I will argue that our understanding of crises is enhanced via the hybrid monsters they engender; here, I focus on the viral spread of the apotropaic image of Amabie via the internet. I also position Amabie as a Gothic artefact, though one which invites a revision of some of the approaches to monstrosity prevalent in Gothic studies.

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's monster theory, developed at the end of the twentieth century, asserts that ‘the monster is born at a metaphoric crossroads, as an embodiment of a certain cultural moment – of a time, a feeling, and a place’.⁶6 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Monster Culture (Seven Theses)’, in Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (ed.), Monster Theory, Monster Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 3–25 (p.4). Cohen’s theory offers seven theses towards understanding cultures through the monsters they engender: the monster's body is a cultural body; the monster always escapes; the monster is harbinger of category crisis – due to its hybridity; the monster dwells at the gates of difference; the monster polices the borders of the possible; fear of the monster is really a kind of desire; the monster stands at the threshold of becoming.
He argues that ‘the monster's body is pure culture. A construct and a projection, the monster exists only to be read: the monstrum is etymologically “that which reveals”, “that which warns”, a glyph that seeks a hierophant.’⁷7 Cohen, ‘Monster Culture’, 4.
Cohen's monster theory appears on first reading to be applicable to the hybrid yōkai, and thus relevant to its deployment in the current pandemic. However, there are questions that arise over how the theory might accommodate a benevolent and reassuring monster, such as Amabie, whose story is a consoling fantasy, rather than a myth of terror. The playfulness of yōkai, which exhibits a tension between the fearful and the comic, is perhaps more easily accounted for in Catherine Spooner's theory of post‐millennial happy Gothic, as I will show.⁸8 Catherine Spooner, Post‐Millennial Gothic: Comedy, Romance and the Rise of Happy Gothic (London: Bloomsbury, 2017).
With the advent of the Covid‐19 pandemic in 2020, a mode of ‘CoronaGothic’ may be discerned; it is the significance of Amabie's role in crises to which I now turn.

Japan's curious first encounter with Amabie was recorded in wood‐block printed bulletins, or Kawarabanj, in May 1846, accompanied by a likeness of the creature (see Figure 1).⁹9 Eishun Nagano, Head Librarian at the Fukui Prefectural Archives in the central Japanese prefecture of Fukui, is the leading authority on Amabie sources: see ‘Edo Period Ghost “Amabie” Popular in Japan amid Virus Crisis’, Nippon.com (12 March 2020), https://www.nippon.com/en/news/yjj2020031201079/edo‐period‐ghost‐amabie‐popular‐in‐japan‐amid‐virus‐crisis.html (accessed 8 August 2020).
This helped to disseminate the image widely across Japan. Amabie's story begins with a government official investigating a mysterious green light in the water in the former Higo province, whereupon a glowing‐green creature with fishy scales, long hair, three fin‐like legs, and a beak emerged from the sea. The creature introduced itself to the official and predicted two things: a rich harvest would bless Japan for the next six years, and a plague would ravage the country. The mysterious mer‐creature insisted that, in order to stave off disease, people should draw an image of it and share it with as many people as possible.¹⁰10 A brief but reliable account of the Amabie story can be found in Yuki Furukawa, ‘Amabié: A Japanese Symbol of the COVID‐19 Pandemic’, Journal of the American Medical Association, July 2020, https://jamanetwork‐com.ezproxy.herts.ac.uk/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768645 (accessed 8 August 2020).

For many of the 174 years following 1846, Amabie has remained dormant. But as the Covid‐19 virus swept across Japan, Amabie's image resurfaced on social media, bringing hope to those who share it that it will help to end the current pandemic. Artists have been quick to publish cartoon versions of Amabie on social networks.¹¹11 Haruno Kosaka, ‘Plague‐Predicting Japanese Folklore Creature Resurfaces amid Coronavirus Chaos’, The Mainichi (25 March 2020), https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200325/p2a/00m/0na/021000c (accessed 8 August 2020).
Orochi Do, an art shop specialising in hanging scrolls of yōkai, is said to have been the first to post Amabie on Twitter as a new ‘coronavirus countermeasure’ in late February 2020.¹²12 Matt Alt, ‘From Japan, a Mascot for the Pandemic’, The New Yorker, 9 April 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural‐comment/from‐japan‐a‐mascot‐for‐the‐pandemic (accessed 8 August 2020).
This fishy, longhaired, birdlike yōkai has now inspired thousands of images of itself in Japan in recent weeks, appearing on cakes, noodles, face masks, and hand sanitisers. It has even sparked the #AmabieChallenge on Twitter – urging people to share their own Amabie image world‐wide to save them from the coronavirus. Its popularity has since spread to five continents.

In Japan, as the country declared a state of emergency, people reacted to the Covid‐19 pandemic in a unique way: by sharing images online of this mystical, mermaid‐like being believed to ward off plagues. Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has since enlisted Amabie for an awareness flyer it circulated on social media, urging people to ‘stop the spread of infection’ (see Figure 2).¹³13 https://twitter.com/MHLWitter/status/1248143633225666562, accessed 17 July 2020.
A feeling of hope is generated by each new sharing of the mer‐creature’s image, and Amabie is now a unifying force as Japan reaches deep into its own folkloric past to find solace during the current crisis.

I argue that this resurrected folkloric narrative is a Gothic one. Yōkai have Gothic credentials, as shown in their affinity to darkness and shade. Michael Dylan Foster explains that yōkai can appear at any time of the day or night, but they prefer ‘the dim light of twilight or dawn … the ushimtsu, the third quarter of the hour of the ox, about 2.00–2.30 a.m. when night was at its darknest’.¹⁴14 Foster, The Book of Yokai, 23.
Another common characteristic of yōkai is their liminality, their ‘inbetweenness’. Foster relates that yōkai are ‘creatures of the borderlands, living on the edge of town, or in the mountains between villages, or in the eddies of a river running between two rice fields … they haunt bridges and tunnels, entranceways and thresholds. They lurk at crossroads’.¹⁵15 Foster, The Book of Yokai, 5.
‘Liminality’ refers primarily to the concept of the threshold, the area between two spaces, or what lies between the known and the unknown; it is frequently claimed for the Gothic mode.¹⁶16 See, for example, Peter Messent's definition of liminality as Gothic in ‘American Gothic’, Journal of American and Comparative Cultures, 23:4 (2000), 23–35 (p.23).
It is perhaps unsurprising that Amabie has returned at a symbolically dark moment in history. Rather than lurking obscurely in the shadows, the Amabie is now the beacon that is guiding us out of the darkness.

Yōkai haunt thresholds and shadows, they are unsettlingly hybrid, and undeniably Gothic. Amabie is also reassuringly prophetic (and Cohen claims that monsters serve to warn). Yumoto Kōichi uses the term ‘Yogenjū’, or prophesy beasts; Amabie is one of this type of yōkai.¹⁷17 Koichi Yumoto, Yōkai Museum, 66.
There are others too. Kudan is a human‐faced bovine. Upon being born, it utters a prophecy which will always come true, then dies. It is said to appear at times of unrest, natural disaster, or epidemic.¹⁸18 See Foster, ‘Kudan’, in The Book of Yokai, 216–17; and Kazuhiko Komatsu, An Introduction to Yōkai Culture, 3.
Images of yōkai were popular good luck charms in the Edo period despite their monstrosity, and Amabie is more powerful than most because it is apotropaic, averting evil via the circulation of its own image.

中文翻译：

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阿玛比风靡一时：可怕的佣兵重返哥特式Covid‐19战斗

我们生活在一个怪物世界中

Yōkai是我们通常与诸如怪物，精神，妖精，恶魔，幻影，幽灵，变形者之类的术语相关联的事物的总称。^1个1有关等效术语的列表，请参阅迈克尔·迪伦·福斯特（Michael Dylan Foster），《日本民俗学的神秘生物：洋海之书》（加利福尼亚伯克利和伦敦：加利福尼亚大学出版社，2015年），第14页。
yōkai起源于日本的当地传说，民间传说和地方幽灵故事，其形式多种多样。^2个2个体yōkai可以在Japandemonium中找到。插图：《鸟山世界》的Yōkai百科全书。和编辑。尤达裕子（Hiroko Yoda）和马特·阿特（Matt Alt）（纽约：多佛（Dover），2016年）。这项工作是塞基恩的加祖·百吉·八木（1776）的一部著作的再版；魔芋加祖左派（1779）; 忍者百草水（1781）; 和Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro（1784）。对塞金的作品，迈克尔·迪伦·福斯特（Michael Dylan Foster）的批评以及艺术家和学者日之女Kijin的作品的转载和注释中都显示了对它们的学术兴趣的兴起。关于洋洋的开创性批判作品包括迈克尔·迪伦·福斯特（Michael Dylan Foster）的作品。《祭坛大游行》：《日本怪兽与妖怪的文化》（加利福尼亚州伯克利和伦敦：加利福尼亚大学出版社，2009年）和《妖怪经》：《日本民间传说的神秘生物》（加利福尼亚州奥克兰：加利福尼亚大学出版社，2015年）。另请参见受欢迎的历史，包括Catrien Ross，《闹鬼的日本：探索日本人的世界》，《鬼魂和超自然现象》（北克拉伦登，佛蒙特州：塔特尔，2020年）；小松和彦（Kazuhiko Komatsu），《日本文化介绍：日本历史上的怪物，鬼魂和局外人》，译。马特·阿特（Matt Alt）（东京：日本文化产业出版基金会，2017年）。
它们通常与民间文学艺术有关，但是它们也拥有悠久的文学和视觉文化。十八世纪的学者，诗人和画家鸟山关园（Toriyama Sekien，1712-88年）制作了插图版的yōkai，这些书出现在HyakkiYagyō（怪兽游行卷轴）中。图像的创作对于yōkai的文化历史具有极其重要的意义。³3汤本浩一，四海市博物馆：汤本浩一收藏的日本超自然人的艺术（东京：P-I-E图书，2013年）。
这意味着某些yōkai的描述已变得固定。⁴4迈克尔·迪伦·福斯特（Michael Dylan Foster）辩称，“随着这些年来图像制作的不断发展，所描绘的许多yōkai并非来自当地的信仰：而是出于娱乐，愉悦和娱乐的目的而发明的”（Yokai书，29）。
Sekien的日常恶魔纲要被翻译成英文，并于2016年作为Japandemonium出版，这引发了学术界对yōkai及其视觉表现形式的兴趣重新兴起。如今，yōkai出现在动漫，漫画，电影，视频游戏和角色扮演娱乐中。⁵5最杰出的系列包括水木茂的喜多郎漫画系列，京极夏彦的畅销悬疑小说以及基于视频游戏的《妖怪手表》（Yoda and Alt，Japandemonium，1x）。
本文将重点介绍一位来自日本江户时代（1603-1868年）的怪物yōkai（Amabie），他将在2020年复活以抵御Covid-19病毒。我认为，我们对危机的理解通过他们产生的混合怪物；在这里，我重点介绍通过互联网传播的Amabie人体形象的病毒式传播。我也将阿玛比（Amabie）定位为哥特式人工制品，尽管它要求对哥特式研究中普遍存在的怪异方法进行一些修订。

杰弗里·杰罗姆·科恩（Jeffrey Jerome Cohen）的怪兽理论是在20世纪末发展起来的，他断言：“怪兽诞生于一个隐喻的十字路口，作为某种文化时刻（时间，一种感觉和一个地方）的体现”。⁶6杰弗里·杰罗姆·科恩（Jeffrey Jerome Cohen），“怪物文化（七个论点）”，杰弗里·杰罗姆·科恩（Jeffrey Jerome Cohen）（编），《怪物理论》，《怪物文化》（明尼阿波利斯：明尼苏达大学出版社，1996年），第3-25页（第4页）。科恩的理论为通过它们产生的怪物理解文化提供了七个论断。怪物总是逃脱；怪物由于种类繁多而成为类别危机的预兆；怪物住在差异之门；怪物控制着可能的边界；害怕怪物真的是一种欲望。怪物正处在变成门槛的时候。
他认为，“怪物的身体是纯粹的文化。怪物是一种构造和投射，它的存在只能被阅读：从词源上讲，雌兽是“揭示的东西”，“警告的东西”，寻求象形文字的字形。⁷7科恩，“怪兽文化”，4。
一读，科恩的怪兽理论似乎适用于混合型yōkai，因此与它在当前大流行中的部署有关。但是，有关该理论如何容纳一个善良而又令人放心的怪物（例如阿玛比）的故事却引起了疑问，阿玛比的故事是一个令人安慰的幻想，而不是恐怖的神话。正如我将要说明的那样，yōkai的好玩性表现出恐惧与喜剧之间的张力，这也许更容易解释为凯瑟琳·斯普纳（Catherine Spooner）的千禧年后的快乐哥特式理论。⁸8凯瑟琳·斯普纳（Catherine Spooner），《千禧年后的哥特式：喜剧，浪漫史和快乐哥特式的兴起》（伦敦：布卢姆斯伯里，2017年）。
随着2020年Covid-19大流行的到来，可能会发现一种“ CoronaGothic”模式。这就是我现在转向危机中阿玛比（Amabie）的作用的意义。

1846年5月，日本人第一次与Amabie发生好奇的互动是用木刻印刷的公告或Kawaraban j记录的，并伴随着这种生物的出现（见图1）。⁹9日本中部福井县福井县立档案馆图书馆长Eishun Nagano是Amabie消息来源的主要权威：请参阅``江户时代的幽灵“ Amabie”在病毒危机中在日本流行”（Nippon.com（2020年3月12日） ），https://www.nippon.com/cn/news/yjj2020031201079/edo-period-ghost-amabie-popular-in-japan-amid-virus-crisis.html（于2020年8月8日访问）。
这有助于在日本各地广泛传播这一形象。阿玛比（Amabie）的故事始于政府官员调查前肥后省水中的神秘绿灯，随后一种发光的绿色生物出现了鱼鳞，长发，三条鳍状腿和喙从海中浮出。这种生物向官员介绍了自己，并预测了两件事：丰收将在未来六年里保佑日本，而瘟疫将肆虐整个国家。神秘的生物坚持认为，为了预防疾病，人们应该绘制疾病的图像并与尽可能多的人分享。¹⁰10关于Amabie故事的简短但可靠的描述可以在古河由纪（Yuki Furukawa）的《Amabié：COVID‐19大流行的日本象征》中找到，《美国医学会杂志》，2020年7月，https：//jamanetwork‐com.ezproxy .herts.ac.uk / journals / jama / fullarticle / 2768645（于2020年8月8日访问）。

在1846年后的174年中，Amabie一直处于休眠状态。但是，随着Covid-19病毒席卷整个日本，Amabie的形象在社交媒体上重新浮出水面，为分享它的人们带来了希望，这将有助于结束当前的大流行。艺术家很快就在社交网络上发布了Amabie的卡通版本。¹¹11小坂晴朗（Haruno Kosaka），《瘟疫预测日冕病毒混乱中的日本民俗生物浮出水面》，《每日新闻》（2020年3月25日），https：//mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200325/p2a/00m/0na/021000c（8月8日访问） 2020）。
据说，专营yōkai挂轴的艺术品商店Orochi Do于2020年2月下旬率先在Twitter上发布了Amabie，作为一种新的“冠状病毒对策” ^。1212 Matt Alt，``来自日本，大流行的吉祥物''，《纽约客》，2020年4月9日，https：//www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/from-japan-a-mascot-for-the大流行（2020年8月8日访问）。
这种鱼腥，长毛，鸟状的妖怪近几周来在日本已经启发了成千上万张自己的照片，出现在蛋糕，面条，口罩和洗手液上。它甚至在Twitter上引发了#AmabieChallenge，敦促人们在全球范围内分享自己的Amabie图像，以免他们被冠状病毒感染。此后，它的受欢迎程度已扩展到五大洲。

在日本，日本宣布进入紧急状态，人们以独特的方式对Covid-19大流行做出反应：通过在线共享这种神秘，像美人鱼般的形象来抵御瘟疫。此后，日本厚生劳动省邀请Amabie在社交媒体上散发宣传传单，敦促人们“制止感染的传播”（见图2）。¹³13 https://twitter.com/MHLWitter/status/1248143633225666562，于2020年7月17日访问。
每一次新分享的生物形象都产生了希望的感觉，当日本深入了解自己的民俗历史以在当前危机中寻求慰藉时，阿玛比现在已成为统一力量。

我认为这种复活的民间叙事是哥特式的。Yōkai具有哥特式的美誉，如其对黑暗和阴影的亲和力所示。迈克尔·迪伦·福斯特（Michael Dylan Foster）解释说，妖怪可以在白天或晚上的任何时间出现，但他们更喜欢“暮光或黎明的昏暗灯光…… ushimtsu，牛的第三时，大约在凌晨2.00–2.30。在最黑暗的时候”。¹⁴14 Foster，《洋海经》，23。
yōkai的另一个共同特征是他们的局限性，即他们的“中间性”。福斯特（Foster）认为yōkai是“边境地区的生物，生活在城镇的边缘，或者在村庄之间的山脉中，或者在两个稻田之间的河流涡流中……它们困扰着桥梁和隧道，入口和门槛。他们潜伏在十字路口。¹⁵15福斯特，《妖怪之书》，5。
“限制”主要是指阈值的概念，两个空间之间的区域或已知与未知之间的空间；它经常被称为哥特式模式。¹⁶16例如，参见《美国哥特式》中彼得·梅森（Peter Messent）对“合法性”作为哥特式的定义，《美国与比较文化杂志》，23：4（2000），23-35（p.23）。
难怪阿玛比（Amabie）在历史上象征性的黑暗时刻回来了。现在，Amabie不再是潜伏在阴影中，而是指引我们走出黑暗的灯塔。

Yōkai徘徊着门槛和阴影，它们令人难以置信地是混合的，并且不可否认地是哥特式的。阿玛比（Amabie）也令人放心地预言（而且科恩（Cohen）声称怪物会发出警告）。汤本光一（YumotoKōichi）使用的术语是“预言兽”。阿玛比（Amabie）是这种yōkai的一种。¹⁷17汤本浩一（Koyo Yumoto），洋海博物馆，66。
也有其他人。苦丹是人脸牛。一出生，它就会说出一个预言，这个预言将永远成真，然后死去。据说它出现在动乱，自然灾害或流行病时期。^18岁18见福斯特，“库丹”，见《洋海经》，216–17；和小松和彦（Katsuhiko Komatsu），《洋海文化概论》，3。
尽管yōkai的图像具有怪异性，但它们在江户时代仍然是受欢迎的吉祥物。Amabie比大多数功能更强大，因为它是一种能使自己流失的邪恶之物。