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The monsters and magical creatures found in Japanese mythology are called “yokai” or “mononoke*,” and a visit to Miyoshi’s Mononoke Museum is a chance to find out all about these mysterious, uniquely Japanese characters. The museum has three permanent exhibition rooms full of eye-catching interactive displays on the monsters, traditional Japanese scrolls and yokai artifacts with information in both Japanese and English, and even an area created by the popular digital art collective teamLab, where visitors can make their own yokai and see them come to life. Plus, there’s a changing special exhibition space, where past exhibition topics include kagura dance rituals and Japanese cryptozoology. The Miyoshi Mononoke Museum is made to be fun and accessible for visitors of all ages, and it’s the perfect place to learn a little about one very unique part of Japanese culture.

Why Miyoshi? This little town has long been connected to the world of monsters, especially since Miyoshi famously became the setting for the Ino Mononoke Roku, an Edo-era (1603-1868) scroll detailing the haunting of a samurai estate. The characters from this scroll included real people in Miyoshi, leading yokai fanatics from all around Japan to come to Miyoshi in search of the supernatural! These local tales inspired the present-day folklore and yokai researcher Koichi Yumoto, who collected more than 5,000 yokai and mononoke artifacts that eventually became the heart of the Miyoshi Mononoke Museum collection when the facility opened in 2019. (The museum’s official Japanese title even carries Yumoto’s name!) The permanent exhibitions at the museum are fairly compact, but thanks to the great collection and lots of innovative displays, there are highlights in every direction.

For visitors hoping to familiarize themselves with the stories of Japanese yokai before jumping in headfirst, look no further than the tall touch-panel screens of the digital yokai encyclopedia, right at the museum entrance! 

Entering the main exhibition rooms, the mystical participants of the “Night Parade of One Hundred Yokai” can be seen dancing across centuries-old painted scrolls before hopping right onto interactive panels, not far from a collection of yokai-themed netsuke, little kimono charms jokingly described as the “keychains of the Edo period.” Seemingly “life-size” models of monstrous mononoke look on as the museum guides visitors towards a room dedicated entirely to the Ino Mononoke Roku, featuring more than one historic illustrated copy of this famous 270-year-old tale of samurai and yokai, set in one very haunted house.

After checking out the dozens of different traditional yokai on display in the Mononoke Museum, the teamLab “Yokai Park” is the perfect place to let those creative juices flow. Each visitor can color their own yokai using a variety of templates (including kappa and tengu), and then see it burst into action on the projection-mapped walls. The real-world shadows of people in the room can even prod the little yokai to jump with surprise! The original pastel-on-paper drawings from the teamLab room make fun mementos, but anyone who wants something more to bring home will have no trouble finding a great souvenir in the gift shop, which is fully stocked with t-shirts, accessories, handkerchiefs, postcards, books, and more, all yokai-themed.

*Do you hear “mononoke” and think of the Studio Ghibli film “Princess Mononoke”? Well, it’s the same “mononoke”! The Ghibli character earned her title by living among the spirits of the forest.