is the fourth book of Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese artist Toriyama Sekien

Toriyama Sekien

thumb|200px| was 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 Kanō school. Toriyama is most famous for his attempt to catalogue all species of yōkai in the Hyakki Yakō series.-References:...

's famous Gazu Hyakki Yakō series, published ca. 1781. These books are supernatural bestiaries

Bestiary

A bestiary, or Bestiarum vocabulum is a compendium of beasts. Bestiaries were made popular in the Middle Ages in illustrated volumes that described various animals, birds and even rocks. The natural history and illustration of each beast was usually accompanied by a moral lesson...

, collections of ghosts, spirits, spooks and monsters, many of which Toriyama based on literature

Japanese literature

Early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese. Indian literature also had an influence through the diffusion of Buddhism in Japan...

, folklore

Japanese folklore

The folklore of Japan is heavily influenced by both Shinto and Buddhism, the two primary religions in the country. It often involves humorous or bizarre characters and situations and also includes an assortment of supernatural beings, such as bodhisattva, kami , yōkai , yūrei ,...

, other artwork

Japanese art

Japanese art covers a wide range of art styles and media, including ancient pottery, sculpture in wood and bronze, ink painting on silk and paper and more recently manga, cartoon, along with a myriad of other types of works of art...

. These works have had a profound influence on subsequent yōkai

Yōkai

are a class of supernatural monsters in Japanese folklore. The word yōkai is made up of the kanji for "otherworldly" and "weird". Yōkai range eclectically from the malevolent to the mischievous, or occasionally bring good fortune to those who encounter them...

imagery in Japan.

Second Volume

is a kettle tsukumogami

Tsukumogami

Understood by many Western scholars as a type of Japanese yōkai, the Tsukumogami was a concept popular in Japanese folklore as far back as the tenth century, used in the spread of Shingon Buddhism...

which holds a clawed staff called koinryō. It is pictured alongside another monster called Yarikechō. http://park.org/Japan/CSK/hyakki/zukan/turezure/naka/yarike.html http://home4.highway.ne.jp/deadsoul/sa/zenhusyou.html