Hyakki Zukan

Record summary

The Hyakki Zukan is an eighteenth-century Japanese picture scroll associated with Sawaki Sūshi and the development of yōkai image catalogues. Its painted beings, including aquatic and animal-like monsters, are useful for comparing visual motifs with later regional creature narratives. The scroll belongs to an artistic and folkloric transmission history rather than a record of expeditions or sightings. Dating, attribution, and the relationship among surviving copies require specialist verification. It is especially relevant to how Edo audiences encountered standardized monster imagery before modern cryptid terminology existed.