Fans love tracking these evolutions, 18. well as learning every bit of information about as many yokai (strange apparition) as they can. This may explain why a lot of these books, scholarly or not, have the look and feel of illustrated encyclopedias, 19. detailed descriptions of scores of creatures. Why do the centuries-old monsters continue 20. fascinate?“There's the mystery of the world about them," said Bill Tsutsui, a Japanologist. "You get that in this folkloric sense of the past: that the real world around us is beautiful and wonderful, 21. can be really horrible to." (By Robert Ito, the New York Times)