Staging the Supernatural: Ghosts and the Theater in Japanese Prints

＂[This book] presents striking, eerie nineteenth-century woodblock prints from Japan that feature ghosts, demons, and other supernatural entities. The book digs into the country’s rich folkloric traditions and how they were brought to life on stage, with insightful essays that explore the depiction of spirits through the centuries, the relationship between printed images and cultural imagination, and how kabuki and Noh theater performances reflect Japan’s deep connection to and shifting notions of the supernatural.＂--

KIT BROOKS is the Japan Foundation Assistant Curator of Japanese Art at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, specializing in prints and paintings of the Edo and Meiji periods. FRANK FELTENS is Associate Curator of Japanese Art at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. He is a specialist in Japanese painting, particularly the late Muromachi and Edo periods.