Bakemono no e (化物之繪, "Illustrations of Supernatural Creatures"), also known by its alternate titleBakemonozukushie (化物尽繪, "Illustrated Index of Supernatural Creatures"), is a Japanese handscroll of theEdo period depicting 35bakemono from Japanese folklore. The figures are hand-painted on paper in vivid pigments with accents in gold and silver pigments. Each bakemono is labeled with its name in hand-brushed ink. There is no other writing on the scroll, no colophon, and no artist's signature or seal.[1][2]
Bakemono no e is held by theL. Tom Perry Special Collections of theHarold B. Lee Library atBrigham Young University in Provo, Utah, US and is part of the Harry F. Bruning Collection of Japanese rare books and manuscripts. Harry F. Bruning (1886–1975) acquired the scroll fromCharles E. Tuttle (1915–1993) in 1952.[1] The artwork is dated to c. 1660[3][4] as according to the description of the scroll in Tuttle's catalog 266 (October 1952), which would make it the arguably the oldest extant example of thebakemonozukushi, or monster index, genre.[2][5] Most of the bakemono illustrated are also found in other scrolls and books of the Edo period, with a few exceptions.[1][2][6]

The scroll came to the attention of Japanese scholars and the famousmanga artistShigeru Mizuki (1922–2015) in 2007 when digital images of the scroll were shared with Kōichi Yumoto (ja:湯本豪一), then curator at the Kawasaki City Museum (ja:川崎市市民ミュージアム). Yumoto was surprised to find an image of a three-eyed bakemono clearly labeled "Nurikabe" in the BYU scroll that matched an unlabeled illustration of the same figure in a scroll Yumoto owns.[7][8][9] TheNurikabe image later became the topic of scholarly debate in Japan.[10][11][8][12][13][14]
The following is a list ofbakemono featured inBakemono no e, along with their backgrounds.
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