AYASHI

In olden times, when the people of Japan faced natural disasters, disease or other misfortune whose cause they could not understand, they sought to attribute it to something ayashi... to anything that felt unsettling or frightening... the supernatural. And so in their imagination they conjured ayashi creatures like ghosts and goblins. This time on DESIGN TALKS, guest Koichi Yumoto, a leading researcher on the Japanese fairies known as yokai, discusses how the concept of ayashi is reflected in design.