"Sound and Images of the Invisible World in Japan"

Multidisciplinary roundtable on perspectives past and present on yōkai with emphasis on sound and images.

Participants:

Michael Dylan Foster (University of California, Davis)

Fabio Rambelli (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Fumi Tomita (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

Bios:

Michael Dylan Foster is Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yōkai (University of California Press 2009), The Book of Yōkai (University of California Press 2015; 2024), and numerous articles on folklore, monsters, and media. His edited volumes include The Folkloresque: Reframing Folklore in a Popular Culture World (Utah State University Press 2015), Matsuri and Religion: Complexity, Continuity, and Creativity in Japanese Festivals (Brill 2021) and Japanese Supernatural Tales (Penguin Classics 2026). Since 2022, he has been the “Yōkai Navigator” for the documentary series YOKAI: Exploring Hidden Japanese Folklore (NHK World).

Fabio Rambelli is Distinguished Professor of Japanese Religions and Cultural History and International Shinto Foundation Chair in Shinto Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His many publications include: Buddhas and Kami in Japan (with Mark Teeuwen, 2000), Buddhist Materiality (2007), The Sea and the Sacred in Japan (2018), Spirits and Animism in Contemporary Japan (2019), Gagaku: The Cultural Impact of Japanese Ceremonial Music (2025), and Before Shinto: Buddhism and the Japanese Gods (2026). He is also a musician and plays the shō, the ancient Japanese mouth organ (both in the classical repertory of Gagaku and in contemporary music), which he has studied with Maestro Bunno Hideaki and others. He performs internationally and has released several CDs of original music (deep ambient, contemporary, jazz, experimental) with various formations.

Fumi Tomita is a jazz bassist, composer, educator, and author. Active in the New York jazz scene for over fifteen years, Tomita’s newest recording, Yokai: Songs of the Japanese Supernatural, will be released in October 2026 on Origin Records, and was inspired by 19th-century woodblock prints of Yokai and other Japanese supernatural creatures derived from folklore. His 2019 recording, The Elephant Vanishes: Jazz Interpretations of the Short Stories of Haruki Murakami, was released to critical acclaim by Origin Arts records and was listed in the top ten records of 2019 by Jazziz. His 2020 release Celebrating Bird: The Music of Charlie Parker was similarly received. As an author, he has published two books, The Jazz Rhythm Section (Rowman and Littlefield 2019) and Introduction to Early Jazz: A Concise Introduction from Its Beginnings through 1929 (SUNY Press 2024). He is currently Associate Professor of Jazz at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.