My thesis aims to map the art historical, religious and cultural influences in Chiho Aoshima’s work, particularly in her 2015 solo show Rebirth of the World at Seattle Asian Art Museum. I will start with an outline of the artist’s overall oeuvre, focusing specifically on her aesthetic development. This will set up an introduction of the main elements I see in her work (Shinto beliefs, yōkai/ukiyo-e aesthetic references, and references to A Cyborg Manifesto). The thesis will essentially be a case study of Rebirth of the World, using specific mediums as evidence for the presence of these influences in her work. My thesis is essentially Chiho Aoshima’s work is a seamless blend of the history and culture of Japan, while still grounding her practice in critical, contemporary theories of subversion. Her work is a gripping nod to the past but it is very much contemporary and critical, and it is easy to overlook all the threads woven into the fabric of her oeuvre.

In this essay, I study Toriyama Sekien’s yōkai (supernatural beings) catalogues and undertake a diachronic examination surrounding Sekien's imprint on his contemporaries and modern times, striving to highlight the aesthetic dimension that adds to the popularity of yōkai today. Through an image analysis based on a modified version of Roman Jakobson's communication model and a diachronic examination of Sekien’s influence on the imagination of the Japanese people, I have investigated how and why Sekien chose to depict yōkai in his catalogues as kawaii (cute). The questions that have driven my study are as follows:    1. Why does Toriyama Sekien kawaii use aesthetic codes in his four catalogues?    2. In what ways have Toriyama Sekien's catalogues influenced the Japanese people's imagination and world view?    The study is anchored in cute studies theories, and with the theory Displacement of Meaning, I have identified possible answers to how Sekien has influenced the Japanese people's imagination: (1) kawaii aesthetic codes are found in Toriyama Sekien's work, because Sekien tried to make his creations as attractive as possible. To accomplish this, he used aesthetic elements which cute studies theories have found control what we perceive as kawaii and thus attractive. (2) Toriyama Sekien demystified the supernatural, took it out of context and allowed Japanese people to take the supernatural out of its traditional setting. This paved the way for yōkai as consumer items and (3) allowed modern creators to fill the yōkai (consumer items) with nostalgia and reintroduce them as symbols of a lost and idealized past.

In 2007, popular mystery author Kyōgoku Natsuhiko attempted to adapt a collection of random stories known as the Mimi bukuro or Tales Heard into kaidan, tales of the strange and mysterious for today’s readership. The writing experiment ended with Kyōgoku questioning his own writing abilities and publishing his small collection of adapted stories into a book that was not considered very frightening. Although the experiment failed, Kyōgoku’s efforts raise the question, “if not kaidan, what is frightening in the twentieth century?” The reason why kaidan are no longer frightening is because their central characters, yōkai, have been displaced from the horror genre. Today the yōkai that were once popular in the Edo period have been “cutesified” for businesses, films, and children’s shows. What is frightening today is no longer the Edo period monster, but rather aliens, ghosts, scientific monsters, and serial killers that represent a fear of the unknown. While the unknown has been a fear of man since the beginning, how it is symbolized and interpreted changes over time based on society and individual experiences. Chapter one traces the development of yōkai’s transformation from traditional horror story icons to children’s characters and role models. Chapter two analyzes and compares four of the original stories from the Mimi bukuro to Kyōgoku’s adaptation to understand what was scary during the Edo period, and what Kyōgoku deemed frightening in modern times. Chapter three analyzes three different monsters and explains why they were frightening and what problems or unknown situations each monster represented for modern audiences.