ABOUT

Michael Dylan Foster is a professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Davis, where he teaches courses about Japanese folklore, heritage, tourism, food, and popular culture. He is the author of many works on Japanese folklore and media, including Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yōkai (University of California Press, 2009) and The Book of Yōkai, Expanded Second Edition (University of California Press, 2024). Among his coedited volumes are 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 Möbius Media: Popular Culture, Folklore and the Folkloresque (Utah State University Press, 2024). Since 2022, he has been the “Yōkai Navigator” for an NHK World documentary television series called YŌKAI: Exploring Hidden Japanese Folklore.