This exhibition traces how the sense of fear has shifted over time, using books from many periods and places. It takes up the range of subjects the word “scary” brings to mind, among them the afterlife, yokai and strange phenomena, wrongdoers, notorious incidents and systems of punishment. The material on display was produced for various different reasons: some of it to record and pass on frightening events, some to leave behind a moral lesson, and some simply for the pleasure of a chill down the spine.
The exhibition pays attention to how the values attached to fear change from one era to the next, considering both things that were widely feared in the past and things that strike modern readers as frightening precisely because of how people live now. Through documents describing the next world, strange occurrences in Japan and abroad, and historical villains, visitors can see how books conveyed anxiety about disaster and the unknown, and how that anxiety was shared and transmitted between readers.
Held at the Toyo Bunko Museum, the exhibition draws on written material rather than objects alone, which gives it an unusually direct link to how ideas were recorded and circulated. Admission is discounted for students and free for junior high students and younger.
