Yokai magic attracts more tourists in Japanese town

M Humayun Kabir: Despite the extremely hot weather on a weekend in early August, a good number of tourists gathered around a murky pond in a park in Fukusaki in southwestern Hyogo Prefecture of Japan. The visitors were intently watching the surface of the water, which soon began to bubble and then three red kappa monsters with large mouths emerged from the water, reports The Japan News.
“They’re so real!” yelled a parent and a child in amazement. There were even children who started crying.
A 10-year-old Shunon Kazayuki sai, “It’s a little scary, but kind of fun.”
The fourth-grade elementary school student came to Tsujikawayama Park, about a 30-minute walk from JR Fukusaki Station, with four other members of her family from Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture.
Fukusaki town decided to attract more tourists and put the kappa statues in a pond the town had had difficulty purifying.
The statues include one named Gajiro, inspired by a kappa appearing in one of Yanagita’s books.
Taking advantage of the cloudy water, the town government created a mechanism to hide the statues underwater most of the time.
“We thought the more realistic they are, the more they would be talked about,” said Tomoo Ogawa of the town government’s regional development division.
Making good use of his hobby of model-making, Ogawa, 44, designed some of the yokai himself.
Since last year, the town government has been working on a yokai bench project.
Nine benches where people can sit with a yokai monster were placed in front of the station and shops along the road to the park.
The nine yokai figures are human-sized and made of fiber-reinforced plastic. The figures all look special and have personalities. There is a kappa pondering its next move in the game of shogi and a tengu wearing a business suit.
Katsutoshi Hirata, a visitor, said, “It’s great fun. I feel like I’m sitting with yokai, which I love very much.”
The yokai benches attracted public attention through social media, such as Instagram and Twitter, as people posted their photos with the yokai.
As a result, the number of tourists visiting the town each year has increased from about 250,000 in fiscal 2013 to about 400,000.