Bakemono no e

Bakemono no e (化物之繪, "Illustrations of Supernatural Creatures"), also known by its alternate title Bakemonozukushie (化物尽繪, "Illustrated Index of Supernatural Creatures"), is a Japanese handscroll of the Edo period depicting 35 bakemono from Japanese folklore.

[1] Bakemono no e is held by the L. Tom Perry Special Collections of the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, US and is part of the Harry F. Bruning Collection of Japanese rare books and manuscripts.

Most of the bakemono illustrated are also found in other scrolls and books of the Edo period, with a few exceptions.

The scroll came to the attention of Japanese scholars and the famous manga artist Shigeru Mizuki (1922–2015) in 2007 when digital images of the scroll were shared with Kōichi Yumoto (ja:湯本豪一), then curator at the Kawasaki City Museum (ja:川崎市市民ミュージアム).

Yumoto was surprised to find an image of a three-eyed bakemono clearly labeled "Nurikabe" in the BYU scroll that matched an unlabeled illustration of the same figure in a scroll Yumoto owns.