Kitaro’s Strange Adventures

KITARO'S STRANGE ADVENTURES SHIGERU MIZUKI

More bizarre and hilarious adventures with everyone’s favorite one-eyed boy! In the fourth installment of Shigeru Mizuki’s Kitaro series readers meet a whole new cast of yokai monsters, including a giant Cyclops, the villainous Blackbeard, and a malefic sea captain who attempts to summon hell on Earth. The lead adventure “Yokai Cloth,” follows Kitaro and his gang as they intercept a plot by Chinese yokai who want to enslave the Japanese population to turn the country into a yokai paradise, bringing forth the largest yokai battle yet! But anyone familiar with Kitaro knows that even the toughest yokai squad is no match for him. With the help of a few friends and some funky magic, Kitaro will do everything in his power to outwit and outplay all who challenge him. Drawn & Quarterly’s kid-friendly edition showcases stories from the golden age of Kitaro, now available for the very first time in English. It also features a bonus “History of Kitaro” essay and more yokai files by the award-winning series translator and Mizuki scholar Zack Davisson. Comedy, folklore, horror, and action meld in Kitaro’s Strange Adventures, epitomizing the whimsical all-age stories that make Kitaro one of Japan’s most celebrated and beloved characters.

SHIGERU MIZUKI

Shigeru Mizuki (1922-2015) was one of Japan's most respected artists and a forefather of manga. He invented the yokai genre with GeGeGe no Kitaro and founded the gekiga—dramatic manga— movement with autobiographical wartime accounts such as Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths. He received the Kodansha Manga Award, the Eisner Award, and the Angouleme Award, as well as the Shiju Hosho Medal of Honor and the Order of the Rising Sun. Shigeru Mizuki was a specialist in stories of yokai. As a member of the Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology, he traveled to sixty countries around the world to engage in fieldwork on the spirits of different cultures. He has been published in Japan, South Korea, France, Spain, Taiwan, and Italy.