I just want to say (as a Japanese-American who grew up on Japanese yokai stories just as much as Western fairy tales), if you were to speak to a Japanese person, they'd call *any* type of creature of myth a yokai. A vampire is a yokai, a werewolf is a yokai, a bugbear is a yokai, a faerie is a yokai, any kind of being that is not a human, an ordinary animal, or a kami (heck, even some kami are also technically yokai! Raijin and Fujin, the brother storm gods, are oni!) are yokai. This is in fact a major plot point in the anime/manga GeGeGe no Kitaro, wherein Kitaro's yokai community come under attack from a group of Western (European) "yokai" led by Backbeard (bugbear), and featuring a few vampires, a pair of witch sisters, a werewolf, and even the Frankenstein monster. Yokai is literally just a term that generalizes "supernatural creature", whether it's one of Japanese origin, or of foreign origin.
Admittedly, it's one thing for someone from Japan to consider all supernatural things as "yokai," (or "bakemono," or "ayakashi," or even "mononoke") because it's the terminology they have for it. I'm more of the mind that there's no excuse for (particularly American fantasy authors) to group all supernatural entities that aren't "demons" or something else they can hang a specific hat on as being "just X country's faeries," which is a thing that happens all too often. Then again, I think that just comes from generalizing; Europe is where fae come from, so clearly, any European mythological critter is a fae, right? Particularly because people hear first and most often about the sorts of things that *are* fae, and then just roll everything under that umbrella from there.
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I just want to say (as a Japanese-American who grew up on Japanese yokai stories just as much as Western fairy tales), if you were to speak to a Japanese person, they'd call *any* type of creature of myth a yokai. A vampire is a yokai, a werewolf is a yokai, a bugbear is a yokai, a faerie is a yokai, any kind of being that is not a human, an ordinary animal, or a kami (heck, even some kami are also technically yokai! Raijin and Fujin, the brother storm gods, are oni!) are yokai. This is in fact a major plot point in the anime/manga GeGeGe no Kitaro, wherein Kitaro's yokai community come under attack from a group of Western (European) "yokai" led by Backbeard (bugbear), and featuring a few vampires, a pair of witch sisters, a werewolf, and even the Frankenstein monster. Yokai is literally just a term that generalizes "supernatural creature", whether it's one of Japanese origin, or of foreign origin.
Admittedly, it's one thing for someone from Japan to consider all supernatural things as "yokai," (or "bakemono," or "ayakashi," or even "mononoke") because it's the terminology they have for it. I'm more of the mind that there's no excuse for (particularly American fantasy authors) to group all supernatural entities that aren't "demons" or something else they can hang a specific hat on as being "just X country's faeries," which is a thing that happens all too often. Then again, I think that just comes from generalizing; Europe is where fae come from, so clearly, any European mythological critter is a fae, right? Particularly because people hear first and most often about the sorts of things that *are* fae, and then just roll everything under that umbrella from there.