Do we know how Japan came to have such a rich relationship with the supernatural and these sort of fantastical beings? Is there something in the culture or the religion? You mentioned the geography even that potentially could come into play.

A lot of the cultural elements we have in Japan got influenced by China.

So the big neighbor brought tea and Buddhism and lots of other things over to Japan.

Then Japan picked up and they did their own version out of that.

The earliest record that I found when I was working on the book was this Chinese treatise called The Classic of Mountains and Seas, assumed to have been written in the late 3rd century BCE.

quite a while ago, yeah, 2300 years ago.

But it's more of a telling of different worlds that are out there and how the beings look like in those different worlds.

What are they up to?