the point of view of the average person In the Meiji era, people still believed that all kinds of yōkai mysteries and creatures ex-isted, and Inoue Enryō sought to explain them scientifically. dismiss yōkai mysteries as nothing more than superstition. Ra-ther, I mean the systematic/logical analysis of their existence—or of the individual mind that believes in their existence—in order to clarify their origins. In other words, the goal of mystery studies is to enable those who believe in and fear the existence of yōkai to, at least, be individually convinced and look into it for themselves. Next let’s look at how Enryō’s mystery studies were received. In February 1897, for example, the minister of education said the fol-lowing. is very detailed in terms of its theoretical arguments and its ci-tation of proofs. Superstitious beliefs are still prevalent among the people today and interfere with the progress of general ed-ucation in many ways… however, this work provides scholarly explanations for all of these superstitions and I believe that it is extremely beneficial… If works such as this are made widely available to the public it will surely help to decrease old super-stitious customs in the future. On the twenty-second of the same month the minister of the impe-rial household presented a copy of Lectures on Mystery Studies to Em-peror Meiji, and it is said that he greatly enjoyed reading it. Thus, When I say “scientifically,” I do not mean to categorically This work brings together a wealth of resource materials, and 109
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