YOKAI - book of shadows

Some stories are not meant to be simply read — they are meant to be lived.

An enigmatic traveller who claims to speak more than fifty languages appears again and again in the lives of strangers connected to a mysterious Japanese book. Wherever the book surfaces, strange encounters follow. The traveller speaks of yōkai — supernatural beings from Japanese folklore that are not quite monsters or spirits, but manifestations of hidden emotions and fears.

As the book passes from hand to hand, its stories begin to unfold through the people who possess it: a writer who isolates himself in a temple while pursuing the perfect story, a grieving man searching for the ghost of the woman he loved, and a tragic legend of a forbidden love between a samurai and a kabuki actor that ends in ritual death.

Slowly, it becomes clear that the book is not simply telling stories. It is using them. Each tale requires a witness, a body, a life to give it form. Those who open its pages risk becoming part of the narrative themselves.

Moving between reality, dream, and folklore, the film explores the fragile boundary between imagination and transformation, suggesting that the true demons are not supernatural creatures, but the desires and obsessions that live within us.