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[UXLZ]

Oh man, Suika in a loincloth. *hums*

[Neonivek]

Yokai though includes spirits, gods, fairies, and other helpful beings.

For example a Snowchild, a being who brings in the spring... It is a Yokai.

Spirit though can be malevolent or benevolent, but they follow a theme given to them. Which fits the Yokai to a T

[Frumple]

... this snowchild? That is used as a trap by another yokai. Or this one? That tricks (poor) people in winter and proceeds to steal all their food (which may or may not result in people dying :V).

Now I'm kinda' wondering where you ran in to that version, actually. Happen to remember the source?

[Neonivek]

>_< so Snowchild has went the way of the Tanuki huh?

No, no source. It must be the typical "difference in fairy tales" thing. Same way that Kappa can be evil or good (or evil unless you give them their favorite food)

[Frumple]

Nah... it's mostly that while there are unambiguously good mythical critters in japanese folklore, they're by and large not yokai, so far as I can recall. Little kami, other sorts of spirits, stuff like that. Yokai, as noted, are almost always either malevolent, massively irritating, or have some sort of trigger (ala the kappa food bit you just mentioned) that fires those two up, with very, very few exceptions (though there are some exceptions. They're just, y'know, exceptions.). Is why I'd call the closest equivalent to them to be the older tales of the fae. Yokai has a distinctively (albeit often mildly) negative connotation, from everything I've seen. It's telling that even in more modern stuff that has yokai presented in a positive light (or at least positive role), they're still pretty likely to be... kinda' jackasses, at their best.

Personally, I just don't bother translating it in my head, if I run into a translator that doesn't process the word into english. Yokai is a particular category of critter that doesn't really track terribly well to a single word in english, so translating it just leads to mild confusion, imo. Spirit would probably be closest, but you'd probably need to add dangerous or trickster spirit to that, something along those lines.

[Neonivek]

Now "God" that is a term that probably would give any translator nightmares due to the modern interpretation (I STILL hear people complaining about gods in certain settings not being the all powerful monotheistic kind).

Anyhow Kami are more neutral but they are flavored by the land itself. The Kami of a dangerous swamp is evil. The Kami of well maintained houses and objects are good.

Though Kami have sometimes been outright lumped in with Yokai... but I've never seen a Yokai lumped in with Kami.

[i2amroy]

Personally, I just don't bother translating it in my head, if I run into a translator that doesn't process the word into english. Yokai is a particular category of critter that doesn't really track terribly well to a single word in english, so translating it just leads to mild confusion, imo. Spirit would probably be closest, but you'd probably need to add dangerous or trickster spirit to that, something along those lines.

Yeah, honestly I tend not to translate a lot of things dealing with folklore, simply because it's inevitable that many of them don't have equivalents, or if they do then they don't carry quite the same ideas. I mean, do we translate "minotaur"? Or "harpy"? Of course not, since they don't have good equivalents in english folklore. Similarly there are several things that just don't carry the same connotations. The werewolf and yee naaldlooshii (skin-walker) from Navajo mythology are very similar in a lot of ways, but differ in some very important ones. Similarly while oni and ogres are definitely similar in many aspects, there are definitely a few that just don't match.

TL;DR: It's better to just treat each new mythological creature as a new entity, since in most cases even the equivalents that do exist will differ in some key assumptions.

[Flying Dice]

Don't even get me started on "kami". I can't count how many weeaboos I've seen who use "Kami-sama" when they mean "Jesus Christ", "Allah", or "YHWH" because despite their obsession they cannot into cultural differences.

[Reelya]

yup, that rings a bell. I've seen series where there are multitudes of kami and yokai, and the yokai are almost universally hated/feared. There were also plots where a kami who goes bad could become a yokai, and this was implied to be very, very bad: basically a one-way slide to bad shit. There were also "reformed" yokai, who were almost like the kami, but they were prone to regressing with their "yokai side" manifesting. If you look at the Kanji in Yokai they're pretty unambiguous too:

Yōkai (妖怪?, ghost, phantom, strange apparition) are a class of supernatural monsters in Japanese folklore. The word yōkai is made up of the kanji for "bewitching; attractive; calamity" and "apparition; mystery; suspicious".

Clearly, yokai is synonymous with bad news.

Generally, "Kami" means spirits in general without considering whether they help or hinder humans. If kami hurt humans they're often portrayed as "caring not for the affairs of humans" rather than out to get us, as yokai often are.

Personally I think some term for yokai which implies malevolence would be more appropriate than spirit. Maybe just "Monster", because a monster is not necessarily evil, but it has the same connotation. "Phantom" could also be a good choice.

[Neonivek]

I really wouldn't use the term Demon though...

Because good Yokai are not only not an oxymoron but not a contradiction.

[Reelya]

"Demon" is wrong, but for the opposite reason you're implying:

In the original Greek, "demon" just means "spirits" in general without any connotation of evil whatsoever. So its original meaning is less evil in intent than "Yokai". Early Christian writers twisted the word around: classic case of turning the previous religion's gods into the bad guys. So you could in fact write fiction where the demons have been given a bad rap and they're not actually evil. The exact same way you can do for witches.

[Neonivek]

Well if we are getting into history I can bring up the connotation of "spirits"

But in Christianity's case it was more that they used the same word in a different context while the original context eventually was lost...

Same thing goes with the term Hell.

The whole Hades thing is more "Writers suck!" then people forgetting Hades isn't a bad guy.

[Orange Wizard]

What's it like?

[JoshuaFH]

It's like, blue, but, eh, perfect, you know?

[Neonivek]

Now I have something here called... Into The Blue... Should I watch it?