Similarities and Differences between Western and Eastern Monsters

Asian horror presents itself in many ways very similarly and very differently than western horror does. They both share many tropes. They both have their own canons of monsters that seem to wish ill upon the human characters of the stories they’re presented in, and they come in a variety of seemingly supernatural forms. The monsters are even repelled by similar conventions, such as religious prayer and iconography. As the vampire is repelled by the sign of the cross, so too does religious scripture keep one hidden from ghosts in eastern horror. They even are occasionally very specific in their comparisons, such as some creatures being marked as such with a physical symbol to show their difference from humanity.

The primary difference between the two is one of philosophy. Eastern philosophy has always been noticeably different from western philosophy, which is always preoccupied with explanation and categorization, by acknowledging the possibility that things can simply be, without the need to separate them. Instead, eastern thought seeks to combine all things into a singular pattern of interconnected life. This thought immediately does away with concepts of good and evil, at least in the strictest categorical sense, which immediately reflects itself upon the portrayal of monsters in Japanese lore.

A western troll might attack a village simply because the troll is evil, like Grendel attacking the men of Beowulf, but a similarly carnivorous spirit in Japanese folklore does so because it is in its nature. It behaves as an animal would, without malice or judgment. In some stories, the monster might even express remorse for their actions, such as the tale of the priest unknowingly meeting a monstrous cannibalistic creature that expresses a sincere remorse for what it is, and what it must do to survive, a trait you would be hard pressed to find in any traditional western monster.

Through these divergent worldviews it is interesting to see how similar some created monsters can be, despite having been invented by completely different people in different parts of the world with little to no contact. There exists a surprising number of similarities between western and eastern monsters and myths. Yet beneath it all there are core differences between the way the cultures approach life and nature and where humans stand in it that drives our monsters to be outwardly similar, but logically very very different, as they exist for different reasons.