Mizuki Shigeru Museum

This two-floor museum in Sakaiminato is dedicated to Mizuki Shigeru, the manga artist known for GeGeGe no Kitaro and for bringing yokai, Japan's supernatural creatures, into mainstream popular culture. Mizuki's actual desk, stained with decades of ink, has been recreated in the museum alongside his ethnographic collection of masks from Africa and the Pacific Islands. A highlight is the Yokai Cave, where 43 life-size yokai figures line the walls of a dimly lit corridor, their names appearing and disappearing as lighting shifts. A series of detailed dioramas of nightmare scenes made with film-quality realism depicts creatures such as Akaname, a long-tongued yokai that licks dirty bathtubs. The museum opened in 2003, eight years before Mizuki's death in 2015.