After the great success at the Villa Reale in Monza, the exhibition Yōkai. The ancient prints of Japanese monsters arrives in Bologna , in the sumptuous fifteenth-century rooms of Palazzo Pallavicini, from 7 April to 23 July 2023 , under the patronage of the Municipality of Bologna , the Emilia Romagna Region and the Consulate General of Japan in Milan .

Conceived and produced by Vertigo Syndrome and curated by Paolo Linetti , leading expert of Japanese art and curator of important private collections, the exhibition presents the fantastic world of monsters of the Japanese tradition to the Western public, through more than two hundred works from the 18th and 19th centuries, among antique prints, rare books, clothes, weapons, samurai armour. Also on display is an extraordinary collection of netsuke , 77 small ivory sculptures once used as hair clips.

The exhibition opens with an immersive room that makes the visitor relive the experience of the most legendary samurai test of courage: the ritual of the 100 candles. Ritual that began after sunset and saw the samurai gather in a room illuminated by the light of a hundred candles. Each of them had to tell their companions a story populated by yōkai, the Japanese monsters, with the aim of testing their courage by scaring them to death. At the end of the story, whoever had narrated it had to get up, extinguish the candle in a lantern, take a mirror and reflect in it in the farthest corner from the others: the progressive darkening of the room accompanied the narration of increasingly frightening stories full of suspense. 

In the same way, visitors will enter a totally dark room, illuminated only by the dim light of a hundred candles which will project red flickering shadows on their faces. The candles will then go out one by one, accompanied by the hoarse voice of the ghost of an old samurai, who died after going mad after meeting a truly monstrous yōkai in the night.