Well, what's known as the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons is an ancient Japanese folk tale about supernatural beings taking over the night.

At an art museum in Boston, artist Masako Miki is bringing the tale into a colorful and even cuddly present day.

Jared Bowen of GBH Boston takes us there for our arts and culture series Canvas.

In the silvery hue of night, a gathering of characters.

At first glance, they're curvy forms standing on their own and dappled with rainbow colors.

Look longer and the shapes come into being, like an all-knowing oak tree.

The trees, they're transparent.

They've witnessed everything that has happened and that we have done.

And I feel like this is the character who observe everything in our history.

Each of these needle-felted sculptures here at the Mass Art Museum in Boston has a reason for being, says artist Masako Miki.

They are characters she has conjured and crafted to take their place in her own contemporary mythology.

It's a human nature to make stories and narratives.

And if you believe in the same story, there's a sense of trust.

And we actually believe in that stories and we act on it.

In creating what she now calls Midnight March, Miki was prompted by a Japanese tale more than

a thousand years old. It tells the frightening story of the night parade of 100 demons, where paranormal beings

called Yo-kai, who range from the monstrous to the mischievous, rampage through the streets

and the wee hours of the morning as villagers hide in their homes.

They're very upset. They're being discarded by humans and they want to reclaim their existence. But as Miki

returned to the tale in her adult life, she began to dissect the demonization of the Yokai,

thinking they were less perpetrator and more misunderstood, vilified because people couldn't

look beyond the Yokai's otherness.

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