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From ESP labs to Pokemon panics to death cults,
Japan is a wonderland of the bizarre.
Japan is a wonderland of the bizarre.
In the old days of discovery, the edges of explorers’ maps sometimes bore the legend “Here be monsters,” signifying the mysterious and potentially dangerous nature of undiscovered regions. For most of its history, Japan was positioned in this fringe realm, near the extremes of the known world—an enigmatic and enchanted land of the strange and the supernatural.
Marco Polo, the medieval traveler who heard of Japan while at the court of Khubla Khan, wrote that it was a land with palaces literally made of gold, a legend that later inspired Christopher Columbus to sail west from Europe in search of it. When the rest of the world finally caught up with Japan in the 19th century, strenuous attempts were made to catalogue and explain the country in terms that made sense to Western empirical science. Japan, however, has never quite fitted the mould of a narrow-minded rationalism that simply rejects anything it can’t explain.
One of the first to highlight these shortcomings in Western scientific rationalism was the American writer Charles Hoy Fort (1874-1932), who named his most important work The Book of the Damned (1919) to refer to all the data that was “damned” or ignored by science—things like UFO sightings, news of strange objects falling from the skies, and sightings of supposedly “mythological” creatures. Rather than ignoring oddities, anomalies and gray areas like this, Fort believed in investigating them with a skeptical but open and curious mind.
This Fortean approach is also the best way to explore and understand Japan’s mysterious side—its weird cults, undiscovered animals, lost civilizations and even the ESP experiments recently carried out by a major Japanese corporation. David Sutton, editor of Fortean Times, a UK monthly magazine that’s a repository of the arcane, offbeat and unexplained, agrees, but adds that such an approach also enhances our understanding of the cultural and sociological factors that may lie behind reported phenomena.
The lab’s lead researcher, Yoichiro Sako set out the agenda at the 16th Annual Meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration, held in Las Vegas in 1997.
While the Fortean approach can be effective in producing fresh insights and revealing new knowledge, its successes are usually co-opted by science, leaving behind only the more marginal and outlandish phenomena that give it its oddball image.
A case in point is the giant squid. For many years this was a subject of myth and ridicule but, in 2004, an 8m-long specimen was finally photographed in its natural habitat off the coast of Japan by two Japanese researchers, Tsunemi Kubodera and Kyoichi Mori. At this point, the giant squid suddenly left the realm of forteana and became a fully signed up property of the scientific community.
While some of Japan’s mysterious phenomena may make this transition, the limitations of science mean that many more will continue to exist in the shadow world of our knowledge and on the fringes of our mental maps, creating the uneasy sense that, at least in Japan, “Here be monsters.”
In almost every area of the country, you’ll find intriguing and baffling phenomena that defy easy rational explanation. Are these myths? Superstitions? Scientific anomalies? Or awkward realities that challenge our rationalist assumptions?
ISSIE, KAGOSHIMA PREFECTURE
Is this Japan’s version of the Loch Ness monster, or a local cryptid that occasionally surfaces in Kyushu’s Lake Ikeda? The best known sighting was in 1978, when 20 people watched a large, black creature, measuring about 5m long, gilding through the waters of the lake, which is set in the caldera of an extinct volcano.
KAPPA, SAGA PREFECTURE
Usually thought of as purely a creature of folklore, the kappa is a kind of water imp with a fondness for cucumbers, sumo and, occasionally, abducting people and animals. In addition to ancient tales and legends, there is also tangible evidence of its existence in unexamined mummified remains. One impressive example, found in the thatched roof of a house in Kyushu, has now been adopted by a local sake company as a mizu no mamori kami, or “water protection god.”
HEIKE CRAB, YAMAGUCHI PREFECTURE
The back of the Heike crab found in Japan’s Inland Sea looks like the angry face of a samurai. Local legend suggests the crabs are the reincarnations of the Heike clan warriors who committed suicide by jumping in the sea after their defeat at the naval battle of Dan-no-ura in 1185. A more prosaic explanation is that fishermen were reluctant to eat any crab that appeared to have a human face, thus creating a system of “unnatural selection” that favored human-faced crabs.
HIBAGON, HIROSHIMA PREFECTURE
A smaller version of America’s Bigfoot, the Hibagon is, according to eyewitness reports, a smelly, snub-nosed mountain-dweller with glaring eyes. The main sighting was in 1972 in the mountainous area around the town of Hiwa.
TSUCHINOKO, OKAYAMA PREFECTURE
This chirping reptilian cryptid, which reportedly looks like a fat-bodied snake with a thin neck and a wide face, has a price on its head. Anybody capturing a specimen stands to gain a ¥20 million reward from the municipal government of Yoshii, the town near where it has been seen. One eyewitness, 82-year-old Mitsuko Arima, said, “I just pointed at it and asked, ‘Who are you? Who are you?’ It didn’t answer me, but just stared. It had a round face and didn’t take its eyes off me. I can still see the eyes now.”
PANAWAVE CULT, GIFU PREFECTURE
One of Japan’s strangest cults is Panawave, a doomsday cult, founded in 1977. The estimated 1,200 members prepare for the apocalypse and typically dress in white. They also use mirrors and white vans to deflect “dangerous” electromagnetic radiation. In 2003, cult members had a standoff with police in Gifu after they refused to move their convoy of white vans. Sociologists and psychologists believe that such cults often express deep social anxieties, in this case, technophobia and fears of pollution.
LOST TRIBE OF ISRAEL, NAGANO PREFECTURE
The origins of the Japanese people remain shrouded in mystery. One theory links them with the Biblical Lost Tribes of Israel. The evidence in support of this includes the resemblance of the Japanese omikoshi, carried around during festivals, to the Ark of the Covenant, and the similarity of the tokin box worn on the forehead of yamabushi monks to the phylactery used during certain Jewish religious ceremonies. Parallels have also been drawn between the Ontohsai festival held at the Suwa Taisha shrine and the Biblical story of Abraham attempting to sacrifice his son, Isaac.
MT. FUJI SUICIDE FOREST, YAMANASHI PREFECTURE
Like the Golden Gate Bridge in America, Aokigahara Forest has earned an unenviable reputation as a suicide magnet, drawing desperados from far and wide to end their lives in its somber glades. Perhaps it’s just the natural beauty of the location in the shadow of Mt Fuji, a mysterious empathy with the spirits of the dead that already inhabit this twilight zone, or some kind of “copycat” effect. Whatever the original reason, the location’s profile is now high. In his bestselling The Complete Manual of Suicide, author Wataru Tsurumi recommended it as “the perfect place to die.”
POKEMON PANIC, TOKYO PREFECTURE
In 1997, an episode of the popular children’s cartoon Pokemon, broadcast on TV Tokyo and its affiliates, showed a rapid series of red and blue flashing backgrounds. Over the next 30 minutes, 618 children were taken to a hospital with nausea and seizures, and a further 12,000 reported a range of disorienting illnesses in the following days. While photosensitive epilepsy was initially identified as a factor, the large number of people affected and the role played by the media suggest this was more
a complex case of mass hysteria. Contributing factors may have been displaced social anxiety related to Japan’s falling birth rate, several highly publicized child crimes, and technophobia.
ORIGIN OF UFOs, MIYAGI PREFECTURE
The UFO craze can be traced to the widespread sightings of UFOs in America’s northwest in the ’40s. This may be partly attributable to Japanese wartime activity. Desperate to strike back at America, the Japanese military devised an airborne bomb, called Fugu because of its resemblance to a blowfish. Suspended from balloons, the bombs, released from a base near Sendai, followed the prevailing winds and soon started turning up in US airspace, where their unexplained appearance, combined with official secrecy surrounding their investigation, may have helped to generate rumors of extraterrestrial space craft.
JINMENGYO, YAMAGATA PREFECTURE
In 1990, a carp with a human-like face was discovered in a pond in the grounds of Zempo Temple in the town of Tsuruoka. Whether a genetic mutation connected to Japan’s intensive carp breeding or some kind of “semi-reincarnation,” the man–fish became a media sensation and an instant tourist attraction.
JESUS IN JAPAN, AOMORI PREFECTURE
The story of Jesus is almost universally known, but, according to the small town of Shingo, there was a sequel. Based on a letter found in the ’30s, a local legend states that it wasn’t Jesus who was crucified but his brother, while Jesus escaped through Siberia to Japan, where he married, had several children, and died at the ripe old age of 106. A grave supposed to contain his remains is now the focus of an annual “Christ Festival.”
LIVING DOLL, HOKKAIDO PREFECTURE
After a 3-year-old girl died in 1919, a local family forgot to cremate her favorite doll with her. Instead, they placed the doll, named Okiku after its owner, in the keeping of the Mannen-ji shrine. Since then, the hair of the doll has been continuously growing. Even stranger, since WWII, her mouth has also started to open slightly.
YONAGUNI SEA RUINS, OKINAWA
Located off the island of Yonaguni, near Taiwan, these underwater structures—a 120-meter platform, a corridor and a staircase—appear to have been hewn into rock around 10,000 years ago. If true, this suggests an extremely ancient civilization with advanced technology that later disappeared in some unknown cataclysm.
Words: C.B.Liddell
Art: Young Shin
Metropolis Magazine
26th June, 20008
Marco Polo, the medieval traveler who heard of Japan while at the court of Khubla Khan, wrote that it was a land with palaces literally made of gold, a legend that later inspired Christopher Columbus to sail west from Europe in search of it. When the rest of the world finally caught up with Japan in the 19th century, strenuous attempts were made to catalogue and explain the country in terms that made sense to Western empirical science. Japan, however, has never quite fitted the mould of a narrow-minded rationalism that simply rejects anything it can’t explain.
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| Charles Fort |
This Fortean approach is also the best way to explore and understand Japan’s mysterious side—its weird cults, undiscovered animals, lost civilizations and even the ESP experiments recently carried out by a major Japanese corporation. David Sutton, editor of Fortean Times, a UK monthly magazine that’s a repository of the arcane, offbeat and unexplained, agrees, but adds that such an approach also enhances our understanding of the cultural and sociological factors that may lie behind reported phenomena.
“The particular Fortean phenomena reported in a place may reveal an actual real thing or something about the culture, mindset and preoccupations of the people living in that area,” Sutton says. “In the case of Japan, they probably also reveal tensions between traditional belief systems and customs and the rapid industrial and technological expansion of the postwar years, as well as perhaps the country’s relationship with the West, particularly America. Kitsune fox spirits and UFOs are both found in Japan, but the latter are to some extent an American global export, while the former are an indigenous form of a possibly universal set of mythic archetypes.”While science has a tendency to exclude anything that can’t be quickly proved and classified, the Fortean mindset is more comfortable with changing probabilities and shifting categories. Loren Coleman, an author of several books on cryptozoology, the study of species that have yet to be scientifically confirmed, sees Japan’s more mysterious wildlife as a continuum of possibilities that range from creatures likely to be real to the practically mythical.
“I think that the Japanese universe of cryptids is a really interesting thing,” he says. “I would go all the way from the Hibagon, which is this ape-like creature that’s supposed to haunt the mountains, as being very unlikely, all the way to the tsuchinoko, which are the small, normal-sized snakes that seem to be vipers and [are] venomous. I think that’s much more possible. Some of those stories seem to be much more realistic—good eyewitness accounts, officials interested in them and organizing hunts, and even some old drawings. There’s the possibility that in the 17th century, there may actually have been some of them captured or put in scientific journals in Japan.”The purism of science rejects much of the available evidence for unusual phenomena like this simply because it comes from scientifically “impure” sources like non-Western tradition and folklore, or eyewitness reports from ordinary people. As a result, these phenomena are not studied or taken seriously, which, in turn, reduces the possibility of scientific proof being produced.
“I think forteana has more to do with an attitude that distinguishes it both from mainstream science and from the other kinds of belief that surround, say, UFOs or Atlantis,” explains Sutton. “We simply remain curious—and encourage others to do so—bringing open minds to such evidence as there is, looking for more, and avoiding the exclusionism and rejection of the anomalous that often, unfortunately, characterizes mainstream science.”But just as science can benefit from the open-minded approach of Forteans, the world of the unexplained can also benefit from the application of scientific methods. Because Japanese culture is less scientifically purist than the West, Japanese researchers have had fewer reservations about applying scientific techniques to the investigation of forteana, according to Coleman.
“The Japanese were one of the first people to go over to Loch Ness with submarines,” he points out. “That’s the other part of Japanese culture. They tend to really use technology. They were in the forefront of using technology to try to understand cryptozoology.”A more astounding example of this is Sony. In the ’90s, the electronics giant financed a laboratory to investigate an area at which science typically turns its nose up: extrasensory perception. For eight years, Sony ran experiments on such ESP phenomena as remote viewing (the ability to perceive hidden images) and qi energy (the notion of “spiritual energy” in Chinese and Japanese traditional medicine).
The lab’s lead researcher, Yoichiro Sako set out the agenda at the 16th Annual Meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration, held in Las Vegas in 1997.
“As the 21st century draws nearer, we can see that society’s materialistic values, fostered in many respects by modern science and technology, have become outdated and unworthy,” he told the conference. “It is clear that we have come to another turning point in history and science. What we require to meet the challenges of these unpredictable and confusing times is a new paradigm to guide a new age. I believe that the key to this new paradigm lies in the research of biological, mental, and spiritual phenomena such as qi and other psychic powers that have been overlooked by modern scientists.”Despite promising results, the lab was reportedly closed down in 1998, following the death of Masaru Ibuka, one of Sony’s founders and its main supporter within the company. Naturally, if news spread that Sony was taking an interest in something considered a pseudoscience, its reputation for scientific excellence—and also its share price—might have suffered.
While the Fortean approach can be effective in producing fresh insights and revealing new knowledge, its successes are usually co-opted by science, leaving behind only the more marginal and outlandish phenomena that give it its oddball image.
A case in point is the giant squid. For many years this was a subject of myth and ridicule but, in 2004, an 8m-long specimen was finally photographed in its natural habitat off the coast of Japan by two Japanese researchers, Tsunemi Kubodera and Kyoichi Mori. At this point, the giant squid suddenly left the realm of forteana and became a fully signed up property of the scientific community.
While some of Japan’s mysterious phenomena may make this transition, the limitations of science mean that many more will continue to exist in the shadow world of our knowledge and on the fringes of our mental maps, creating the uneasy sense that, at least in Japan, “Here be monsters.”
FORTEAN JAPAN
In almost every area of the country, you’ll find intriguing and baffling phenomena that defy easy rational explanation. Are these myths? Superstitions? Scientific anomalies? Or awkward realities that challenge our rationalist assumptions?
Is this Japan’s version of the Loch Ness monster, or a local cryptid that occasionally surfaces in Kyushu’s Lake Ikeda? The best known sighting was in 1978, when 20 people watched a large, black creature, measuring about 5m long, gilding through the waters of the lake, which is set in the caldera of an extinct volcano.
KAPPA, SAGA PREFECTURE
Usually thought of as purely a creature of folklore, the kappa is a kind of water imp with a fondness for cucumbers, sumo and, occasionally, abducting people and animals. In addition to ancient tales and legends, there is also tangible evidence of its existence in unexamined mummified remains. One impressive example, found in the thatched roof of a house in Kyushu, has now been adopted by a local sake company as a mizu no mamori kami, or “water protection god.”
The back of the Heike crab found in Japan’s Inland Sea looks like the angry face of a samurai. Local legend suggests the crabs are the reincarnations of the Heike clan warriors who committed suicide by jumping in the sea after their defeat at the naval battle of Dan-no-ura in 1185. A more prosaic explanation is that fishermen were reluctant to eat any crab that appeared to have a human face, thus creating a system of “unnatural selection” that favored human-faced crabs.
HIBAGON, HIROSHIMA PREFECTURE
A smaller version of America’s Bigfoot, the Hibagon is, according to eyewitness reports, a smelly, snub-nosed mountain-dweller with glaring eyes. The main sighting was in 1972 in the mountainous area around the town of Hiwa.
This chirping reptilian cryptid, which reportedly looks like a fat-bodied snake with a thin neck and a wide face, has a price on its head. Anybody capturing a specimen stands to gain a ¥20 million reward from the municipal government of Yoshii, the town near where it has been seen. One eyewitness, 82-year-old Mitsuko Arima, said, “I just pointed at it and asked, ‘Who are you? Who are you?’ It didn’t answer me, but just stared. It had a round face and didn’t take its eyes off me. I can still see the eyes now.”
PANAWAVE CULT, GIFU PREFECTURE
One of Japan’s strangest cults is Panawave, a doomsday cult, founded in 1977. The estimated 1,200 members prepare for the apocalypse and typically dress in white. They also use mirrors and white vans to deflect “dangerous” electromagnetic radiation. In 2003, cult members had a standoff with police in Gifu after they refused to move their convoy of white vans. Sociologists and psychologists believe that such cults often express deep social anxieties, in this case, technophobia and fears of pollution.
The origins of the Japanese people remain shrouded in mystery. One theory links them with the Biblical Lost Tribes of Israel. The evidence in support of this includes the resemblance of the Japanese omikoshi, carried around during festivals, to the Ark of the Covenant, and the similarity of the tokin box worn on the forehead of yamabushi monks to the phylactery used during certain Jewish religious ceremonies. Parallels have also been drawn between the Ontohsai festival held at the Suwa Taisha shrine and the Biblical story of Abraham attempting to sacrifice his son, Isaac.
Like the Golden Gate Bridge in America, Aokigahara Forest has earned an unenviable reputation as a suicide magnet, drawing desperados from far and wide to end their lives in its somber glades. Perhaps it’s just the natural beauty of the location in the shadow of Mt Fuji, a mysterious empathy with the spirits of the dead that already inhabit this twilight zone, or some kind of “copycat” effect. Whatever the original reason, the location’s profile is now high. In his bestselling The Complete Manual of Suicide, author Wataru Tsurumi recommended it as “the perfect place to die.”
In 1997, an episode of the popular children’s cartoon Pokemon, broadcast on TV Tokyo and its affiliates, showed a rapid series of red and blue flashing backgrounds. Over the next 30 minutes, 618 children were taken to a hospital with nausea and seizures, and a further 12,000 reported a range of disorienting illnesses in the following days. While photosensitive epilepsy was initially identified as a factor, the large number of people affected and the role played by the media suggest this was more
a complex case of mass hysteria. Contributing factors may have been displaced social anxiety related to Japan’s falling birth rate, several highly publicized child crimes, and technophobia.
The UFO craze can be traced to the widespread sightings of UFOs in America’s northwest in the ’40s. This may be partly attributable to Japanese wartime activity. Desperate to strike back at America, the Japanese military devised an airborne bomb, called Fugu because of its resemblance to a blowfish. Suspended from balloons, the bombs, released from a base near Sendai, followed the prevailing winds and soon started turning up in US airspace, where their unexplained appearance, combined with official secrecy surrounding their investigation, may have helped to generate rumors of extraterrestrial space craft.
In 1990, a carp with a human-like face was discovered in a pond in the grounds of Zempo Temple in the town of Tsuruoka. Whether a genetic mutation connected to Japan’s intensive carp breeding or some kind of “semi-reincarnation,” the man–fish became a media sensation and an instant tourist attraction.
The story of Jesus is almost universally known, but, according to the small town of Shingo, there was a sequel. Based on a letter found in the ’30s, a local legend states that it wasn’t Jesus who was crucified but his brother, while Jesus escaped through Siberia to Japan, where he married, had several children, and died at the ripe old age of 106. A grave supposed to contain his remains is now the focus of an annual “Christ Festival.”
LIVING DOLL, HOKKAIDO PREFECTURE
After a 3-year-old girl died in 1919, a local family forgot to cremate her favorite doll with her. Instead, they placed the doll, named Okiku after its owner, in the keeping of the Mannen-ji shrine. Since then, the hair of the doll has been continuously growing. Even stranger, since WWII, her mouth has also started to open slightly.
YONAGUNI SEA RUINS, OKINAWA
Located off the island of Yonaguni, near Taiwan, these underwater structures—a 120-meter platform, a corridor and a staircase—appear to have been hewn into rock around 10,000 years ago. If true, this suggests an extremely ancient civilization with advanced technology that later disappeared in some unknown cataclysm.
Words: C.B.Liddell
Art: Young Shin
Metropolis Magazine
26th June, 20008
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