The spiny monster of Saitama, the rat monster of an old temple… What are the true identities of the bizarre animals that appeared in various parts of Japan during the Meiji, Taisho, and Showa eras?

The Identity of “Mysterious Animals” that Are Neither Monsters nor UMAs

In Japan, there have been many stories of sightings of unknown monsters in various parts of the country since ancient times. Were they really yokai or UMA?

The book, “Kai-zo Zuzu Zukan” (Hozumi Akiyuki, Tetsujinsha), published on February 27, discusses “bizarre animals” sighted in the Meiji, Taisho, and Showa eras. The “bizarre animals” here refer to “animals whose true identities are now known” and “animals that have been recorded as bizarre for various reasons.

Japan is an island nation, and because of its isolation during the Edo period (1603-1867), animals outside of one’s own region, especially those from overseas, were not well known to the general public. Because of this lack of knowledge, people often thought of unfamiliar animals as “monsters” when they encountered them.

This was true not only for the general public but also for the media. Newspapers and magazines of the time reported sightings of “strange animals” as “incidents. The author, Mr. Hozumi, uses modern knowledge to reveal the true identities of more than 50 of these “strange animals. Here are just a few of them.

The spiny monster of Saitama, Japan, which even the Ueno Zoo was unable to solve.

The following is an article that appeared in the Tokyo Metropolitan Newspaper on October 1, 1899. On September 15 of the same year, Yasutaro Nagashima, a resident of Osato-gun, Saitama Prefecture, caught a strange monster. Since he did not know its name, he packed it in a box and brought it to the Ueno Zoo to await its appraisal, but the Ueno Zoo refused to accept it, saying that they did not know what kind of animal it was and that they did not know how to keep it. At a loss, Yasutaro brought the monster to the head office of the Tokyo Metropolitan Newspaper in Tokyo and showed it to the reporters.

The monster was about the size of a puppy, with sharp, black, spotted, 2″ (6 cm) spines on its back. It resembled a hedgehog, but its belly was black, like the shell of a turtle or a wild boar. Its mouth was shaped like a long duck’s beak, and its four legs were black and shaped like the palm of a baby’s hand.

Hozumi suspects that this “spiny monster” may be a hedgehog. He says that it resembles a hedgehog and that its mouth “looks like a duck with a longer beak…” (from “Illustrated Book of Mysterious Animals”). It is understandable that the Ueno Zoo staff refused to accept the animal, since it was a year later that the echidna was first shown to the public in Japan. However, the mystery remains as to why the echidna, which is found only in Australia and other countries, was in Saitama Prefecture. ……

The size of a large rabbit…… Rat Monster Appears at an Ancient Temple

The following is an article that appeared in the Tokyo Nichinichi Shimbun and other newspapers on March 28, 1907. Rumors began to circulate that a rat monster appeared nightly at an old temple called Fumyoji in Haijima-mura, Kitatama-gun, Tokyo. The monster did not do anything evil, but at night it began to rumble about, causing a succession of offerings to be lost.

The monster’s body hair was brown and sharp like needles, and its eyes were glistening. The young men of the village immediately set out to “hunt the monster. They succeeded in capturing it alive.

The monster they caught was about the size of a large rabbit, weighed 300 monme (about 5 kg), had a tail the size of a human thumb, and its nose and underbelly were covered with white hair like silver needles. People from neighboring villages also gathered to see the monster.

Hozumi speculates that the monster may have been a civet, as its “snout and underbelly were covered with white hairs that looked like silver needles. The civet, which is now known for destroying orchards, is a non-native species that began to be seen throughout Japan around the mid-Showa period and is believed to have come from Taiwan and other countries. However, experts are divided on when they arrived in Japan, and their appearance has been documented in documents from the Edo period (1603-1868). It would not be surprising if they were here during the Meiji period.

Never-before-seen “monster” in Hokkaido: Hokkaido’s Kiva Monster

On January 10, 1877, a mysterious monster resembling a Steller’s sea lion was spotted in Kayabe County, Watashima Province (present-day Hakodate City, Hokkaido). The monster had sharp, pure white fangs in its mouth and bloodshot eyes, and apparently was not a Steller’s sea lion.

The fishermen, however, knowing full well that Steller’s sea lions are dangerous predators, immediately prepared guns and harpoons and headed out to the sea to kill the monster. After a struggle, the fishermen succeeded in killing the monster.

After pulling it back to land, the fishermen immediately began to measure it. The monster was huge, measuring 9′ 9″ (about 3 meters), with fangs 2″ (about 60 centimeters) long, a 9″ (about 27 centimeters) beard around its mouth, and 2″ 4″ (about 13 centimeters) on its front legs.

The diagram in the Yomiuri Shimbun article that reported this story suggests that the Kiva monster is most likely a walrus. The average male walrus is about 2 to 3.5 meters long, so it is not particularly large. However, walruses are found only in eastern Canada, western Alaska, and Greenland, and rarely swim to Hakodate, Hokkaido, which is close to Honshu, so the fishermen were surprised. Incidentally, it was 1977, exactly 100 years later, that the first walruses were bred in Japan.

The “Japanese Chupacabra”?　Koishikawa Monster Lived in the Botanical Gardens

On February 12, 1910, a wire fence was broken at an aviary in Sashigaya-cho, Koishikawa-ku, Tokyo (near Koishikawa 2-chome, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo), and six chickens were killed inside. The chickens died in a very strange manner: their flesh was not cut up, only their blood was sucked out, and there were footprints near the aviary that looked like claws on a horseshoe.

The owner of the footprints was thought to be a creature from the botanical garden there, and a neighbor tried to exterminate the creature hiding under the eaves of the house with a knife, but it escaped.

Hozumi, who is also an expert on UMAs, believes that it is most likely a chupacabra-like creature. The chupacabra is a blood-sucking UMA that has been spotted in South America and Puerto Rico. Since there is a record of a yokai called “Ushiuchibo,” or Japanese chupacabra, in Tokushima Prefecture, he believes that it may be a bizarre animal with a similar ecology.

Like the “Koishikawa no kaiju,” there are many examples of bizarre animals introduced in this book whose true nature is still unknown even with today’s scientific knowledge. There are probably still other creatures on earth that are beyond the reach of human common sense.

The Illustrated Book of Mysterious Animals” (Hozumi Akiyuki, author, Tetsujinsha)