After 35 years, the fish are proliferating all over the archipelago again…″Human-Face Fish″ were discovered and photographed in Hyogo and Miyazaki Prefectures!

Masked fish live in various parts of Japan

In 1990, FRIDAY reported on the “human-faced fish” boom that swept across Japan from Yamagata. Thirty-five years have passed since then, and the previous article, which reported that “the phantom fish still lives in ponds,” received a huge response, with many people saying, “There is one in my hometown, too. It seems that the human-faced fish lives more quietly than expected in many parts of Japan, but it is certainly still alive. The reporter went to Hyogo and Miyazaki Prefectures, where the information was particularly credible.

First, the reporter visited Fukusaki Town in Hyogo Prefecture, known as the birthplace of Kunio Yanagida, the father of Japanese folklore. Last November, a human-faced fish (photo above) was discovered in a pond in Tsujikawayama Park, which is known for its legend of kappa, or water imps, named after the author of the book.

There were three of them, and the most popular was the one on the left with a red heart mark around its fins. However, since August of this year, they have stopped showing up. We have not been able to find the heart-shaped fish, but the other two fish are swimming fine,” said the Fukusaki Town Regional Promotion Division.

The next stop was the Sano Shrine (Takahara Town), located at the foot of the Kirishima Mountain Range in Miyazaki Prefecture. The human-faced fish are said to be in a pond on the shrine grounds.

Tameya Owaki, a Shinto priest who is also a gonnegi (senior priest), tells us that the fish are said to live in a pond within the shrine’s grounds.

When we put in water plants to facilitate the laying of eggs, the number of fry increased. One of them is a white man-faced fish. It is about 50 to 60 cm in size. I think it is the child of a white carp and a black carp that originally existed. At first I wasn’t aware that it was a human fish (laughs).

(Laughs.) What is even more surprising is that there is even a 30-centimeter-long “second generation” swimming around that has a similar pattern to that of the original fish.

There are two human masked fish in the pond now,” he said. There are two human masked fish in the pond right now: a white one and a smaller one that looks like a child with a very similar face.

There are about 30 carp swimming in the pond. Visitors to the shrine are amused by the sight of visitors peering into the pond and commenting, “They do look like faces,” a sight that brings a smile to the shrine.

We would be happy if people love the human-faced fish along with their visit to the shrine. We hope they will be happy to receive a blessing from the shrine.

According to Hiroshi Furukawa, a representative of the e-commerce site “Nishikigoi.com” and an expert on Nishikigoi farming, Koi have a tendency to change their body color.

Koi can also change their patterns. They change their body color due to environmental changes such as water temperature, water quality, food, and stress.

In other words, the disappearance of Hyogo’s manmade fish may just be the result of the disappearance of their patterns, making them indistinguishable from other Koi. If that is the case, on the other hand, it is not impossible for ordinary carp to change into ningyoi.

Thirty-five years after the boom of the Heisei era, human-faced fish are now beginning to make their mysterious appearance in front of us again.

From the November 28 and December 5, 2025 issue of FRIDAY