RICHARD FREEMAN: MASS MURDER OF DOLPHINS IN JAPAN

As September begins so does the Japanese plot to murder and enslave dolphins. The Ito Fishing Cooperative in Futo has announced it will resume a drive hunt of dolphins this season for the first time since 2005. They plan to take 419 animals, including 59 bottlenose dolphins, for sale to aquariums, for “scientific research,” and for human consumption. In an unbelievable statement they have also said they believe it “important to teach the skills of the drive hunt to the next generation”. This barbarism should be consigned to the history books, not fostered to a new generation.

Using motorised vessels to locate a dolphin pod, the fishermen herd the animals toward shore, trapping them in a large net or shallow bay. Here a number are captured to be sold to aquariums and dolphinariums. The rest are butchered with lances and knifes in a manner akin to the perverse atrocities carried out in the seas around the Faeroe Isles. The meat is sold for human consumption regardless of the fact it is full of PCBs, heavy metals, and other toxins thanks to pollution.

The recent shocking documentary film The Cove and the new Animal Planet series Blood Dolphins has brought this sick behaviour to the public eye despite Japan’s best efforts to hide it from the international community.

In June 2010 a new Prime Minister was elected in Japan. Naoto Kan began his political career as an environmental campaigner and has a background in activism. With all of the negative publicity surrounding the drive fisheries, perhaps he will use his new position to instigate positive change that reflects the views of the majority of the Japanese people, and the world. Brutal and inhumane activities like dolphin drives clearly have no place in modern society.

Tell him what you think here:

https://secure.humanesociety.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=4681&s_src=enewsletter&sub_src=090110takeaction&JServSessionIdr004=dgyghno242.app304a

IN THIS MONTH'S ISSUE OF `PHENOMENA` MAGAZINE...

In this month's issue of Messrs Mera and Sadler's online magazine there are a lot of things of interest to readers of this bloggo. These include an article about preserved yokai in Japan by our very own Richard Freeman. For details, email sadler_dave@yahoo.co.uk



http://www.upia.co.uk/

RICHARD FREEMAN: The Preserved Yokai of Japan

Guest Blogger time for Richard Freeman again. It almost seems silly introducing Richard to you all once again when he makes an appearance as guest blogger several times a week. However our viewing audience/readers (whatever you like to call yourselves) is growing so fast that it is certain that some of you missed the last time I introduced him.

Some of you may know that I have recently finished writing a book on Japanese monsters or Yokai as they are collectively known.

In a number of Japanese temples keep alleged specimens of yokai in a mummified state akin to the cats that are sometimes found in old buildings in the UK.

There are a number of different types of mummified yokai, mermaids being the most common. In Japan the mermaid is not the beautiful creature of popular western imagination. It looks more like the ancient Greek triton. It has a fish’s body, humanoid arms and a head that looks like a cross between a monkey and a carp. It is covered with shining golden scales.

A Ningyo’s voice is said to sound like a flute and if it ever sheds tears it will be transformed into a human. Fishermen would usually throw he creature back if they caught one as they generally papered before a storm. Dead ones washing up on beaches was thought to be a bad omen. The flesh of the Ningyo is said to greatly extend human lifespan if ingested.

A fisherman from Wakasa (now Obama town in Fukui prefecture) once caught a Ningyo and not knowing what it was served it up at a meal for his friends. The men refused to eat the flesh after they saw the strange appearance of the ‘fish’ their colleague had netted. But one man, drunk on sake accidentally took some of the meat home.

The man’s sixteen year old daughter ate the Ningyo flesh and stopped ageing. She married many times and had many children. Time and again she had to suffer seeing her family grow old and die as she stayed unchanged. Finally she could stand it no longer and became a reclusive Buddhist nun and lived alone in a cave. She finally died at the age of eight hundred. She is called the Happyaku Bikuni or Yao Bikuni, the "Eight Hundred Nun".

A number of mummified mermaids are held in temples. One is at Zuiryuji Temple in Osaka, which was bestowed to the temple as an offering from a Sakai-area trader in 1682. It is a withered creature with an outsized head. Another mummified mermaid is preserved at Myouchi Temple in the city of Kashiwazaki in Niigata prefecture. This mermaid is about a foot long. It has a mouthful of sharp teeth and is holding it’s hands up by its face as if in alarm. Yet another mermaid mummy is preserved at Karukayado Temple outside the city of Hashimoto in Wakayama prefecture. The it is nearly one and a half feet long and has fangs that protrude from its wide open mouth. Both of its hands are raised to its cheeks. Its lower body is covered in scales, and there appear to be the vestiges of fins on its chest, as a pair of nipples.

A fourth mummy is owned by a Shinto sect in the city of Fujinomiya near the base of Mt. Fuji. At nearly 5 feet cm tall and 1,400 years old, it is the largest and oldest known mermaid mummy in Japan. The mermaid has an unusually large head that is bald, except for some hair growth that extends from its forehead to its nose. Its eyes and mouth are open. It has webbed hands with sharp claws. The lower body has a bone structure similar to that of a fish, but it is unclear whether or not the upper body has a bone structure. The entire body shows signs of having been ravaged by moths.

The mummy has a legend attached to it. The mermaid appeared to Prince Shotoku Taishi as he was passing along the shores of Lake Biwa 1,400 years ago. The creature told the prince about how it had been transformed into a mermaid as punishment for making a living as a fisherman within the boundaries of an animal sanctuary. The mermaid claimed that over many years it had come to a clear understanding of the horrors of destroying life, and that it was prepared to move on to the next world. As a final wish before dying, though, it asked the prince to establish a temple using the mermaid’s body as a centerpiece, where it could be used to educate people about the sanctity of life. The mermaid then died. The prince took the mermaid’s body and set up a temple as requested. But after a number of strange occurrences, the mummy was passed on to another temple. The mummy changed hands several times before ending up at its current location at the base of Mt. Fuji.

Another mermaid mummy is claimed to be the cadaver of the creature met by Prince Shotoku Taishi is held at the Kannon Shoji Temple in Shiga prefecture, which is nicknamed the “mermaid temple.” This temple professes to be the one established by Prince Shotoku at the request of the mermaid. The temple mummy is much smaller than the one owned by the Shinto sect and is a little above a foot long.

In Victorian times it was not uncommon for explorers to bring back stiffed ‘mermaids’ from the Far East. These bore little resemblance to the beautiful creatures of European myth because hey were meant to represent the ape-like Ningyo. Most were skilful composites were the top half of a monkey is stitched onto the bottom half of a large fish. This is done with such skill that the stitching can only be seen via an x-ray. In Europe they were dubbed nondescripts.

The most famous was created in 1810 by a Japanese fisherman. It was bought by Dutch merchants who then, in 1822, resold it to an American sea captain, Samuel Barrett Eades, for $6000 (at the time, a huge amount of money). Eades had to sell his ship in order to afford the mermaid, but he hoped to make a fortune by exhibiting it in London. Unfortunately he didn’t own the ship and spent the rest of his life in debt!

His son sold the mermaid to PT Barnum who exhibited it in the UK and the USA. It was destroyed in a fire.

This was one of several mermaid mummies to make it to the west. The one held in the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden was brought by Jan Cock Blomhoff while serving as director of Dejima, the Dutch trading colony at Nagasaki sometime between 1817 and 1824.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology owns an excellent specimen skillfully created by the special effects wizard Alan Fizwell. Thankfully he did no use a real fish or monkey!

The Raijū or thunder beast is an animal said to fall to the earth in a blot of lighting. It can take the form of a tanuki, a weasel, a monkey, a cat or a wolf. It is wreathed in lightning. It can also fly around in the form of a ball of lightning.

The Raijū is said to be the companion of Raijin the Shinto god of lightning. Were lighting strikes the Raijū has clawed the ground. Raiju leaves claw marks in trees. People did not hide under trees during storms in case the thunder beast leapt upon them.

A school teacher from Kanayama Town, Gifu Prefecture was scratched on the face by a Raijū during a thunderstorm. It left a scar.

Raijū were rumored to live atop Kaga Province's Mt. Hakusan and Shinano Province's Mt. Asama. One was captured and put on show in either Osaka or Kyoto. It resembled a fox and was kept in an iron net. It refused to eat or drink but it’s hair stood on end before the evening rain.

Another was captured in Lord Nagai's fiefdom of Iwatsuki, whilst running through a vegetable patch after a storm. It refused to eat and drink and thus died. It was then stuffed. It looked like a puppy with bear’s claws. Its feet had many knuckles and folds. The pelt was thin except beneath the legs were it thickened.

The bodhisattva Kokūzō captured one of these beasts after it came down in a thunderbolt at Satoshō Town, Asakuchi District, Okayama Prefecture. From then on no more thunderbolts fell. The great full locals held a festival on the 13 th day of the first old month each year in calibration.

For some unfathomable reason the Raijū hates camels. If images of camels are erected then the thunder will not come.

The Raijū also has the odd habit of sleeping in people’s navels. When Raijin wants to awaken the beast he fires arrows into the unfortunate mortal’s belly button. This the Superstitious sleep on their bellies during storms.

A bird called Kaminari-no-tori is the favorite food of the thunder beast.

In Volume 2 of Kasshi Yawa (“Tales of the Night of the Rat”), a collection of essays depicting ordinary life in Edo (now Tokyo), Matsuura Seizan writes that a cat-like creatures would sometimes fall from the sky during thunderstorms. The book includes the story of a family who boiled and ate one such creature after it fell onto their roof.

In the Saishōji Temple in Niigata prefecture a supposed Raijū mummy is held in the hall of treasures. It seems to be no more than a mummified cat like those sometimes found in the walls of very old buildings in Britain.

The same can be said of the Raijū preserved at Yūzanji temple in Iwate prefecture. This was presented to the temple by a parishioner in the 1960s. Were the parishioner found it is not recorded

The kappa is one of the most famous of all yokai and along with the Tatsu (Japanese dragon), Tengu (the bird men) and the Oni (Japanese daemon) the most well known outside of Japan. Kappa has the shell of a turtle and frog’s arms and legs. It has a human like face but with a beak instead of a mouth. It has a fringe hair like that of a western monk about its head. The hair is known as okappa-atama.





The top of a kappa’s skull is concave and holds a magick liquid that gives the water goblin its phenomenal strength. Despite being only the size of a small child a kappa is strong enough to overpower a horse or cow.

Kappa will often challenge an unsuspecting human to a sumo match and easily overpower them with it’s magickal brawn. The defeated victim would have his bowels devoured after they were ripped from his anus.





Animals would be killed by kappas in this way as well. Kappa was particularly fond of the shirikodama, a fabled ball said to be found near the anus.





A kappa victim will usually have a distended anus and is known as a Gappadoko. Some victims, oddly, seemed to be smiling after their fatal, anal violation!

Kappa would often lurk in toilets and fondle women’s thighs and buttocks. Indeed Kappa were said to rape women if they got a chance. In Matsuzaki village, Iwate Prefecture, women bore hybrid children from Kappas for two generations. The creatures were so grotesque that they were hacked to pieces upon birth and buried in wine casks.

National Museum of Ethnology, at Leiden in the Netherlands has a mummified kappa, seemingly made of parts of a monkey and a stingray.

Zuiryūji temple in Osaka holds a preserved kappa with a very human like ribcage and a fish like head. It may be a fish head on a monkey body. The arms and legs look simian. It is 70 cm long and dates to 1682.

In a shrine in Kumamoto prefecture there is an alleged mummified kappa hand. It looks like it may have come from a Japanese otter, now feared to be extinct.

In the Matsuura Brewery in Imari, Saga Prefecture, a whole mummified kappa is on show. It was discovered in a box during plant renovations over fifty years ago. It is known as kahaku. It has a cat like body with no shell but a long neck and odd looking skull with eyes set far apart. Its nose recalls a softshelled turtle.

One of the best known yokai, the Oni feature in many Japanese legends. Oni are savage daemons in bodying the worst of human nature. They can have ox like, bird like, or humanoid heads. The generally have horns and wild mane of hair. They have three claws on each and three toes on each foot. Some have three eyes. They may be red, green, blue, white or grey in colour. They go naked except for a loin cloth. They are usually huge in size and their favored weapon is an iron spiked club.

Oni have their ancestry, like so many other yokai, in China. Here the ruler of Jigoku the Buddhist hell is called Emma-Daiō. He has two Oni henchmen, one green and one red known as ao-oni and aka-oni respectively.

Oni in Japan have a roll akin to that of trolls, giants and ogres in western lore. They walk the earth spreading terror in their wake until stopped by some hero. But like daemons they also torture souls in hell. Despite this their unpleasant image was often carved into tiles at the end of Japanese roofs. The onigawara tiles were used to keep evil spirits away from the building.

In the festival of setsubun, that marks the start of the new year and spring in the old lunar calendar, people don Oni masks to ward off evil and bad luck for the coming year. The Oni themselves are said to be driven off by the smell of burning sardines (and who can blame them?) and soya beans, which they cannot abide. Folk throw these and yell Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!" ("Out with demons! In with happiness!").

Zengyōji temple in Kanazawa ,Ishikawa prefecture holds the head of a three faced oni. Its origins are unknown and it was supposedly found by priest in a temple storage chamber in the early 18th century. It has two faces (but only 3 eyes) at the front of the head and one at the back. It is put on show at the spring equinox.

Another preserved oni can be found at Daijōin temple in Usa, Oita prefecture. It is a thin creature with a long face and neck. Its hands and feet bear three claws. The mummy heirloom of a noble family. But after they were forced to get rid of it after some kind of misfortune.
The oni changed hands a number of times before ending up with a Daijōin temple parishioner in 1925. After the parishioner fell extremely ill, the mummy was suspected of being cursed.
The parishioner quickly recovered from his illness after the mummy was placed in the care of the temple. It has remained there ever since. Today the enshrined oni mummy of Daijōin temple is revered as a sacred object.


Rakanji Temple at Yabakei ,Oita prefecture, once had a mummified baby oni . The creature bore horns on its head. It was destroyed in a fire in 1943.


One of the best known off all yokai, the tengu is a man / bird hybrid. It has two basic forms, the first being a creature with the head of a bird (usually a raven or a bird of prey), a humanoid body, birds talons and birds wings. It is known as the Karasu Tengu. The second is more human like with a man’s face. A greatly elongated nose is seen in lue of a beak. This form is the Yamabushi Tengu On occasion tengu are portrayed as red skinned men with long noses but no avian features. This may spring from a confusion with the Shinto god Sarutahiko who shares these features. If defeated they are said to transform into birds. Tengu seem invariably male.

Their nature seems contradictory they can spread chaos and fear but are also not averse to humble humans joining in with their merrymaking. They punish the vain and the rich and can affect the human mind leaving the victim wandering the forests or mountains in a state of madness known as tengu-kakushi. This sounds very like the effect certain fairies had on humans in western legend. In the South West of England this was known as being pixy led. The same monster would equally be called on to help lost children find their way home. This may be because in some stories the evil tengu were converted to Buddhism and become enlightened creatures.

Tengu hatch from huge eggs. How these are laid is unclear as the race seems to have no females. When Dutch travelers brought an ostrich egg to Japan locals thought it to be the egg of a tengu. Some say that the daemon Ama-no-zako begat the Tengu. They generally make their homes in Cryptomeria trees. They generally wear small black caps and sashes with pom-poms. These can be traced to a sect of warrior monks known as yamabushi or shugenja. These mountain dwelling ascetics sought enlightenment in the harsh environment of the wilderness. They held the bird yokai’s image as sacred. Tengu were supposed to be great martial artists and were said to have schooled many ninja and samurai.

The Hachinohe Museum in Aomori prefecture in holds a tengu mummy, which is said to have once belonged to Nambu Nobuyori, a Nambu clan leader who ruled the Hachinohe domain in the mid-18th century. It has a simian head with a bird’s body and legs, with long toes. There are also many feathers, in poor condition. The feet and feathers suggest a pheasant or similar bird. The mummy originated in Nobeoka ,Miyazaki prefecture. The Hachinone tengu bears an uncanny resemblance to Owlman!

The Japanese dragon known as the Tatsu or Ryū looks very like it’s Chinese counterparts. It has a head with piercing eyes and jaws furnished with formidable teeth. It has branching antlers on its head and barbles like those of a catfish on the snout. Its vast body is elongate, scaled and serpentine. Japanese dragons usually lack the massive bat like wings of their western relations but some sport small fin like wings, or wing like fins just behind the front legs. The dragon’s four legs are small in comparison to its immensely long body. Unlike the Chinese dragon that has four (or five if it is the Imperial Dragon) claws on each foot the Japanese dragon has only three.

Japanese dragons are less aerial than other Asian dragons but like those on mainland Asia they are intimately associated with water and the sea in particular. Most Japanese dragons are benevolent towards mankind but if treated with disrespect they can wield god like power. An angry dragon could cause earthquakes, tsunami, typhoons, floods or droughts. The length of the largest dragons are measured in miles. Asian dragons rarely breathe fire but their breath condenses and forms rain.

Japanese dragons hatch from eggs that resemble gems. They take 3000 years to hatch. Unlike the Chinese dragon with its long, staged development in several forms, Japanese dragons generally grew to a great size almost as soon as they hatched. In some stories snakes grow into dragons.

Japanese dragons hatch from eggs that resemble gems. They take 3000 years to hatch. Unlike the Chinese dragon with its long, staged development in several forms, Japanese dragons generally grew to a great size almost as soon as they hatched. In some stories snakes grow into dragons.

Some legends contradict this and have Japanese dragons evolving through stages like their Chinese cousins. A standard dragon changes into a Kakuryu, a horned dragon after 500 years. A Kakuryu changes into an Ouryu, a yellow, winged dragon after 1000 years. The Ouryu is defined as the highest form of a dragon.

Black dragons guarded the north, red ones the south, white the west and blue the east. The yellow dragon ruled the center. Four great dragon kings governed various aspects of the world. They were the Celestial Dragon, the Hidden Treasure Dragon, the Earth Dragon and the Spiritual Dragon.

The Zuiryuji Temple in Osaka houses a small stuffed dragon several hundred years old. It seems to be a composite of eel, lizard and bird.

Despite the many dragon legends and their spiritual significance in Japan, dragon mummies are rare. This is perhaps because of the large size of the creatures made them difficult for early taxidermists to fake short of getting their hands on a dead crocodile

RICHARD FREEMAN: Yokai exhibition at the Royal Academy

UTAGAWA KUNIYOSHI, JAPAN’S MASTER OF THE MACARBRE AND MONSTEROUS

Richard Freeman

Anyone who knows me will tell you I have an obsession with Japan, and in particular it’s folklore. My next book ‘The Great Yokai Encyclopaedia’ (due out later in the year) is an A to Z of Japan’s monsters. Japanese monsters or yokai are mindbendingly weird, but I won’t give too much away here, you will have to buy my book!

The Royal Academy of Art is currently (until the 5th June) holding an exhibition of the work of Utagawa Kuniyoshi, one of the most celebrated Japanese artists of all time, and one who excelled in painting yokai.

Of course, as a yokai obsessive, I had to go. In fact I visited the exhibition twice. It was an eye-popping experience.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi was born in 1797, the son of a silk dyer. By the age of twelve he was producing impressive drawings that caught the attention of the renowned artist Utagawa Toyokuni whose studio he joined. He worked in the Ukiyo-e style of woodblock art. Ukiyo-e, or ‘The Floating World’ was a genre that transended the mundane, everyday world. It revolved around pleasure, entertainment and living for the moment. Kuniyoshi was one of the first Japanese artists to use the more brightly coloured western dyes and paints in his pictures. He was also the first to incorperate western perspective in his work. This made him unpopular with critics. He was, however, massivly popular with the general public. So much so that there were even Kuniyoshi pirates who did knock-offs of his prints!

Kuniyoshi had a number of themes to which he returned again and again. One was great warriors from history and legend. He painted the heroes of the Chinese classic tale The Water Margin in spectacular action poses. He was also fond of painting beautiful women from history, folklore and from contempory life. But it is for his grotesque monsters and ghosts that he is most famed.

A nuber of pictures depictiong yokai were on show in the exibition. One of the most spectacular shows the horrific Gashadokuro, a giant cannibal skeleton. It is 90 feet tall and created from the bodies of those who died in famines. Gashadokuro bites the heads off its victims and its coming is heralded by a ringing in the ears. The painting depicts a story from the 10th century in which a provincial worlord called Taira-no-Masakado led a coup against an outpost of the central government untill he was killed by his cousin Sadamori. He was dismembered and beheaded as a warning to others.

Taira-no-Masakado’s head carried on living. It leered and laughed and eventualy flew away. His daughter, outraged at the treatement of her father’s body, prayed at the ancient Kifune Shrine in Kyoto untill her outrage was given form in a in a monsterous skeleton.

In another picture we see the renowned hero Yorimasu doing battle with the Nuẽ, a sort of Japanese Chimera. The Nuẽ has the head of a monkey, the legs of a tiger, the body of a tanuki and the tail of a snake. In 1135 the Emperor Konoe whilst at his palace in Kyōtō began to suffer dreadful nightmares. He became very ill and it was noticed that a black cloud appeared on the palace roof at 2 am each morning. The Minamoto hero Yorimasu shot an arrow into the cloud. Out of the dark miasma fell a dead Nuẽ.

Yorimasu threw the weird carcass into the Sea of Japan. The body washed ashore in a bay and the locals, fearing a curse buried it. The mound under which the Nuẽ lies is still there today, but to my knowledge no one has ever excavated it.

Yorimasu features in another spectacular work by Kuniyoshi in which he battles the titanic earth spider or Tsuchigumo. Once the great Yorimitsu fell ill and was confined to his mansion in Kyoto. He had many servants so it did not bother him that he did not recognize the boy who brought him medicine at midnight. But as the days drew on Yorimitsu became more and more ill, and suspected the boy of poisoning him.

One night Yorimitsu attacked the boy and slashed him with his sword. The youth spat a vast web about the warrior and bound him to the bed. One of Yorimitsu’s lieutenants heard the commotion and ran to his aid. He met the boy in the corridor and once again the strange youth sprayed out a giant web, pinning the man down whilst he made his escape.

The boy was tracked to a cave, where his true form - that of a giant spider - was descovered. The monster was overcome and slain. At the monster spider’s death it’s vast webs disintigrated and Yorimitsu’s strange ailment vanished.

Another story has the Tsuchigumo manifesting as a beautiful woman leading an army of yokai. Yorimitsu and his friends do battle with the bestial hord. Yorimitsu hacks at the woman and her followers vanish as if an illution. The hero follows the woman to a cave were she transformes into a monsterous spider. After a desperate struggle Yorimitsu slashes her asunder. Even in death the Tsuchigumo vomits forth hundreds of spiders the size of human infants from it’s innards. Yorimitsu and his retainers claim claim total victory only after having made sure every last one is slain. Yorimitsu was wielding a sword named "Kumokirimaru" (spider-cutter).
Both stories feature in the exhibition. In the former we see the earth spider, its bloated body covered in eye-like markings, bearing down on the hero and entwining him in its web. In the second we see the Tsuchigumo vomiting forth, not just spiders but a whole army of spirits and monsters.

In another jaw-dropping picture we see a whale-sized fish shashing the boat of the samuri Minamoto no Tametomo. Winged bird men or tengu swoop down to snach him from the waves that are engulfing his wife and child.

From a cryptozoological view point the most intresting painting was Asahina Saburo and the crocodiles. It shows a Japanese warrior in battle with two crocodiles on a beach in Japan. Crocodiles are not native to Japan but are known to the Japanese as wani. In fact the huge Indo-pacific crocodile has been known to occasionally stray into the waters around the southernmost Japanese islands. German traveler Englebert Kaemfer encountered a dragon worshiped in a Japanese temple in 1690. He tells us that he saw…

“A huge four footed snake, scaly all over the body like a crocodile with sharp prickles along the back; the head beyond the rest monstrous and terrible.”

From his description the creature seemed to be a crocodile. He even refers to a crocodile in his description. Kaemfer had almost certainly not viewed a living crocodile prior to this.

However the creatures doing battle with Asahina Saburo have turtle-like fins that make them look more like Mosasaurs than crocodiles. This could be, of course, that Kuniyoshi had never seen a crocodile and was filling in the gaps in his knowlage with his imagination, but you never know.

In a more sedate and muted picture Kuniyoshi depicts Arhat Handaka, a spiritual hero and Guardian of the Buddhist Doctrines, summoning a rain dragon from a rice bowl.

These are only a handful of the monsters that Kuniyoshi depicted in his long career. I would urge anyone in the UK to hurry down to the Royal Academy of Arts and see this amazing exibition whilst you still can.

http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/kuniyoshi/

RICHARD FREEMAN: Between a rock and a hard place; the story of the Senaku Mole

The Senkaku Islands lie northeast of Taiwan, due west of Okinawa, and due north of the end of the Ryukyu Islands in the East China Sea. They are little known in the west and are uninhabited.

They were first mentioned in the Ming Dynasty book Voyage with the Tail Wind and appear on a map from the same period. The group consists of four main islands and three large, rocky outcrops. Their collective land area amounts to only 2.7 square miles.

In 1979 a single specimen of a mole was discovered on the largest of the island group, Uotsuri-jima. It was found to be a new species and named Mogera uchidai, the Senkaku mole. This type specimen is the only known example of the animal. A survey conducted in 1991 found no moles but did find a tunnel.

In 1978 a pair of goats, one of the most ecologically damaging species, was introduced to the island. These have bred and now the goats are a menace to the islands ecology including the moles who have one of the most restricted ranges of any animal in the world.

Most of Uotsuri-jima is covered with subtropical forest dominated by Livistona chinensis, and there are cloud forests at higher elevations it has only recently been described and very little is known about its ecology.

The island range is currently caught up in a dispute with China and Taiwan on one side and Japan on the other.

Unsurprisingly the dispute is down to the fact that two Japanese scientists said that there may be large reservoirs of oil off the islands, currently controlled by Japan.

In the 15th century the former Ming Dynasty general Zheng Chenggong drove Dutch from the whole area and set up the Kingdom of Chenggong, based on Taiwan but including the Senkaku Islands. The Kingdom remained faithful the defeated Ming Dynasty and existed from 1661 to 1683 when Zheng Chenggong’s grandson, Zheng Keshuang was defeated by Qing Dynasty who now ruled mainland China.

After the Chinese lost the first Sino-Japanese war in 1895 they were forced to hand over Taiwan

and related territories in the Treaty of Shimonoseki.

During WW2 the US controlled the area. After the war 1945, all "unequal treaties" forced on China were declared void, including the Treaty of Shimonoseki In 1972, however the US handed the Senkaku Islands back to Japan.

No one cared much until the possible discovery of oil off the islands.

The goat population on Uotsuri-jima needs to be wiped out as it may constitute a threat to the Senkaku mole who must be considered endangered by sheer dint of it’s restricted range (no to mention the fact that only one has ever been see). Also another dedicated expedition in search of the mole, to find out if it still exists and what kind of population it has, needs to be carried out. This may prove difficult, but far from imposable under the current political situation.

If China wins the dispute it will doubtless drill for oil and set up a base on the island. This will mean curtains for any surviving Senkaku moles.

The little animals are caught between a rock and a hard place. Currently with China held at bay oil drilling is unlikely. But so long as the goats remain on the island, he moles are under threat.

RICHARD FREEMAN: STRANGE TALES OF JAPANESE OCTOPI

Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai painted the picture Dream of a Fisherman’s Wife in 1820. The picture depicts a beautiful Japanese woman being sexually ravaged by a giant octopus. It may seem strange to westerners, but it is not an unusual image for Japanese culture, because somehow octopi have a hold on the Japanese imagination.

Several monster octopi turn up in their legends

Akkorokamui

In the legends of the Ainu people, the original inhabitants of Japan, this was a monster resembling a giant octopus or fish. It lurked in Funka Bay and adjacent waters off southwestern Hokkaido.

The 19th century Englishman and missionary John Batchelor, who lived among the Ainu , wrote firsthand a journal entry of an alleged actual incident concerning an apparent Akkorokamui in his book The Ainu and their Folklore.

In the morning, we found the whole village under a cloud. Three men, it was said, were out trying to catch swordfish, when all at once a great sea monster, with large staring eyes, appeared in front of them and proceeded to attack the boat. A desperate fight ensued. The monster was round in shape, and emitted a dark fluid and noxious odor. The three men fled in dismay, not so much indeed for fear, they say, but on account of the dreadful smell. However that may have been, they were so scared that the next morning all three refused to get up and eat; they were lying in their beds pale and trembling.

Another old 19th century account was made by a Japanese fisherman and was translated by cryptozoologist Brent Swancer.

And I saw ahead something huge and red undulating under the waves. I at first thought my eyes deceived me and that I was merely seeing the reflection of sun upon the water, but as I approached, I could see that in fact it was an enormous monster, 80 meters in length at least, with large, thick tentacles as big around as a man’s torso. The thing fixed me with a huge, staring eye before sinking out of sight into the depths.

Thomas Beal, a surgeon on a British Whaling ship, described being attacked by a huge octopus whilst on the Bonin Islands off southern Japan in 1835. He was rescued by his shipmates.

Another Englishman, Arthur Grimbal was also attacked but saved by his colleagues.

The Pacific octopus may reach 7 meters across the tentacle span but it does not seem large or aggressive enough to account for these sightings. Could we be dealing with a huge, unknown species?

Nurarihyon

In early legends from Okayama prefecture, Nurarihyon (whose name means slippery and strange) was an aquatic yokai from the Seto Inland Sea. He was said to look like a giant octopus or jellyfish and dived beneath the surface if humans came too close.

By the Edo period Nurarihyon had radically changed. He was then supposed to be the supreme commander of the yokai. For all this he is an unassuming, harmless and rather pleasant fellow. He resembled a green skinned man with an enlarged head shaped somewhat like a cabbage. In the evenings he entered people’s housed and drank their tea and smoked their tobacco. His manner is so confident he was never questioned.

Tako no nana ashi

An octopus with seven legs. These odd tentacled cephelopods haunted the seashore of Chubu District in the Edo period. They crawled up onto land to dig into graves and feast on rotting flesh.

Tako-ningyou

A human headed octopus captured by fishermen during the Meiji period. Make you wonder whether H P Lovecraft read old Japanese texts.

RICHARD FREEMAN: SNAKES IN THE GRASS ARE ABSOLUTELY FREE

Tsuchinoko the flat snake

The ‘flat snake’, a yokai that may have its roots in reality. Tsuchinoko is reported to be one to three feet long with a dorso-ventraly compressed body. It has horn like ridges above the eyes and dorsal pits. The head is triangular and the neck well defined. It is thought to be venomous. It is described as being black or rust coloured. It is supposed to have an odor like chestnut tree flowers!

In legend it has a liking for alcohol, can speak and can hold it’s tail in its mouth and roll along like a hoop (such stories are common in western snake legends as well). It is also said to progress in a series of hopping motions.

The creature is known as Bachi hebi in Northeastern Japan and tsuchi-hebi. It is also said to live in Korea. This yokai has a long history. Drawings resembling Tsuchinoko on stoneware dating back to the ancient Jōmon Period (14,000 BC to 300 BC.) have been discovered in Gifu and Nagano. An encyclopedia from the Edo Period contains a description of the tsuchinoko under the name Yatsui hebi. Accounts of the Tsuchinoko can also be found in the Kojiki, Japan’s oldest surviving book from 680 AD.

But this is a yokai that is still reported in modern times. In June, 1994, 73 year old Kazuaki Noda was cutting grass with his wife when they came across a huge snake with a thick body like a beer bottle and a head described as being like that of a tortoise.

On May 8th, 2000, 90 year old farmer Sugie Tanaka was out looking for bamboo shoots in Mikata, Hyogo prefecture, when she happened across two metallic coloured snakes with what she described as “tails like rats.”

On May 21st 2000 in Yoshi, Okayama prefecture, a farmer cutting grass saw one of these weird serpents slithering across his field. He said it’s face reminded him of the popular Japanese cartoon cat Doraemon. He slashed at it with his weed whipper but it escaped into a stream. He said he had heard of the creatures before and thought they make a kind of chirping sound.

Four days later seventy two year old Hideko Takashima found the creature’s body lying beside a stream. Government officials collected the body and sent it to Kawasaki University of Medical Welfare to be examined. Professor Kuuniyasu Saton examined and said that the creature may indeed have been the beast referred to as Tsuchinoko in ancient legends but “scientifically speaking, it was a kind of snake.”

If the professor ever established the species or if it was indeed a new species is unknown.
A live Tsuchinoko was reportedly captured in Mikata on June 6th, 2000. It was supposedly put on display in a glass box in the Mikata’s visitor center. It may well have been a hoax to drum up publicity for the Tsuchinoko hunts held each year in the area.

Also in June, 2000. 82 year old Mitsuko Arima saw a Tsuchinoko swimming along a river. She described its eyes as being the most striking feature, saying “I can still see the eyes now. They were big and round and it looked like they were floating on the water.” She added “I’ve lived for over 80 years but I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.”

On 30th of August 2000 the Mainich Daily News reported that a bounty had been put on Tsuchinoko’s head. People throughout Kansai and from as far away as Kanto had throng to the town in central Okayama Prefecture in order to try and catch a Tsuchinoko and claim the reward of twenty million yen from the Yoshi Municipal Government. Though the scaly little yokai remained elusive local sales of Tsuchinoko wine and Tsuchinoko rice cake sky rocketed.

Other supposed bodies of this animal have turned up. In Mikata, (the area said to have the highest concentration of sightings in Japan) a corpse was found by four loggers in the Spring of 2001. The body was actually turned over to the Japan Snake Center in Gunma prefecture, where an analysis was done on it that confirmed it as a common grass snake. Another body was found by a villager near Mikata around the same time in May that year, and it too was turned in to the same center for examination. It was determined to be a rat snake.

Back in 1969 A live Tsuchinoko was reportedly captured in by an M. Tokutake in Mikata. He supposedly captured it with a forked stick and kept it for a couple of days before deciding to eat it.

According to Naoki Yamaguchi, who has interviewed over 200 eyewitnesses and is author of the book Catching the Illusory Tsuchinoko, the specially organized mass searches are of little use. The searchers do not go far enough into the wilderness. Most sightings are by hikers, fishermen and loggers.

If Tsuchinoko is a real creature then it seems probable to me that it is an aberrant species of pit viper (Crotalinae). The flattening of the body could enable the snake to hide in rock crevices. There is a president for thin in reptiles. The chuckwalla (Sauromalus) are a genus comprising of five species of Iguanid lizards of the arid areas of the southern USA.

They are dorso-ventaly flattened and once in a crevice inflate their bodies to make extraction by a predator near impossible.

The Pancake tortoise (Malacochersus tornieri) of eastern Africa has a flattened shell so it can slide into crevices. It is not impossible that Japan, a country with a surprising number of snake species) plays host to an undiscovered pit viper of unique form and one of the most ancient yokai is in fact very real.

RICHARD FREEMAN: Hibagon - ‘and the nature of monkey was irrepressible’

This weird Japanese ‘mini-yeti’ is described as an upright walking ape-like beast. It has been reported from the forests around Mount Hiba in Hiroshima prefecture.

In the Autunm of 1972, Reiko Harada and her son encountered a Hibagon whilst walking home near Hiwa. It stood at the roadside and raised its hands as if signalling her to stop. Both mother and son ran home terrified. A search later revealed crushed shrubs and a stench like a rotting cadava.

Yokio Sazawa was digging wild sweet potatoes in the foothills of Mount Hiba when he encountered the beast.

“All of a sudden, this thing stood before me. It was about five feet tall with a face like an inverted triangle, covered with bristles. Having a snub nose, and large, deep, glaring eyes.”

Mr Sazawa was certain that what he had seen was not a monkey.

Albert Kubo was spreading fertilizer on his rice fields when he saw a figuer standing on a path. It seemed to be holding a paper bag. Not knowing who it was Mr Kubo approached it.

“He seemed to be lost in thought or puzzled…I was just about to say something when I realized it was the Hibagon. I was petrified, but the stench was what really got to me. He must have bathed in a septic tank and dried off with cow dung. I mearly passed out. Luckily enough, though, I managed to turn and run before it realized I was there. I ran five miles straight home without ever looking back over my shoulder.”

A nervous populace began to attribute livestock and even human disappearances on the creature even though it never behaved in an aggressive manner.

Creatures much like Hibagon feature in many Japanese legends. One such is the Hi-Hi, an ape like yokai that was covered in long silver hair that could turn back the blows of a sword. Those who drank its blood were said to be able to see demons usually invisible to the human eye. It may be the same species as Hibagon, but with mystic attributes grafted onto it. Some say the Hi-Hi was a monkey that rolled in turpentine to make its pelt bullet proof. Just how turpentine can turn back musket shots is unclear!

In Minamiaizu District, Fukushima Prefecture, the people were disturbed by a hideous screeching each night. A brave man called Teppōuchi set out to solve the mystery. He saw something white at the top of a tree and tried to shoot it. All the bullets turned back, except the last that struck the beast in the eye. Next morning he found a huge, dead Hi-Hi with white hair. It had plastered itself in pine sap then rolled in the riverbed sand.

Natives in Canada say that the sasquatch will smear pine sap upon its hide and roll in sand to give itself a hard coat against the winter frost. This led to the folk belief that it had a hide of stone. Could the same thing be happening here?

In his 1910 book ‘Tôno Monogatari’ (translated in 1975 as‘The Legends of Tono’) folklorist Kunio Yanagita records a belief in Iwate Prefecture that old monkeys use pine resin and sand to make their fur so hard that even bullets cannot penetrate it!

In Hamamatsu City, Shizuoka Prefecture a girl was sacrificed once a year to a Hi-Hi. The god of Mitsuke sent a dog called Shippeitaro to kill the beast. After it was dead, the Hi-Hi’s body was enshrined on Kannon Mountain near the village of Kuma.

Dogs and Hi-Hi seem to be enemies. Another story that took place in Tokushima Prefecture involved a Hi-Hi that devoured a hunter. The man’s dog rushed back home to alert the hunter’s brother. He followed the dog back to the Hi-Hi. The dog attacked the beast and the hunter managed to shoot it. But the dog was also killed in the fight. The gravesite of the hunter and his dog remain.

A soldier named Daijirō was fleeing from Sendai capital city of Miyagi Prefecture with his family. His brother and his family were following behind Daijirō when a Hi-Hi killed his brother’s daughter. Daijirō and his brother killed the beast. The monster and the weapons used to kill it were supposedly buried in the grounds of a primary school.

Another Hi-Hi was buried in land were now a modern primary school stands. It was meant to have been killed in Sannai Village, Hiraka District, Akita Prefecture. As far as I am aware, no excavations have been undertaken. Perhaps the remains of some kind of unknown primate lie there to this day.

Another weird monster ape from Japanese legend is the Yama-chichi. This creature is a nocturnal ape that inhales people's breath while they are sleeping and pounds their chest until they are dead. However, if it happens to rouse its victim's companion, then the victim will be blessed with long life. It is said that many of them once dwelt in Michinoku Province.

In 1665, the second year of the Meireki era, Tokuemon,who served under Mihayashi Banyaku of the Kiriguchi house, was on patrol in the mountain forest when he met the Yama-chichi. He slew it with a bayonet.

A hunter named Nagasōmura no Ennemon met a Yama-chichi in the mountains of Kochi Prefecture. It said that it was going to eat him, but the hunter persuaded it to watch him dance first. He did such a silly dance that the monster roared with laughter. The hunter took this opportunity and shot it in its gaping mouth.

What was Hibagon and its kin? The Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata), or snow monkey is found throughout the wilder, mountainous areas of Japan. But the macaque is a quadruped and reaches a size less than half that of Hibagon.

Another idea is that Hibagon was an escaped pet chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). Exotic pets are popular in Japan and strange as it may seem a number of these savage and dangerous apes are kept. Chimps can walk on their hind legs for a while but they are knuckle walkers by nature. This clashes with the description of Hibagon as a bipedal creature. It is likely that an escaped chimp would have also attacked humans.

Hibagon is more like other short, upright hominids or pongids reported elsewhere in the world. On mainland Asia there are supposedly three types of yeti. The giant Dzu-Teh, possibly a surviving form of the giant Pleistocene ape (Gigantopithecus blacki) the man sized Mi-Teh, perhaps a mainland species of orang-utan and the smaller Teh-lma. This last kind is four to five feet tall. In Malaya the Batutut is also a small upright walking primate. It is said to be fond of stealing shiny objects from human camps. On the island of Sumatra the orang-pendek or ‘short man’ is well known. It is a five foot tall muscular bipedal ape of great strength. It has black or honey coloured hair and a long mane that hangs down from its head. The author has twice taken expeditions into the deep jungle in search of orang-pendek and even followed its tracks. I have spoken to many witnesses including Debbie Martyr, head of the Indonesian tiger conservation group, who has seen orang-pendek no less than four times. I have no doubt it exists. My colleague Adam Davis brought back hair from Kerinchi National Park in Sumatra that was examined by Professor Hans Brunner, the world’s leading expert on animal hair. He announced that it was from a new species of ape related to the orang-utan

Could Hibagon be related to one of these creatures? Japan is certainly not tropical like Malaya or Sumatra but the Teh-lma inhabits cool mountain climates. There have, as far as I know, been no recent sightings of Hibagon. The animal might have died out or it just might still be awaiting discovery in Japan’s trackless mountain forests.

GUEST BLOGGER CORINNA DOWNES: Whale meat again

George W Bush really was a nasty little sod. Even in the last few weeks of his administration he was engaged in talks to undo the global moratorium on commercial whaling and extend unprecedented authorisation to the government of Japan to kill whales off its coastline and in international waters. Wildlife Extra has the Whole Story but Corinna is incensed..

So, in the final throes of its reign, the Bush Administration organised some closed-door meetings and discussions with the Japanese Vice-chair with a view to reaching a compromise over their whaling activities. It seems that this would have legalised Japan’s ongoing ‘scientific’ research activities, which would even stretch its ‘scientific’ fingers to include a whale sanctuary.

Hmm, now according to my dictionary the definition of the word sanctuary is: A reserved area in which birds and other animals, especially wild animals, are protected from hunting or molestation. Does this mean, then, that this word does not exist in the Japanese language? Well, of course yes, it does. So, I can only assume, then, that it means the complete opposite in Japan than it does in every other country of the world.

Since the global commercial whaling ban came into force in 1986, Japan came up with the idea of doing some scientific research into whales. The Embassy of Japan in Australia issued the following explanation for the annual slaughter:

“In order to obtain appropriate scientific data for the proper management of whales, only using non-lethal research method is insufficient and lethal method is required:

While certain information can be obtained through non-lethal means, other information requires sampling of internal organs such as ovaries, ear plugs and stomachs. For example, while the population age structure and reproductive rates of land mammals can be determined by observation over a long period of time, such is not the case for whales since they spend most of their life underwater. In this case ear plugs are needed for age determination, ovaries are needed to establish their reproductive rates, and stomachs are needed for the analysis of their food consumption (whales might have consumed large amounts of fish, so as to give an adverse impact on commercial fisheries and the balance of the marine ecosystem).

Of course, the lethal research method is only applied to whale species which are already determined as abundant, and the small take for research purpose will not produce a negative impact on overall stocks of those species.”

Well, over 15,000 whales have been killed in the name of this scientific research. And you can, perhaps, visualise how much meat is left over after the relevant bits and pieces have been removed. And, perhaps, you can also guess where this meat conveniently ends up. It has, after all, been eaten in that part of the world for the best part of 2,000 years.

Waste not, want not eh?

EDITOR'S NOTE: The latest whaling news is that the outgoing Icelandic government has increased their whaling quota as well. Iceland is already bankrupt financially. It looks like it is also bankrupt morally. See you in the gutter guys. I hope you like it there.

FREE DOWNLOADS: Picture of collectable monster toys, courtesy John "Brojo" Wooldridge.

"Cryptozoology Is Serious Business" by Oll Lewis

The CFZ, as most of you know is a very serious organisation populated by very serious people. However, nobody can remain serious all the time, and there is a fun side to cryptozoology too.

For example there have been loads of cryptozoology related toys released over the years that can help you to indoctrinate your children, nephews or nieces into the fold. Among the many monster toys available are "Monster in my pocket", best-known as a toy-line released by Matchbox in 1990. It consists of small, soft plastic figures representing monsters, and later other tangentially-related characters.the collection contains, as well as traditional horror staples like the wolf-man ghosts and vampires, a number of cryptids like the Loch Ness monster.

Monster in my pocket were very popular when I was a kid so I was greeted by a wave of nostalgia when CFZ member John Woodridge from Montana in the USA emailed us his photographs of cryptozoological toys he’s collected. Among them are also several Japanese monster toys, among them some particularly cool looking ones of mothman that were very reminiscent of pokemon in their appearance.

Pokemon are perhaps my personal favourite cryptozoological toy as I got hooked on the Nintendo game when I was younger, and still enjoy the odd pokemon battle on my Nintendo DS. Many pokemon were based on cryptids and monsters from Japanese folklore called yokai. More information can be read about yokai in Richard Freeman’s encyclopaedia on the subject, being released soon by CFZ Press.

But I digress… take a look at John Wooldridge’s rather smart looking photos:

http://www.cfz.org.uk//Brojo/MonsterInMyPocket/MonsterInMyPocket/

http://www.cfz.org.uk//Brojo/Shadowbox&Horvath/DavidHorvath/

http://www.cfz.org.uk/Brojo/Shadowbox&Horvath/ShadowboxCollectibles/

WHALE STORIES OF CRYPTOZOOLOGICAL INTEREST

Two stories on the excellent Wildlife Extra website are of more than considerable interest to people of a cryptozoological persuasion.

The most recent comes from the west coast of Ireland where, in September, there were the first confirmed sightings of blue whales since records began.

The other story is much older, but as it is accompanied by the only pictures of four Arnoux’s beaked whales (Berardius arnuxii), observed from a helicopter during an Antarctic expedition, we decided to include it. For more details go here.

NEWS FROM THE CETACEAN NATION

THE WORLD’S SECOND LARGEST ANIMAL RUNS AGROUND IN IRELAND

A 64 foot fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus) the second largest animal in the world ran aground alive near Courtmacsherry in the west of Ireland this January. The animal was in poor condition with its bones visible through its blubber. It was hope that the animal could be saved as putting such a huge creature to sleep is hard as it takes a vast amount of drugs and shooting it with high powered firearms would be the only option.

Sadly the animal died of natural causes. It was probably very weak and ill before it ran around. The creature was buried using two JCBs.

Many fin whales have been recorded off the Irish coast since September 2008. The International Whale and Dolphin Group were working closely with operators to record the whales in the area through photo-identification, where unique markings are recorded to enable them to recognize individuals. To date they have more than 60 fin whales and 10 humpback whales recorded (mostly from West Cork).

SPURNING JAPANESE

According to Greenpeace sources in Surabaya, East Java, the Japanese whaling ship Yushin Maru II, has been forced to abandon her whale-slaughtering mission and return to port in Indonesian. The Ship has a damaged propeller, rudder and navigation system. The Yushin Maru II being out of commission will significantly decrease the number of whales killed in the southern ocean this season. It is not know if this damage was due to the gallant efforts of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

Meanwhile two Greenpeace activists are awaiting trial in Japan for their part in exposing a whale meat scam. Japanese whalers hunt Antarctic minke whales (Balaenoptera bonaerensis) for ‘scientific research’ (what ever the hell that means) but the whale meat is sold on illegaly for huge profints. In 2006 505 minke whales were butcherd by the Japanese fleet.

Not content with this atrocity, Japan is making a mockery of international law by re-flagging and using the refueling tanker, formerly known as the Oriental Bluebird, after it was fined by the Panamanian government for breaching international environmental law Now named the Hiyo Maru - the vessel is still operating with the whaling fleet, without a permit and despite the fact that Japan has ratified a treaty which seeks to ban the practice of reflagging to circumvent environmental law.

SINK THE BASTARDS!

In December 2008, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ship Steve Irwin, named after the late, lamented conservationist and crocodile expert, perused the Japanese whaling fleet across the Antarctic.

They found Japanese whalers in the Australian Economic Exclusion Zone at 64°26 South and 132° 40' East. The Steve Irwin launched a Delta boat with a crew to attack the Yushin Maru II with rotten butter bombs. The Sea Shepherd crew pursued and delivered 10 bottles of rotten butter and 15 bottles of a methyl cellulose and indelible dye mixture.

Pursuing this ship and several others the Steve Irwin prevented them from whaling. Captain Paul Watson said… “The Japanese whalers are still targeting whales in the waters of an established international whale sanctuary and thus they are still in violation of international conservation law and acting under the principles of the United Nations World Charter for Nature, we will continue to pursue, harass and intervene against their blatantly illegal lethal assaults on the whales."

The Steve Irwin has a crew of 40 international volunteers and a film crew onboard producing the series Whale Wars. Last year the Sea Shepherd crew pursued the Japanese whaling fleet from early December until mid-March. That intervention cost the whalers over $70 million in lost profits and saved almost 500 whales.

Everyone at the CFZ would like to send out our thanks and admiration to these brave people.

WOLVES OF THE RISING SUN

I suppose that it was inevitable considering that Richard and I have lived together on and off for about ten years (although not, thank goodness, in the Biblical sense) and collaborated on various crypto projects for the entire time,that he should be sneakily becoming our foremost Guest Blogger. He has always been obsessed with dogs, so it is not surprising that Derek's marvellous posting the other day on the subject of stray wolves in Illinois prompted not one, but two wolf-related bloggings.

Canis lupus hodophilax

Some of the most fascinating wolves were found in Japan. There were two sub-species of wolf in Japan, the dwarf wolf, Honshū wolf or Shamanu (Canis lupus hodophilax) and the Hokkaido wolf or Ezo wolf (Canis lupus hattai ). The former was the smallest of all wolf species at fourteen inches shoulder hight. It was also the most strinkingly marked wolf species,with grey, white and russet fur. The Shamanu occupied the islands of Honshū, Shikoku, and Kyūshū. It was eradicated by a combination of rabies (perhapse were the myth of the mad Hito-okami first arose), that first appered in the area in 1732 and the introduction of fire arms. Troughout the 19th century they were extensivly hunted and the last known individual was killed near Washikaguchi on Honshū in 1905. In Higashi-Yoshino Village in Nara prefecture a requiem for the Shamanu is carred out each year. Despite this there are sightings that sugest the dwarf wolf might still be extant.

A wolf was killed and photographed in Fukui in 1910 but the body was destroyed by fire.

In 1934 a group of farmers northwest of Hongu reported seeing five or six wolves in a pack. After World War II, sightings increased. Forester and writer Ue Toshikatsu, thinks that this makes sense as conscription and war reduced the population of rural areas and produced an increase in the numbers of wild game such as boar and deer.

In 1993, Yanai Kenji published his own story of how, whilst mountaineering with his son and his co-worker, he was startled by a “horrible howling” near Ryogami Mountain in 1964. Soon after hearing the howls, the party encountered a lone wolf. The animal watched them briefly, then fled, leaving the half-eaten carcass of a hare behind.

In March 1994, a conference on the wolf’s possible survival was held in Nara. Over eighty professional and amateur researchers attended. They presented and analyzed reports from seventy witnesses who had seen wolves or heard howls. An accompanying story in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun stated that a shrine in Tottori Prefecture, just northwest of Nara, was discovered in January 1994 to hold a surprisingly recent specimen of a dwarf wolf. This animal may have been presented to the shrine as recently as 1950.

Most sightings have come from the Kii Peninsula. This rugged, mountainous block of land projecting into the Pacific from the southeastern coast of Honshu was the last stronghold of the Shamanu.

Canis lupus hattai

In 1966, a wolf expert named Hiroshi Yagi was driving on a forest road in Saitama prefecture (well north of the Kii) when he spotted what he believed was a wolf. He stopped, and the animal let him get close while he took photographs.

In 8th July 2000 Satoshi Nishida, a high school headmaster was on a camping trip in the mountains of central Kyūshū. He encountered a strange creature and took ten shots of it with an auto focus camera. Two of the best were taken at a range of only three to four meters from the left side of the animal.

Mr Nishida showed the pictures to Dr Yoshinori Imaizumi, a former chief at the National Museum’s animal research divistion and an expert on Japanese wolves. Dr Imaizumi noted several charactaristics inherent to the dwarf wolf including the rounded tip of the tail and the reddish orange fur behind the ears and on the outside of it’s legs. He thought it was a lactating female.

Thus far none of the alledged photos of Shamanu have reached the west.
Modern expeditions have focused on the Kii Peninsula but despite trapping efforts and playing recordings on Canadian wolf vocalizations the dwarf wolf remains elusive.

The Hokkaido wolf was closer in size to the average mainland wolf. It was found on Hokkaido, Shakhalin,the Kuril Islands and the Kamchatka Penninsular. It was thought to have become extinct in Japan around 1889 during the Meiji restoration period. It was deemed a threat to livestock and a bounty was placed on the species. They were erradicated mainly by poison.

Like the dwarf wolf, sightings of the Hokkaido wolf are reported from time to time. It is also thought they may survive in Kamchatka.

There can be no greater metaphore for the ‘progress’ of ‘civilization’ than the transformation of the wolf in Japan from a spiritual creature to noxious vermin as it’s culture became modenized. There is a striking similarity here to the case of the thylacine or Tasmanian marsupial wolf (Thylacinus cynocephalus). It too is offically extinct but continued reports from excellent eyewitnesses such as zoologists and park rangers sugest it still survives. If the same is true for the wolves of Japan it would be a triumph for both conservation and the Japanese nation. Let us hope that the howling gods still lurk in the fastness of the Japanese mountains.