Amabie Began with a Single News Sheet: The Prophetic Yokai from the Sea off Higo

Amabie is known all over Japan today, yet as far as anyone knows, the only Edo-period record of it is a single kawaraban, a one-page printed news sheet. Unlike oni or kappa, told of for centuries, Amabie was born on one sheet of paper, mostly forgotten, and then spread far and wide in recent years. That makes it a rather unusual yokai.

1846, from the sea off Higo

According to that news sheet, the year was the third year of the Koka era (1846). Word spread that something was glowing in the sea off Higo Province, today's Kumamoto Prefecture, night after night. When a local official went to look, a figure appeared out of the water and named itself "Amabie."

Amabie announced that good harvests would continue for some time to come. Then it added: if sickness spreads, copy my likeness and show it to the people. And with that, it returned to the sea. The sheet shows the creature in simple lines: long hair, a beak-like mouth, a body covered in scales, and three legs.

The sheet is now held in the collection of the Kyoto University Library.

The kawaraban: Edo-period media

Kawaraban were single-sheet prints sold on the streets during the Edo period. Besides fires, earthquakes and revenge killings, rumors of strange creatures appearing were a popular subject.

There's a clever twist in Amabie's message. "Show people my picture" leads naturally to "let's get hold of this picture and show it around." So some see these prints as doing two things at once: answering people's fears and hopes, and making sure the printed image was in demand.

Amabiko and the "prophetic beasts"

Toward the end of the Edo period, quite a few stories circulated about creatures like Amabie: they appeared, foretold the future, and asked for their picture to be spread. Today, researchers group them together as "prophetic beasts."

One of them, "Amabiko," has a name very close to Amabie's, and more records of it are said to survive. That has led to a theory that "Amabie" was originally "Amabiko," and that the name changed as the story was copied. We plan to introduce Amabiko on its own another time.

2020: Amabie spreads again

For a long time, Amabie was known mainly to yokai fans. Then, around 2020, as a new infectious disease spread around the world, pictures of Amabie took off on social media. Many people drew their own versions and shared them, and the creature began to appear on sweets and everyday goods too.

Of course, a drawing of Amabie has no power to prevent illness. Still, in an anxious time, people drew the same figure and showed it to one another with a shared wish: may this pass soon. Somehow, that feels close to how people in the Edo period must have felt holding a news sheet in their hands.

See Amabie in detail on its Yokaipedia page. The sea off Higo is marked on the Yokai Map in Kumamoto.