by Dom Joly
The whole Hibagon office is at our disposal,’ said Naoko laughing. ‘We will meet with the man responsible for the Hibagon and he will take us to the places where there have been sightings. He is happy to answer all questions and he is very knowledgeable. I am very happy we are going to hunt for a monster, Dom-San. This is a big adventure.’ She paused for a second with glorious comic timing. ‘This, however . . . We don’t have to do this . . .’ she continued, puffing and looking up the path. I teased her and suggested that she should advertise herself as a ‘lazy’ guide. Eventually we got to the top. I felt good. It was from this very spot that an incredible photo was taken of the mushroom cloud six minutes after the bomb went off. I’d seen it in the museum. What must the photographer have thought as he raised his camera? It must have seemed like the end of the world. Had the Hibagon, whatever it might be, been created at that very moment? Had it maybe gazed too long at the fiery skies over the city, transfixed, as so many were, by the sheer enormity of what was happening around it?
We were very happy on our summit and stayed there for quite a while. Eventually Naoko took me a down different way because there were several holes in the rock that supposedly had certain powers. One hole, for example, cured ‘itchy body’ – unless you were ‘bad’, in which case it actually gave you ‘itchy body’.
Back at the bottom, we stopped in a Shinto shrine while Naoko prayed for a while. I stood on an outside platform, smelling the incense and gazing down at my feet – ever the awkward atheist. I have to admit to feeling very calm there. These sorts of places seem to work better the older you get.
We caught the boat back to Hiroshima. I’d done enough ‘normal’ tourism. It was time to crack on with some monster-hunting.
The next morning I was up early and ready to bag me a Hibagon. But first, breakfast: monster-hunting is always more productive on a sated belly. The dining-room walls were wallpapered with black-and-white photographs of New York. Some of them showed New Yorkers flying the Stars and Stripes and cheering in a ticker-tape parade. I rather hoped it wasn’t a war-related celebration and marvelled at the insouciance shown by Hiroshimites towards their destructors.
I met Naoko and we set off to rent a car. Having been told that I needed an International Driving Permit I was rather worried but I needn’t have been. Renting a car in Japan was akin to being greeted on a royal visit. Every production of a form or a credit card was met with much bowing and smiling and we were soon sitting in a tiny little Toyota Box (not the real name but it would be apt) while the entire staff of the rental agency lined up to bow as we drove out of the garage. We were headed for Saijo, seventy-five miles north-east of Hiroshima. Naoko had arranged for us to meet a Mr Maeda, who was head of the town’s tourist association and also ran the ‘Hibagon office’. As with the low-bridge experience, Naoko was a very nervous passenger and I worried for her fingers as she gripped the door handle for dear life. Not that we could do much speed in the Box. I managed to get it up to about sixty miles an hour but that was it.
Saijo is an unremarkable little town at the foot of a small range of mountains, the highest being Mount Hiba. We parked up outside a building in the centre of town and were met by Mr Maeda, an unassuming man who seemed incredibly pleased to see us. He invited us into his messy office where he handed me his business card. It had a cartoon drawing of a rather cuddly-looking creature that Mr Maeda confirmed was the Hibagon. It turned out that he had designed this endearing image to make the Hibagon more tourist-friendly, as the original UMA (unidentified mysterious animal) was not quite so sweet.
We sat around a table and I asked Mr Maeda to tell me the history of the Hibagon. He produced a map that marked every sighting of the beast as well as a photograph of a footprint, taken about seven miles from where we were sitting. As I looked at these he told me the story, with Naoko translating:
On 20 July 1970, very near Mount Hiba, a farmer reported seeing a big ape wandering through his field. The ape measured about two metres seventy centimetres, had dark reddish-brown hair, a big head like a cone and was walking on two feet. They had small monkeys in the area but nothing remotely like this. After the farmer’s original sighting there followed about ten more sightings within a month – all fitting the same description. A local newspaper wrote the story and coined the name ‘Hibagon’ after the nearby mountain. Things then got a bit hysterical, with schoolchildren having to be accompanied to school by the police and a lot of locals becoming incredibly nervous about going out. The story exploded all over Japan and all sorts of weirdoes came from all over the country to hunt the creature. Universities set up Hibagon student-exploration clubs and groups would come and roam the mountains for weekends. The initial panic lasted for about a month but then things started to calm down a little. Journalists came from everywhere and the locals started getting a bit annoyed because Japanese magazines and newspapers started making fun of them.
The local government set up a special Anthropoid Section’ and they got a budget to deal with press and inquiries.
Then, in August 1974, a local, a Mr Mitani, took a photo of the Hibagon. He had stopped his car on a road in the mountains when he spotted the beast in foliage at the side of the road. This was the only photograph that had ever been taken of the Hibagon and it kicked off the story again. More sightings were reported and then started to dry up.
The Anthropoid Section was eventually closed in 1975 and the town declared the ‘end of the Hibagon’, as they’d had enough of all the attention. Despite these protestations, though, soon products as varied as noodles, washing powder and sweets appeared bearing the Hibagon name. Mr Maeda was very much still a believer in the beast but recognized that it was a scary thing that might not really attract too many tourists. This was when he came up with the cartoon version of the animal. This logo was now used on everything related to the town, from the Forest Commission to tourist literature and hiking guides.
I was just going to ask more about a movie called Dear Hinagon that had been shot in the town when the door opened and a very fat man waddled in. He was a journalist from the local paper in Chugoku and he’d been tipped off that one of the world’s most eminent monster-hunters was in town. He asked if I’d mind doing an interview and then have him follow my investigations. I agreed and we all decided that we should set off in Mr Maeda’s car to check out some of the places where the Hibagon had been spotted.
We drove to the place where a rice farmer spotted the Hibagon. He’d been driving up a remote road when he saw the beast crossing the road in front of him. When it heard the car, it ran off up into the woods above the road. The farmer’s description of the beast broadly matched that of the first sighting, but he also said the creature had a vaguely human face.
I got out of the car and looked around, not exactly sure what I was supposed to do about something that had happened forty years previously. It was very unlikely that the Hibagon was still hiding in the bushes above. I was mindful that the local journalist was watching me intently and taking loads of pictures, however, so I felt that I needed to act out the part. I knelt down beside the road and ran my hand through the earth in a questioning manner. I then went and smelt the bark on a nearby tree for quite a long time before nodding and writing stuff on my iPhone. This seemed to satisfy the journalist, who took more photos.
We got back in the car and drove on up a river valley until we got to the farm where the original sighting had taken place. We got out and trudged over a ploughed field until we reached a particular spot in between the farmhouse and some woods.
Mr Maeda told us that the farmer had been working in this field and had been just about to stop for the day as it was getting dark when he saw a figure approaching him. He said that the first thing he’d noticed was that there was a terrible smell. At first the farmer thought it was his elderly neighbour and shouted out a greeting. (I thought this didn’t say much for either the looks or the personal hygiene of his elderly neighbour, but I kept quiet.)
When the farme
r shouted out the figure stopped moving and the farmer walked towards it. He said the smell became even worse and he saw that the creature was not his elderly neighbour but a tall, hairy man ‘like a caveman ape’. As he approached, the creature bolted back into the woods at the same time as the farmer ran to his neighbour’s house.
Presumably when he knocked on the neighbour’s door in panic he left out some of the details, and didn’t just blurt out, ‘I just saw a really ugly, hairy beast in the field; it stank to high heaven and I presumed it was you but it wasn’t . . .’ Whatever, the farmer was absolutely terrified, in quite a state of shock, and refused to go back to his house.
I wanted to speak to the farmer but he had since died. Mr Maeda had spoken to all these witnesses at length, though, and saw absolutely no reason to disbelieve them. Mr Maeda said that Mount Hiba was a ‘holy’ mountain and had been sort of off limits to people before 1970. At that time, there had been talks of developing the area for tourism and it was then that the initial sightings happened. Some said the Hibagon was angry about this invasion of his territory and this was why he was coming closer to humans.
Hungry from all this monster-hunting, we stopped at a mountain lodge to have lunch. The local reporter started to interview me. It turned out that he was something of a monster aficionado himself and had been to the home of another of Japan’s big monsters, Issie, at Lake Ikeda. I told him that I intended to try to go there and check it out for myself. He was quite encouraging and said that there were boats that took people out to search for the beast and that he had spoken to several local fishermen who had all seen peculiar things.
We all headed back off down the mountain to the city, where Mr Maeda showed us the roadside signs that he’d had erected. These all featured the cuddly Hibagon welcoming people to the town. He then took us to a local bakery where they made Hibagon sweets. It was all a little desperate and I was quite glad when it was time to finally say our goodbyes and head off back to Hiroshima. There was something a bit depressing about the whole Hibagon affair. It felt like the creature had left town a long time ago. I’d sort of hoped for more of the irradiated-man angle but Mr Maeda didn’t even seem to factor this in as a possibility. The journalist told me that foreign journalists had heard about the Hibagon, noticed it was in Hiroshima prefecture and put two and two together to make five. I tried to look bewildered at how people could be so stupid while subtly emphasizing that I was not one of those idiots. I’m not sure that I was entirely successful.
Mr Maeda waved at us sadly as we disappeared down the road. I drove back towards Hiroshima while Naoko chatted away about her travels to Europe. She told me that she’d been terrified while on the sleeper train from Venice to Nice because someone had told her that people gassed sleepers and stole their stuff. She and her husband had barricaded their compartment and refused to let the ticket inspector in because they were sure he was a baddie.
As we re-entered Hiroshima I glanced at our little rented car’s incomprehensibly complicated sat-nav system. I noticed a plethora of swastikas dotted all around the city. For a moment I worried that these might denote secret Nazi bases in town but Naoko laughed and told me that they represented Buddhist temples – the swastika being an old Buddhist symbol before the Nazis swiped it for their own nefarious purposes.
Back at the hotel, I said goodbye to Naoko and gave her a copy of my last book. She promised to find the article by the local journalist when it appeared in the newspaper and to send me a translation.
‘Soon you will be famous in Hiroshima, Dom-San,’ she joked. I loved her calling me Dom-San – I don’t know why -and I wondered whether I could persuade Stacey to start doing so too. It being a mark of respect, I somehow doubted it. Naoko and I bowed to each other and she wandered off smiling to the end.
Despite the appealing prospect of my forthcoming celebrity status in Hiroshima, I had decided to leave the city the following day. The Hibagon had not been as exciting a prey as I’d hoped. I’d had an actual sighting of Ogopogo in Lake Okanagan whereas here so far I hadn’t even spotted a shape-shifting badger. I decided that I was going to take a Shinkansen and get down to the very bottom of Kyushu Island to see if I could learn anything about Issie the lake monster.
That evening I headed out to a Yakitori joint that Naoko had recommended. When we’d been wandering round town she’d popped in and introduced me to the owner. Had she not done this, I think I’d have been too nervous to walk in on my own – it was a low-ceilinged room packed with Japanese patrons. My entrance through the sliding door caused some raised eyebrows until the owner waved at me and beckoned me to sit down at the lone remaining seat. I was immediately given a plate piled high with raw cabbage covered in soy sauce and tons of pureed garlic. An enormous glass of chilled Sapporo was plonked in front of me. I didn’t order anything. Every time the owner cooked a round of skewers he’d walk up and down the bar placing one on each plate. When you finished a skewer you put it in a cup opposite you and this was how you were charged at the end of the meal. Life was good. I ordered some cold sake and the owner suggested I have some from a beautiful-looking bottle. Some rice wine can be slightly vomit-inducing but this was perfect – and incredibly strong. Within half an hour I was showing the whole bar photographs of my wife, kids, dogs, cats, mother. The reserve was down on both sides.
On the way back to the hotel I stopped at a portrait painter’s and had him paint me. When he’d finished, he handed me a portrait of an elderly drunken Irishman. I presume that it was supposed to be me but nobody who has seen it has ever yet guessed this fact.
The following morning I had a sore head and found the lift ride down particularly tricky. There was some sort of convention happening in the hotel and it was even fuller than the Tokyo metro. However calm and ‘Zen-like’ the Japanese character is supposed to be, there’s always one man hammering away at the ‘close’ button in every lift. Should he get out at a certain floor, then another man just steps up to take his place. At breakfast I checked my emails. There was one from Naoko. The fat journo’s story was in the paper and she had translated it for me.
Dom Joly, 44, an English comedian, visited Saijo Town, Shobara, to write in his book about Hibagon, which was seen there in around 1970. He is writing a travel book on six UMAs in the world, including the Nessie and Yeti. Hibagon has been included in the six.
He energetically reported the area where Hibagon was first seen and the vegetable field where the local resident met Hibagon at a very close distance. He said that the nature and the atmosphere in Saijo is similar to that of the forest in California where Bigfoot roams.
Mr Tadanori Maeda, 44, Secretary General of the Saijo Town Tourist Association, said, ‘It is our honour that Hibagon has been included in the top six UMAs in the world. I’m glad to know that, even today, Hibagon has been paid attention to.’
Mr Joly will soon go to look for a dinosaur in a deep forest in Africa in January, and Yeti in the Himalayas.
There was a photograph of me, Naoko and Mr Maeda. I was in the middle and pretending to be inspecting something. Naoko wrote, ‘You are very famous now in Hiroshima, Dom-San; all my friends have seen this.’
Monster-hunters like myself, however, do not do this for fame or women or free food: we do it for science.
I caught the Shinkansen and, an hour out of Hiroshima, we pulled into Kokura. I gazed out of the window at the city This was the ‘B’ target on the day of the Hiroshima bombing. It survived purely because of clement weather over Hiroshima. The train flew on, like a silent projectile (a bullet, if you will), through Japan. An overly helpful man insisted that I get off at Hakata.
‘You need to change here for sure.’ He smiled, almost tugging on my sleeve.
Are you sure? I thought the Shinkansen went all the way to the bottom of Kyushu?’
‘No . . . You change here one hundred per cent. I go where you go.’
‘To Lake Ikeda? I want to see Issie.’ I tried to make what I considered to be the international sign
for ‘lake monster’ but was not convinced it worked.
‘Yes, yes, we must hully, please . . .’ he smiled and I followed him off the train meekly. I had to admit that my Japanese train-getting had not been brilliant so far. The man took me through some barriers and we entered what looked like a distinctly less-salubrious train platform.
‘Shinkansen?’ I asked, looking concerned.
‘No Shinkansen . . . Local train.’ The man seemed absolutely convinced and the signs were now in Japanese so I relinquished all control and got on a smaller train. I sat down and the man sat opposite me. I sort of wanted to be alone but he seemed to have taken me under his wing. I hoped that I wouldn’t end up in some gimp basement and surreptitiously got my penknife out from my bag, just in case. The train rolled along the coast and the scenery became rather beautiful. Occasionally my new friend would point out of the window and say something like ‘Sea . . .’ while pointing at the sea.
I would nod and say ‘Yes, sea . . .’ back to him and then stare intently at the sea as though I had just noticed it.
‘Tree . . .’ he said, pointing at a rather nondescript tree.
‘Yes, tree . . .’ I said, now longing for an escape route.
The train rolled on for a good two hours. We stopped at several places but I didn’t have a map so I had no idea how far we had gone or how long it would take. The train started to slow down and the tannoy lady was very vocal for a while.
‘We are here,’ said my friend. ‘Velly good.’ He smiled at me and I smiled back. He had been very helpful and didn’t seem to have any hidden weapons or chloroform at the ready. As the train pulled into the station, I thanked him.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘Welcome to Nagasaki,’ he said.
I’m still not sure how my ‘friend’ ever got it into his head that I was going to Nagasaki. Certainly I never mentioned it. All I could think was that he assumed every foreigner on a train was bound for his hometown. Maybe they had a very proactive visitor programme? Whatever, there was very little I could do. I checked the map and I was way off course. Nagasaki is on a peninsula on the westernmost part of Kyushu and it would take an age to get back to a line that would take me down to near Lake Ikeda. I had limited time left in Japan so I decided to go with the flow and visit Nagasaki. To my knowledge it has no monsters – but it was the site of the dropping of the second atomic bomb in the Second World War and so, in a Dark Touristic way, it sort of made sense that I be here.
