The First Hibagon Sightings at Mount Hiba and Saijō's Hominoid Section

Saijō was a quiet town in Hiba County, Hiroshima Prefecture, near the border with Tottori. Today it is part of Shōbara City. Above it rises Mount Hiba. In the summer of 1970, something came down from its forests.

20 July 1970, about 8 pm. A 31-year-old man was driving a truck near Chūgoku Electric Power's Rokunohara Dam, in the Yuki district. A creature came out onto the road, walking on two legs. It noticed him, then slowly went back into the forest. It was gorilla-like in shape, about the size of a calf.

Three days later, a farmer in the same district was cutting grass near his home. A figure stood bolt upright, its upper body showing above the grass. It was about as tall as an adult and covered all over in black hair. Its head was abnormally large. Its face looked human.

30 July. About 8 pm again. A local man, then 47, saw a figure walking toward him along a paddy-field ridge path. He called out, thinking it was a relative. It was a monster that looked exactly like a gorilla.

The witnesses spoke of fear. One said, "I couldn't stop trembling," while another recalled, "In fear, I ran to a relative's house to stay overnight." The body was too large for a monkey, they said, but the facial features resembled a human. Together the reports described a stocky creature 1.5 to 1.65 metres tall, with an inverted-triangle face, large protruding eyes and bristles standing on end atop a head nearly twice human size. There were 12 reports in 1970, and in December footprints appeared in the snow.

The Saijō town office was swamped with calls and press inquiries. On 26 August 1970, the Chūgoku Shimbun ran the headline "'Ape-man' commotion at the foot of Mount Hiba." That autumn, town official 恵木剋行 was assigned to the matter. In April 1971 the office formally created a "hominoid consultation section," popularly called the Hibagon section. The town even paid witnesses a ¥5,000 nuisance payment, because the attention had disrupted their daily lives.

University exploration clubs and research groups searched the area. Only eyewitness accounts and footprints remained, falling short of definitive proof. Reports continued into 1974, when a motorist took an unclear photograph that experts judged to be probably a monkey or a bear. By most counts the total reached 29. The section closed in 1975.

Zoologist Tadaaki Imaizumi suggested an old Japanese macaque separated from its troop. Others proposed an escaped or smuggled gorilla or orangutan, a feral human, an army deserter, or a person affected by the Hiroshima atomic bombing. Locals answered the bear theory. Bears, they said, stay in the deeper forest, with too little food near the sighting areas. None of it was ever settled, Imaizumi's macaque included, and no hoax was ever established.

Similar reports followed, including Yamagon in Fukuyama in 1980 and Kuigon in Kui-chō in 1982. Saijō, meanwhile, adopted its monster, and a cute Hibagon mascot now appears on buns, eggs, miso and buses. Kiyoshi Shigematsu wrote the novel Itoshi no Hinagon. In 2020 a rove beetle, Lathrobium hibagon, was named for the 50th anniversary of the first sighting. Anthropologist Grégory Beaussart has spoken on the affair at the Muséum de Toulouse.

Then, on 23 August 2024, a man in Saijō saw a long-haired black creature about 175 cm tall. In 2025 the hominoid consultation section was revived, and its former staffer came back to collect reports. Fifty-five years on, Hibagon remains unexplained.