Yamagon: the gorilla-like creature of Yamano-chō, Fukuyama

Hiroshima Prefecture already had its ape-man. From 1970 to 1974, people around Mount Hiba reported a hairy creature they called the Hibagon. Then the reports faded.

Yamano-chō sits in the northern hills of Fukuyama. In 1980 it was not a town of its own. The old village of Yamano had merged into Kamo in 1955, and Kamo was absorbed into Fukuyama in 1975. The district takes in the Oda River and the nearby Yamano Gorge.

October 20, 1980. About 6:40 in the morning. A local man had finished his farm work and was driving home along a prefectural road in Tahara. The sources do not give his name. Or his age.

Ahead of him stood a gorilla-like creature. It was about 1.5 metres tall and heavily muscled. Its face was black. Grey-brown hair covered its whole body, except the belly. It stood upright. For about a minute, the creature and the witness stared each other down.

Then it turned for the mountain. It dropped onto four legs and slid down the bank of the Haratani River, 5 metres below. It crossed the river knee-deep, at tremendous speed. Once out of the water, it moved from tree to tree like a monkey. And it was gone into the mountains.

In 1981 a "footprint" about 30 cm long was found on the prefectural road in front of the Tahara health center. No cast is mentioned. In 1982 Jōji Kamisako searched Yamano Gorge. He reported footprints, discarded shells and droppings that might have been Yamagon's. One account adds that the witness drew a sketch from memory, and that a Hibagon witness called it the same creature. That claim remains unconfirmed.

No police or scientific investigation is recorded. The response was administrative. The Yamano authorities took notice of the testimony and the footprint as a tourism resource. Following the Hibagon, they named the creature Yamagon. Some speculated that it was the Hibagon itself, travelled south from Hiba to Yamano.

No hoax claim about the sighting or the footprint has surfaced. No source has offered a specific conventional explanation either. One curiosity lingers. In November 1979, about a year earlier, a Doraemon story called "The Snowman's Part-Time Job" featured a village monster named Yamagon, which turned out to be a villager in costume. One essay that noticed the overlap calls it a coincidence.

The main print account comes from Susumu Urushima's 1993 book on Japanese monsters and phantom beasts. Urushima also recorded the Kuigon, a hairy creature reported by two young brothers in Kui-chō in 1982. English Wikipedia appears to fold both cases into the Hibagon story. Yamagon has not been seen since 1980.