Hibagon
Aliases: Hinagon / Territory: Japon
A squat, ape-like figure reported around Mount Hiba from 1970 to 1974, never firmly identified and never seen again.
Japan's answer to Bigfoot was smaller, shyer and much shorter-lived. In July 1970, residents of the rural town of Saijō, below Mount Hiba on the border of Hiroshima and Shimane prefectures, began reporting a two-legged creature about a metre and a half tall, covered in black or dark brown hair, with a broad triangular face and glittering eyes. Sightings accumulated at rice-paddy edges, forest margins and mountain roads at dusk.
The wave lasted four summers. Between 1970 and 1974 dozens of reports were logged, footprints were photographed in mud and snow, and one blurry picture of a dark crouching shape made the rounds of the regional press. The affair even acquired a bureaucratic dimension rare in cryptozoology: the local town office opened a desk to register sightings, and residents were briefly advised not to approach the animal. After 1974 the reports all but stopped; scattered claims in the 1980s, filed under derivative local names, never revived the case.
None of the proposed explanations requires an unknown species. Japanese macaques are common in these mountains, can look startlingly large and will stand on their hind legs; an Asian black bear standing upright also matches the reported outline, especially in poor light. Commentators have added a cultural layer: the region lies near Hiroshima, and the sightings coincided precisely with Japan's 1970s boom of yeti and Bigfoot coverage, which plausibly shaped how ordinary animal encounters were read.
As so often in Japan, the creature outlived its own case file as a mascot. The city of Shōbara, which absorbed Saijō, now uses the Hibagon as a tourism emblem, complete with statues and merchandise. Zoologically, the dossier remains exactly where 1974 left it: sincere testimony, and not one piece of usable physical evidence.
+ Notable reports
// Saijō, Hiroshima Prefecture
The first reports describe a hairy bipedal creature about 1.5 m tall near rice paddies at the foot of Mount Hiba. The core description — broad face, bright eyes, stocky build — stays consistent throughout the wave.
// Mount Hiba area
A witness photographs a dark shape crouching in vegetation; the blurred image is printed in the regional press but cannot be authenticated. Footprints attributed to the creature are recorded around the same period.
// Mountain road near Saijō
A driver reports the creature crossing in front of his car — one of the last sightings of the wave, which then fades out almost entirely.
+ Leading rational explanations
- A large Japanese macaque standing on its hind legs
- An Asian black bear upright at dusk or against the light
- 1970s media climate in Japan (yeti and Bigfoot vogue) shaping witnesses' interpretations
- Possible pranks or misidentifications that were never resolved for lack of workable evidence
Status note
Class 2: a four-year run of consistent eyewitness reports, but the photographs are unusable and the footprint evidence was never preserved — nothing material survived scrutiny.
+ Frequently asked questions
- What is the Hibagon?
- A hairy, bipedal creature about 1.5 m tall reported between 1970 and 1974 around Mount Hiba in Hiroshima Prefecture. Often called the Japanese Bigfoot, it has never been identified, and credible sightings ended with the wave.
- Why did Hibagon sightings stop after 1974?
- No one knows for certain. The end of the wave tracks the fading of media interest, which suggests a social component to the phenomenon; alternatively, a real animal — a macaque or a bear — may simply have left the area.
- Could the Hibagon have been a monkey?
- It is the most economical explanation: Japanese macaques live in these mountains, stand on their hind legs and can look bulky in poor light. A standing Asian black bear also fits several of the descriptions.