In modern

Japanese folklore Japanese folklore encompasses the informally learned folk traditions of Japan and the Japanese people as expressed in its oral traditions, Tradition, customs, and material culture. In Japanese, the term is used to describe folklore. The Folklor ...

since the mid-2000s, the Ningen (ニンゲン) is an aquatic humanoid whale-like and mermaid-like creature supposedly inhabiting the subantarctic oceans. It was invented by Japanese internet users.

History

The story of the Ningen began in 2007 on a post on the Japanese online forum,

2channel , also known as 2ch, Channel 2, and sometimes retrospectively as 2ch.net, was an anonymous Japanese textboard founded in 1999 by Hiroyuki Nishimura. Described in 2007 as "Japan's most popular online community", the site had a level of influe ...

, which claimed that the crew of a whale research ship witnessed the creature as it surfaced near their ship off the Antarctic coast. Originally thinking it was a

submarine A submarine (often shortened to sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. (It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability.) The term "submarine" is also sometimes used historically or infor ...

, they went to take a closer look, but the "submarine" vanished into the waves. In 2005,

Google Earth Google Earth is a web mapping, web and computer program created by Google that renders a 3D computer graphics, 3D representation of Earth based primarily on satellite imagery. The program maps the Earth by superimposition, superimposing satelli ...

captured what some people believed to be a Ningen near the

Southern Ocean The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, comprises the southernmost waters of the world ocean, generally taken to be south of 60th parallel south, 60° S latitude and encircling Antarctica. With a size of , it is the seco ...

. Skeptics suggest that the "Ningen" was actually an

iceberg An iceberg is a piece of fresh water ice more than long that has broken off a glacier or an ice shelf and is floating freely in open water. Smaller chunks of floating glacially derived ice are called "growlers" or "bergy bits". Much of an i ...

or beluga whale that coincidentally looked like the sea monster. In 2010, the Japanese Enoshima Aquarium published a

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

video showing the ocean life that they observed. Near the end of the video, a large creature with small eyes and a large, smiling slit-like mouth can be spotted lying on the ocean floor. It was claimed that the video shows the Ningen . However, the aquarium identifies the object as an unusual rock formation in the shape of a frog, with two

sponges Sponges or sea sponges are primarily marine invertebrates of the animal phylum Porifera (; meaning 'pore bearer'), a basal clade and a sister taxon of the diploblasts. They are sessile filter feeders that are bound to the seabed, and ar ...

forming its “eyes”. Sometime around the 2010s, an unknown user posted underwater footage depicting a large humanoid sea creature which some believe to be the Ningen.

Description

The Ningen is described in two forms; one has it as a large, aquatic,

whale Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully Aquatic animal, aquatic placental mammal, placental marine mammals. As an informal and Colloquialism, colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea ...

-like creature with anatomical similarities to humans, such as a distinct, humanoid face; sometimes it is given extremely large limbs and/or arms and hands, about long. The second, less common, description portrays it as a considerably smaller, terrestrial organism that consists of little more than a large head on humanoid legs, with which it wanders Antarctica. The pigmentation of this creature is said to be pale blue. The creature has a large, slit-like mouth and either small or large gaping eyes.

Pop culture

The ningen was discussed on "BillsChannel", a

channel which frequently looks over mysteries and decides if they are real or fake. The Ningen was the subject of the analog horror series The Ningen, created by M4NTICOR3. In Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, a 2 stage evolution line called Cetoddle and Cetitan are both based on the ningen.

References

Fictional whales Japanese legendary creatures Japanese urban legends Purported mammals Water spirits Aquatic cryptids {{Japan-myth-stub

History

Description

Pop culture

See also

References