Amabie

And it was just a certain set of circumstances that kind of catapulted it into mainstream awareness.

Yeah, that's a really interesting example and a little tricky because the research on Amabie has shown that Amabie probably was never really a local yokai in that same way.

Yeah, nobody's exactly sure, but around that time in the early 1800s, there were a bunch of – Bunch of what we could call sort of urban legends or or legends that were circulated about creatures like the Amabie that would emerge from the ocean or sometimes come down from the mountains and predict something about the future and also say, share a picture of me and you will be saved from whatever a pandemic is spreading or epidemic is spreading because there were a lot of diseases spreading around that time.

So nobody exactly knows how the amabie itself came to be.

One theory also is that there was something called, a little more common, called an amabico.

And Amabie is actually a typographical error when somebody copied it and it became Amabie.

But whatever the case, it's not necessarily, it is associated in the original Amabie document, which is what's called a Kawaraban, which was kind of almost like the tabloid newspapers of the time.

They were cheaply printed sort of one color woodblock prints that were easily distributed and and told about current events, often supernatural or, or mysterious events and stuff like that.

There might be plenty of glowing bioluminescent creatures in the ocean, but you won't find this one on any scientific record.

It's called the Amabie, a spirit from Japanese folklore, and not only does it glow bright enough to see from the shore, but it's also a mermaid sporting a mix of human and fishy features as well as a beak and three legs for good measure.

Now, according to the stories, back in April of 1846, an Amabie marched right up out of the water, tapped a government official on the shoulder, and warned him of a coming plague.

Not as a threat, mind you, just a heads-up so the people could be prepared.

From then on, the Amabie was celebrated as a protector from disease, which is why when a particular world event occurred in the spring of 2020, this little guy made a major comeback, and it was all thanks to one shop, a candy shop.

You see, in the early days of COVID, the president of a Tokyo sweets shop noticed the Amabie tales had started making the rounds online, and so he had an idea.

He popped onto the health ministry's website, found a drawing of the mer-creature, and copied the image right onto a piece of candy.

"Although the candy is not medicine," the creator said, "I hope people will keep it with them as a charm for good luck." And that's exactly what happened.