Japanese researchers are investigating the origins of a nightmarish 300-year-old mummified “mermaid” that has been worshiped for centuries for the creature’s supposed healing powers.
It turned out that the remains are a terrible mixture of the torso of a monkey, sewn to the tail of a fish and decorated with human hair and nails.
A member of the board of the Okayama Folklore Society, Hiroshi Kinoshita, found a mummy of a mermaid that was around 30.5 cm in length in a box in a temple in Okayama Prefecture. After discovering a photograph of a peculiar specimen in an encyclopedia of fabled animals, he first learned about the mummy.
According to a note left in a box with a corpse, a fisherman allegedly caught a specimen between 1736 and 1741 and subsequently sold it to a wealthy family. According to the Japanese news website The Asahi Shimbun, scientists are still unsure of precisely how the mermaid got into the shrine.
After Kinoshita persuaded the temple to permit researchers to examine the odd bones, Takafumi Kato, a paleontologist from Kurashiki University of Science and Arts, and associates started researching the mummy’s origins.
On February 2, using computed tomography, researchers captured a photograph of the mummy. In order to identify which animal parts were utilized to create the eerie mummy, they also intend to collect DNA samples. Later this year, the team intends to publish the findings of their research.
The mummy of the mermaid is slightly reminiscent of two fabled creatures from Japanese folklore: ningyo, fish-like monsters with human heads, and amabi, mermaids with beaks in place of lips and three tail fins.
Both of these species of critters are connected to legends of healing miracles and lengthened lifespans. One famous tale says that a woman named Yao Bikuni lived to be 800 years old after she accidentally ate a whole ningyo.
The priests of the temple look at the mummy as a source of health and longevity. “We worshiped him, hoping that it would help to at least slightly mitigate the coronavirus pandemic,” the head priest of the Kozen Kuida temple told The Asahi Shimbun.
The mummy used to show to visitors in a glass case but has spent the past 40 years in a fireproof vault inside the temple. According to The Asahi Shimbun, similar mermaids were worshiped at two other temples in Japan.
What lies behind the myth
The mermaids were most likely crafted by locals to sell them to curious Western tourists and lure them into sightseeing.
In the 1810s, a similar fraud known as the “Fiji Mermaid” was sold to Dutch tourists in Japan and afterward resold to English businessmen. They then shipped it to the United States, where it joined the renowned Barnum collection. This 91 cm-long mermaid is thought to have been created from a salmon’s tail and an orangutan’s body.
The new research, according to temple priests in Okayama Prefecture, will allow the mummified mermaid to continue to live on in future mythology. Kuida told The Asahi Shimbun, “I hope the research project can leave a scientific record for future generations”.
Src: kenhthoisu.net
