In 1975, a Japanese man took some of the most intriguing images of an alleged alien being ever to be captured on film.
Kawanoe was a city that was once located near the center of the Japanese Island of Shikoku. However, as of April 1, 2004, Kawanoe was merged with Doi, Shingū and Iyomishima, to form the new megalopolis of Shikokuchūō. Sadly, many of the people currently residing in this epic urban sprawl have no idea that at one time their proverbial backyard played host to one of Earth’s most unusual visitors.
On the night of March 24th, 1975, a man named Giichi Shiota was at a landfill in Kawanoe when he stumbled across a sight that would force him to reassess his preconceived notions about the world in which he lived.
According to Shiota’s report, sometime during the night he spied what he described as a “luminous,” suit-clad figure — not unlike the Kinnula Humanoid — that seemed to be suspended in mid-air.
Shiota would later estimate that this unusual entity — which he wasted no time in dubbing an “alien cosmonaut” — was hovering almost 7-feet off the ground and at a distance of approximately 300-feet away from him. Shiota, who had claimed to see a UFO in the past, was not alarmed by the apparently weightless apparition, but he did claim that he immediately developed a headache.
While it is pure speculation, one must wonder whether or not this alleged alien was trying to communicate with Shiota. This theory is based on the fact that numerous other alien eyewitnesses have made similar claims, including the unlucky Italian night watchman, Pier Fortunato Zanfretta, who claimed to have suffered head-splitting headaches while his alien captors attempted to communicate with him during what is known as the harrowing Zanfretta Alien Abductions.
Astounded by the sight of this ostensibly alien entity, Shiota became obsessed with the notion of capturing this visitor on film in order to prove that his bizarre encounter was real and not a product of an over active imagination or worse, as some no doubt speculated. So — armed with no less than three cameras — it was with a grim determination that Shiota returned to the scene of his encounter night after night. While this sort of mania infects many who have had brushes with the unknown — opening up new doors of inquiry and forging new obsession — most, sadly, are never able to get another glimpse beyond the veil. Shiota, however, proved to be an exception to the rule.
On the night of March 31st — after a week of lurking in the landfill with dogged patience — Shiota claimed that he was suddenly stricken with another brutal headache. When he looked up he was what he described as a bluish-white electrical disturbance floating roughly 300-feet in front of him.
Shiota had been staring, enthralled, at this anomalous, cloud-like formation for several minutes, when he testified that an almost 6-foot tall, humanoid apparition appeared in the midst of this disturbance. He stated that this unusual being leisurely descended until it was hovering just a foot off the ground. It was then that it began to “glide” toward the intrepid, amateur investigator.
Shiota, to his credit, refused to succumb to panic and rose to the occasion, snapping photos as quickly as he could using his Nikomat EL camera and 200mm Nikkor lens. These pictures — which bear more than a passing resemblance to that of the Metal Man Of Falkville — have, for reasons difficult to ascertain, all but faded into ufological obscurity.
The unknown entity had traversed more than half the distance between it and Shiota, when it suddenly veered to the right. The glowing “thing” then traveled in that direction at an extraordinary rate for about 30-feet before it disappeared. While it must have felt like an eternity, Shiota quickly determined that the entire event had lasted no more than a minute.
It should be noted that just a month before Shiota’s disturbing encounter, in Kofu City, Japan, two young students also claimed to have had a face to face encounter with an unknown, suit clad, alien entity. While these boys did not have a camera at hand, they did manage to draw what has come to be known as the Fanged Humanoids Of Kofu. Whether or not there is any direct connection between these two strange cases — save that of time and proximity — remains to be seen. Still others have concluded that the images are reminiscent of the now famous Cumberland Spaceman image.
Shiota never encountered this odd creature again, but whatever it was — be it alien invader, inter-dimensional being, time traveler or space-ghost — the photos prove that this thing was real and not a figment of one man’s imagination.