Incident · 23 February 1975 · Kōfu, Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan
Kōfu incident
Also known as Kofu, Kofu UFO incident, 甲府事件
Japan's best-known close encounter. On the evening of 23 February 1975 two eight-year-old cousins in Kōfu, Yamanashi Prefecture, reported that an orange object chased them, landed in a vineyard, and released a small, wrinkled, faceless figure that tapped one of them on the shoulder. Family members and a local caretaker described lights and a rotating silver object in the sky the same evening, and an investigation with the regional newspaper found broken concrete posts, flattened netting and marks in the vineyard. The case became national news.
The evidence is the children's account, the adults' sightings and the physical traces; no official investigation is on record, and sceptics point to undamaged vines and the impossible fit of the object between the posts. In February 2025, for the 50th anniversary, one of the former boys, who had long stopped giving interviews, spoke again on television and attended a commemorative event in Kōfu. The witnesses, private individuals and children at the time, are not named here.
Sources: Wikipedia (Japanese), citing NTV News (2025), the Yomiuri Shimbun (2025) and Mu (2017)
Facts and claims
- claimed Around 6 p.m. on 23 February 1975, two second-grade boys, cousins, walking home in Kōfu saw an orange UFO that seemed to follow them. It came down in a vineyard, and a wrinkled, chocolate-brown figure without a face came out; it tapped one boy on the shoulder from behind, and the other carried him away to fetch their families. Source: ja.wikipedia.org (archived)
- claimed Adults gave supporting accounts: one boy's mother said she saw a silver object rotating in the sky, his father a fading light, and the caretaker of the Kōfu environment centre a light over the place where the boys had been roller-skating. The mother's account was recorded at the time. Source: ja.wikipedia.org (archived)
- claimed A field investigation with the Yamanashi Nichinichi Shimbun found three concrete vineyard posts knocked down, the wire netting spread as if a heavy object had rested on it, and holes and wheel-like tracks in the ground; a local high-school teacher, Susumu Maeda, investigated, and some media reported he measured short-lived residual radioactivity at the site. Source: ja.wikipedia.org (archived)
- claimed Doubts: the posts were broken but the vines undamaged, and a disc of the reported size could not physically have passed between the posts; some suspected a family invention. Source: ja.wikipedia.org (archived)
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