An old Japanese painting of a rhinoceros, not of an Ōnuma Rhinoceros.
Ōnuma Rhinoceros or Onuma Rhinoceros is a cryptid reported from Ōnuma (also spelled Onuma) in Hokkaido, Japan.
Sightings[]
In 1825, rumors began to circulate about the appearance of a sacred horse on a mountain called Hokkaidō Koma-ga-take in the area. However, testimonies were not consistent, and the color of the hair and the number of individuals varied. The following year, an attempt was made to capture them using food and horses, but this failed. It is unknown if these sacred horses are related to the rhinoceros-like creatures later reported in the area.
In 1860, Joun Kurimoto, a physician working in what is now Hokkaido, wrote a letter to a doctor in what is now Tokyo about a beast that had recently been sighted near Ōnuma. He described the beast as about the size of a cow, with horns growing a foot or so from its forehead, and sometimes seen along the Shikabe River. He also stated that, given the time of year, it may be migrating in pursuit of the herds of Japanese dace that migrate up the river. Kurimoto continued that the creature is believed by the locals to be a mountain god, but according to his English and French friends, it must be a rhinoceros.
In 1877, rumors of a strange beast spread in the vicinity, causing damage to the fields.
On the morning of February 20, 1881, a person named Kangoro Nishikawa from the nearby village of Oshironai captured a strange beast. It was 167 centimeters long, 66 centimeters tall, and weighed over 100 kilograms, with hard, brown hair all over its body and eight-centimeter-long, recurved fangs. The bizarre beast, which is still in the Hakodate Museum as a stuffed specimen, was identified as a wild pig.
Explanations[]
There were wild pigs and boars in the area at that time, but very few. It is likely that local people who saw the large boar misidentified its form because it was an unfamiliar creature.