Amabie

Submission 11,617

Part of a series on COVID-19 Pandemic. [View Related Entries]

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About

Amabie (Japanese: アマビエ) is a Japanese yōkai^[1] or mythical creature in the late Edo era in the 19th century. During the COVID-19 Outbreak, Japanese amateur and professional illustrators on social media drew illustrations of the yōkai in order to avoid the disease by the power of the legendary mermaid.

Origin

According to the legend,^[2] Amabie appeared on Higo Province (Kumamoto Prefecture in present) in the middle of April 1846. The mermaid-like yōkai with 3 legs and a beak emerged from the sea, gave a town's officials prophecy of the abundant harvest for upcoming 6 years and said "if disease spreads, show a picture of me to those who fall ill and they will be cured." This event and the form of the yōkai had spread via Kawaraban, or woodprint newspaper in those days (shown below, left). Until 2010s, Amabie had been very obscure, while a few of anime viewers knew the yōkai because it had been featured in an episode in the 5th season for anime GeGeGe no Kitarō^[3] which aired in the late 2000s (shown below, right).

On February 28th, 2020, Twitter user @shigeokahide^[13] posted a drawing of the character, captioning it "Coronavirus measures," gaining over 100 retweets and 240 likes (shown below).

Spread

In the following days, Amabie was introduced to Japanese Twitter users via Yokai fans & artists such as @orochidou(大蛇堂)^[4], @KitanoYoukaiten (北の妖怪展)^[5] (shown below, left), and @youmisedori (妖店百貨展) whose tweet had earned 29,900 retweets and 35,000 likes in the five days after it was posted (shown below, right).^[6] The legend of the yōkai caught the attention of users who were nervous about the Coronavirus outbreak, and its special power also inspired both amateur and professional illustrators/mangakas. Twitter users started uploading their own Amabie illustrations with prayer for the end of the pandemic under the hashtag #アマビエ, #アマビエ様 (Amabie-sama), #アマビエチャレンジ (Amabie Challenge), and #アマビエ祭り (Amabie Fes).^[7] This illustration trend also spread to Pixiv^[8], Nico Nico Seiga^[9], and Instagram.^[10]

This illustration movement was covered by Japanese online news media J-CAST^[11], local newspapers in Kumamoto Pref., and Japanese major news agency Jiji Press in English respectively.^[12]

On March 17th, Mizuki Production, the copyright management company for Shigeru Mizuki^[14], tweeted an illustration of Amabie by the authority of Yokai manga who passed away in 2015.^[15] The tweet had earned over 95.4K retweets and 196K likes within its first 3 weeks.

On April 7th and 9th 2020, Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare published an official awareness poster for preventing the spread of COVID-19 on its official site^[16] and Twitter^[17], in which the official featured Amabie for the purpose of gaining more recognition from young generations.