Scientists to probe origins of mummified mermaid with human face and tail

Japanese experts will investigate a mummy in the shape of a mermaid that is claimed to offer immortality to anybody who tastes its flesh.

Between 1736 and 1741, a strange 12-inch (30-centimetre) creature was purportedly caught in the Pacific Ocean off the Japanese island of Shikoku. It is presently housed in a shrine in Asakuchi city, Okayama prefecture, near Japan’s southern tip of Honshu island.

The mummified item, which had nails and teeth, hair on its head, and scales on its lower body, was taken to a veterinary facility for a CT scan at the Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts.

According to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper in Japan, the mummy was discovered preserved in a casket with a letter indicating that it was captured in a fishing net in the Pacific Ocean between 1736 and 1741. The dried mermaid was claimed to have been maintained by one family and then passed down to another until being purchased by a temple and displayed around four decades ago.

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It is also possible that the object was made with the intention of being exported to Europe. It was discovered by Hiroshi Kinoshita of the Okayama Folklore Society while researching Kiyoaki Sato, a Japanese natural historian who studied enigmatic creatures. He speculated that the creature had religious significance.

‘Japanese mermaids have a legend of immortality. It is said that if you eat the flesh of a mermaid, you will never die. There is a legend in many parts of Japan that a woman accidentally ate the flesh of a mermaid and lived for 800 years’, New York Post quoted Kinoshita as saying. He further said that some individuals believed in mythology and ate the scales of mermaid mummies.

The findings of the specialists who are investigating the mummy will be published later this year.