KOFU

Opening

On the evening of 23 February 1975 two boys playing near the Kamicho housing in Kofu, Yamanashi, watched orange lights come off the direction of the mountains and drop toward a winter vineyard. Masato Kono and Katsuhiro Yamahata followed. They said a domed object sat among the concrete vine posts. Two small figures came out. One touched Masato on the shoulder. The boys ran.

The next day they took adults back. Teachers and then newspaper people walked the rows. Posts were down. Wire was sprung. Depressions in the dirt were pointed out as pads. Other people in Kofu said they had seen lights that same evening. The vineyard is gone now, under later building. The night is not.

Timeline

23 February 1975, about 18:30Roller skates, vacant lot, two orange objects. One light toward the vineyard. The boys on a dirt road between bare posts. Landing, figures, the hand on Masato, the run home.

24 FebruaryHomeroom teacher Miyoshi Ueda listens, then walks the field at lunch with the boys. Depressions. Talk in the staff room.

Following daysLocal press. A fuller survey: broken posts, wire netting pulled, hard packed circles talked up as a triangle of pads. Small metallic bits are claimed in some write-ups.

A month on, Hiroshi Minamiyama walks the rows with the boys and measures post height and spacing. The case becomes Japan's textbook CE3. The vineyard is later built over.

Key figures

Masato Kono is the boy who was touched. Katsuhiro Yamahata is the classmate who was there. Eight years old, same school, same lot. Their first telling is the exhibit. Later interviews lengthen the figures.

Masako and Toshihiro Kono are the parents who had to decide whether a child had been in a field with something that should not have been there. The Yamahata house is the second kitchen that night.

Miyoshi Ueda is the teacher who chose to walk instead of laugh. That walk is why the traces entered paper the next day.

Minamiyama and the local desks own the measured field. They are not the tap on the shoulder.

Physical and documentary trail

The record:

One: the two boys' same-night account of orange lights, a landing among the posts, two small beings, and a hand on Masato's shoulder.

Two: other Kofu lights that evening, reported by adults who were not in the vineyard.

Three: the next-day walk with Ueda and the later survey of downed posts, sprung wire, and packed depressions in the winter dirt.

Four: the local press and Minamiyama's field notes on post spacing.

There is no photograph of the object on the posts. There is no skin sample from the shoulder. There is no object in a Yamanashi lab with a 23 February tag.

Things you might not know

• Even the boy's name varies. Most English accounts call him Masato Kawano, while others, including a 1978 photo credit, give Masato Kono.
• The figures had no clear face. In the boys' description, the head was brown and covered in deep horizontal wrinkles, with no eyes or nose to speak of.
• They described metal teeth. The boys said the figure had three silvery, fang-like points where a mouth should be, and ears like a rabbit's.
• It made a sound like a fast tape. One account has the figure chattering like a tape recorder played at high speed.
• The touch left Masato unable to walk. In some tellings he froze or nearly collapsed after the hand on his shoulder, and his friend helped him away.

Competing explanations

Landed craft and a contact. This is the boys' night plus the traces. It has two children and a field that looked punished. It has no machine in a shed.

Misread lights and a damaged vineyard from ordinary work. Winter posts fall. Wire springs. Two eight-year-olds can weld a schoolyard story onto a messy field. This reading has to live with the teacher walking it the next day and other adults seeing lights.

Hoax by older hands using the boys. Possible. Not shown. The families did not get rich.

Later life of the case

Kofu became Japan's best-known close encounter and a regular in UFO books, retold from the boys' first account and the teacher's walk through the rows. The vineyard has since been built over, so there is no field left to measure again. For another case resting on children who were together when it happened, see the Ariel School sighting in Zimbabwe.

Finding

Two boys in Kofu followed orange lights into a winter vineyard on 23 February 1975, said a domed object sat among the posts, and said one of two small figures touched Masato on the shoulder. Their teacher walked the rows the next day. Posts were down. The dirt was marked.

What still will not resolve: a photograph of the object on the posts, or a kept fragment from those packed circles with a 24 February chain.