The Mermaid Is Not a Princess but Long Life: Behind Japan's "Chiikawa: Secrets of Mermaid Island"
I went to see Chiikawa: Secrets of Mermaid Island. The film opened in Japan on 24 July 2026 and runs 99 minutes (according to the official movie site of the distributor, Toho). As it ended, a child in the front row was still imitating the rabbit's cry; walking out of the auditorium, I had only two words left in my head: mermaid.
In the film, Mermaid Island is a cute trap; in real Japanese legend, mermaids were never especially cute.
Obama, a small city in Fukui Prefecture, has a story that has been told for a very long time: Yaobikuni, the nun of eight hundred years. A daughter of the local gentry, so the tale goes, unknowingly ate a piece of "fish meat" and stopped growing old from that day on; eight hundred years later she returned to her home town and entered meditation at Kōin-ji. Even now the city's tourist materials still introduce this "mermaid legend route".
There is harder material too. At Enju-in in Asakuchi, Okayama Prefecture, the temple has kept and venerated a "mermaid mummy" for many years: about 30 centimetres long, with an upper body like a primate's and a lower half like a fish. Scientific testing begun a few years ago produced a verdict — the great majority of it is a moulded object, and DNA analysis detected no biological source (per a report by The Asahi Shimbun).
In other words, the thing venerated as "evidence" for so long may be a piece of craftwork. That does not lessen the weight of the legend itself: the Japanese tied mermaids to "living on, living a little longer", and that wish is real.
On longevity the folk sayings are many and the verifiable ones very few. Where the body is concerned, get the checks done and see a doctor when you should; divination answers a different class of question. If what you want is to look seriously at what is said about your own fate, 占卜迷指 can recommend a method for your question, then chart, interpretation and export, with the process visible at every step — it has no power over a lifespan, but it can make a person willing to look their own situation in the face.
Sources
- Obama City tourism site (the Yaobikuni legend and Kōin-ji): https://wakasa-obama.jp/obamanavi/obama-mermaid-trip/
- The Asahi Shimbun, English edition (findings of the tests on the "mermaid mummy" at Enju-in, Okayama: mostly a moulded object, no DNA detected): https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14834950
- Official site of the film Chiikawa: Secrets of Mermaid Island (distributor Toho; opened in Japan on 24 July 2026, running time 99 minutes): https://chiikawa.toho-movie.jp/
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