Kofu 1975: the vineyard encounter and the children’s drawings
Two children described a landed object in a vineyard and a figure that approached them. Drawings attributed to the boys bring the story back to their account, before the statues, souvenirs and later imagery.
Two children described a landed object in a vineyard and a figure that approached them. Drawings attributed to the boys bring the story back to their account, before the statues, souvenirs and later imagery.
This article distinguishes the source material, participants’ accounts and later interpretations.
An evening among the vines
On the evening of 23 February 1975, two primary-school boys in Kofu, Yamanashi Prefecture, said they followed a light to a vineyard. They described an object on the ground and a figure that touched one boy’s shoulder. Frightened, they sought their family. Later reports also mention adults who saw a light nearby; those observations are separate from the children’s description of the figure.
The lines left on paper
Mu identifies the paired drawings of the object and figure as pictures made separately by the boys, reproduced from Kazuo Hayashi’s JSPS Osaka library. Their value lies in preserving how the account was expressed. The unusual face and simple outlines should be read as witness description, not as anatomical documentation. A drawing can be an authentic record of testimony without becoming a photograph of its subject.
The vineyard and later claims
Japanese publications also preserve site photographs and a report of a broken vineyard support. A 2020 article interprets old radiation measurements and proposes a nuclear source. That is the author’s interpretation, not an established identification of a propulsion system. Linking a physical trace to an encounter requires its timing, collection history and comparison measurements.
A story the city still tells
Kofu marked the story’s fiftieth anniversary in 2025. The city website describes UFOKOFU1975’s local activities and the registration of 23 February as a commemorative day, already reported in 2024. Commemoration is not municipal confirmation of an encounter. The case connects personal memory, surviving drawings and local culture, each contributing a different kind of record.