What is the jinmenken?
The jinmenken is a creature with the body of a dog but the face of a human, like that of a middle-aged man. Well-known stories say that if you speak to it while it is rummaging through garbage, it snaps back in human words, “Leave me alone” or “Shut up,” and walks off. Other stories tell of it overtaking cars on the expressway.
A boom at the start of the Heisei era
The rumor of the jinmenken spread rapidly among elementary and junior high school students all over Japan from 1989 to 1990. Covered by magazines and television, it became, alongside the slit-mouthed woman, one of the representative urban legends of the Showa and Heisei eras. The way the rumor spread has itself been studied as an example of the relationship between the media and children’s word of mouth.
What was the jinmenken really?
It is thought to have come from people mistaking dogs with human-looking faces, or from a rumor someone made up to be funny that then spread. Stories of animals with human faces are old, and human-faced animals appeared in Edo-period sideshows too. Its flavor of “scary but somehow funny” seems to be why it was so popular among children.
