ISSIE
Lake Ikeda, Kagoshima. Caldera about 233 metres deep. Tourist name Issie, built to rhyme with Ness. Older mare-and-foal story. 1978: Matsubara still and about twenty two-hump reports. No specimen.
130°34'00 E
1. Public Record
Lake Ikeda, Kagoshima, Kyushu. A caldera lake, the largest on the island: about eleven square kilometres of water, shoreline some fifteen kilometres, deepest point about two hundred and thirty-three metres. Mount Kaimon stands in the postcard. Local Shinto talk once put the origin of people at this water. The tourist name for the thing in it is Issie, built to rhyme with Ness.
The older story is a white mare on the shore whose foal is taken by a samurai. She cannot find the foal, goes into the lake, and becomes a great saurian that still surfaces looking for the child. In 1978 a man using the name Matsubara is said to photograph something. Twenty other people that year report a black shape with two humps, each called about five metres. No type specimen. No ministry list. The lake photographs as a lake with a volcano behind it.
A mare. A hump. A rhyme with Scotland.
She jumped into the lake and her despair transformed her into a giant, saurian beast.
2. Date of Incident
Folklore older than the tourist name. Cluster of reports and a photograph claim in 1978. Tourism ongoing.
3. Location
Lake Ikeda, Kagoshima Prefecture. Approximate 31°14 N 130°34 E.
4. Official Narrative
A caldera lake and a scenic route. Official narrative is water and Kaimon. Issie is not fauna.
5. Witness Layer
1978 shore group. Matsubara as the named photographer. Later visitors. Folklore speakers of the mare.
Black and having two humps, each about five metres long.
Photographed in 1978 by a man who went by the name Mr. Matsubara.
6. Recovery Logistics
A claimed photograph. No hide. Soundings of a deep caldera.
7. Assessment
Keep the caldera numbers so the water is a place before it is a monster. Keep the mare as folklore and 1978 as a tourist year. Do not write a plesiosaur. Do not write Matsubara's still as a type plate. The rhyme with Nessie is a marketing decision. The foal is the part of the story that does not photograph.
8. Materials & Remains
Lake. 1978 claims. No specimen.
9. Key Personnel
1978 shore witnesses : Two humps.
Matsubara : Named still.
10. Aftermath
Signage and boats. Kaimon still in the frame. No carcass on the road to Kagoshima.
11. Current Archive Status
Status: Ikeda caldera. Issie talk. 1978 humps. No specimen.
Confidence: High that the lake is a deep caldera and that 1978 produced a cluster of hump reports. Low that the photograph is diagnostic. Low that a mare became a saurian.
Filing note
A Kyushu caldera, a volcano in the postcard, a white mare who lost a foal, twenty people in 1978 and two humps, a man who used a surname and a camera, a lake that kept its depth.
Looking for her lost child. The only motive the water was ever given.