KOFU
23 February 1975. Two eight-year-old boys in Kofu, Japan, follow an orange object into a vineyard. A silver disc, unread hull script, a figure that taps one boy on the shoulder. Adults find broken vine posts.
138°34'00 E
1. Public Record
23 February 1975, about 18:30. Two eight-year-old boys, Masato Kono and Katsuhiro Yamahata, were on roller skates near the Hinode housing blocks in Kami-chō, Kofu, Yamanashi. Two glittering orange objects were moving in the eastern sky. One went off toward Mt Atago. The smaller one came down into a vineyard behind the estate.
They walked to it. Silver disc, roughly five metres across, three rotating pads underneath, square windows, a line of black characters they could not read. A hatch. A ladder. A figure just over four feet, dark wrinkled skin, three silver teeth, four fingers, a silver suit, something like a gun or a camera. It put a hand on Yamahata’s shoulder twice and made a sound they compared to a tape running backward. They ran. Adults who followed found broken concrete posts on the vine frames and a crushed path in the soil. Police came. The object was already gone.
It sounded like a tape recorder running backward.
2. Date of Incident
23 February 1975, early evening. Same year as Walton, other side of the Pacific, different texture: children, a vineyard, adults on the scene within minutes.
3. Location
Kami-chō, Kofu City, Yamanashi Prefecture, in sight of the Mt Fuji massif. Approximate 35°40 N 138°34 E. Housing estate, then rows of grapes. Not a wilderness case.
4. Official Narrative
Local police inspected the vineyard and logged damage to the frames. No Japan Self-Defense Force inquiry with a public finding. Later soil talk - including a 2010s claim of phosphorus-32 in sampled earth - sits outside the 1975 police note and should be labelled as such. Official 1975 posture: children, a light, broken posts.
5. Witness Layer
Two boys of the same class. Their drawings of the face - no ordinary features, three metallic teeth - were made early and did not improve with retelling. Masako Kono, Masato’s mother, did not believe them until she saw light still moving in the vines. Other adults in the estate reported orange objects the same evening, which is the difference between a two-child story and a small local flap.
Yamahata turning around because he thought the tap on the shoulder was his friend is the human sentence in the file. It is also the moment the case stops being a light in the sky.
I thought it was Masato. I turned around.
6. Recovery Logistics
Broken vineyard posts. Ground compression. No official photograph of the disc on the soil. The boys were home before any camera that mattered.
7. Assessment
Japan’s cleanest child-entity landing: two witnesses, immediate adult follow-up, physical disturbance in a working vineyard, contemporaneous sketches. It does not have Walton’s polygraphs or the Hills’ tapes. It has a shoulder tap and a row of grapes that would not stand up the next morning.
Resist grafting later radioactivity papers onto the 1975 police walk. Different decades, different claims.
8. Materials & Remains
Boys’ drawings. Police note of damaged frames. Later soil analyses of disputed chain. No suit, no tooth, no plaque of the unread script.
9. Key Personnel
Masato Kono - First to see the hatch open.
Katsuhiro Yamahata - The shoulder.
Masako and Toshihiro Kono - Parents who walked to the vines.
Kofu police - Damage log, no craft.
10. Aftermath
Both boys carried it. Japanese Fortean press never dropped it. Kofu did not become a tourist triangle. The vineyard was replanted.
There were words on it we could not read.
11. Current Archive Status
Status: Two-child landing in a working vineyard. Adult corroboration of lights and ground damage.
Confidence: High that two boys in Kofu reported a landed disc and a figure on 23 February 1975 and that adults found damaged vine frames the same evening. Moderate that other residents saw the orange objects. Low that a recovered fragment exists. Low that later isotope claims should be stapled to the original police walk.
Filing note
Two schoolboys, a working vineyard, adults on the path within minutes, broken posts. Japan did not make a triangle out of it. The grapes were replanted.
He turned around because he thought the tap on the shoulder was his friend. For a second the figure was only Masato standing in the wrong place. Then it was not. The unread characters on the hull are the other human fact: a child who did not claim to understand them.