Amabie is a mermaid-like spirit from Japanese folklore depicted with long hair, a bird's beak, fish scales, and three fin-like legs. According to legend, the creature appeared to a government official in Higo Province (modern-day Kumamoto Prefecture) in 1846, predicted six years of good harvests followed by disease, and instructed the official to draw its image and share it with the sick1. This encounter was documented in a single woodblock-printed bulletin called a kawaraban, now housed at the Kyoto University Library4.

For over 170 years, Amabie stayed almost entirely forgotten. Then in early 2020, as COVID-19 spread across Japan and the world, Japanese social media users rediscovered the creature's legend and began drawing and sharing their own versions. The meme's core mechanic was baked into the original folklore: draw Amabie, share the image, ward off plague. It was, as Stanford graduate student Victoria Rahbar put it, "an Edo Period meme"1.

Amabie crossed from internet meme to official public health tool when Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare featured the creature in COVID-19 awareness materials in April 20202. The government specifically chose the yōkai to connect with younger citizens who might otherwise tune out traditional public safety messaging.

The meme drew coverage from major international outlets including the BBC, NPR, and the Japan Times17. The BBC framed it as "the Japanese monster going viral," drawing a direct parallel between the ancient folklore instruction to share Amabie's image and the way content spreads on social media.

Amabie products flooded the Japanese market during 2020. Sanrio produced Hello Kitty x Amabie merchandise including food packaging, keychains, and reusable bags10. The creature appeared on omamori (protective charms) and ema prayer tablets at Kasuga Grande Shrine in Nara, which featured an Amabie illustration drawn by the artist who also designed the city's mascot10. The city of Nishinomiya used Amabie artwork in its COVID-19 prevention and vaccination campaigns10.

Design firm IDEO turned the meme into a global creative prompt, publishing 16 professional designer interpretations and inviting the public to share their own8. The project highlighted how Amabie sat at a unique intersection of folklore, participatory art, and public health messaging.

Professor Komatsu noted that yōkai had been shifting from feared spirits toward entertainment for generations: "In the Edo era, people began to think that yokai do not really exist, and are created by humans. And at the same time, people started to enjoy pictures of yokai"2. Amabie was perhaps the purest expression of that evolution, where drawing the monster felt good rather than frightening.

The first hints of Amabie's return predated @shigeokahide's February tweet. A Shigeru Mizuki fan account posted a series of tweets on January 30, 2020, connecting the 1846 legend to the emerging pandemic and sharing Mizuki's art of the creature10. This planted the seed, but the broader movement took off a month later when individual illustrations gave people a visual template to follow.

What made the Amabie meme unusual was how naturally its mechanics mapped to social media behavior. The original folklore literally instructed people to copy and share the creature's image to prevent disease. Drawing and posting an Amabie illustration felt like participating in both ancient tradition and modern internet culture at the same time. Emeritus Professor Kazuhiko Komatsu of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies explained: "We are in the same situation as the Edo era. A new disease has come up, and people are terrified"2.

The creative output was staggering in its variety. People didn't just draw Amabie on paper. They made clay figurines, embroidered it on fabric, cut it from paper, baked Amabie-shaped cookies, sculpted Amabie sushi, blew it up as balloon animals, and even dressed their pets as the sea spirit1. One illustrator painted Amabie on the side of a long-haul truck, tweeting: "I travel all over the country with my goods and Amabie to pray for the disease to go away"1. The creature appeared on face masks, hand sanitizers, and in Japan's gachapon capsule machines.

The Japanese government took official notice on April 7 and 9, 2020, when the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare published COVID-19 awareness posters featuring Amabie on its website and Twitter account2. The poster showed the creature's beak delivering the message "Stop the infection from spreading!" The ministry chose the yōkai specifically to reach younger demographics.

International art communities embraced the trend with equal enthusiasm. Design firm IDEO asked designers across its global offices to create their own Amabie interpretations, producing 16 wildly different versions ranging from psychedelic collages to minimalist geometric drawings to paper-cut art inspired by the Japanese tradition of kirie8. Artist groups organized weekly video call sketching sessions with Amabie as the subject during lockdown9.

The trend also drew scholarly attention. Yōkai researcher Hiroko Yoda, co-author of Yōkai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide, explained that yōkai "often play the role of helping people process unpleasant feelings or situations. They can sometimes be a kind of pressure valve for when things get tense"1. Professor Yuji Yamada of Mie University connected Amabie to Japan's long tradition of drawing ogres to drive off epidemics: "When many people are suffering and dying, our wish for an end of the pandemic is the same in all ages" (translated from Japanese)7.

Horror manga legend Junji Ito drew his own Amabie in May 2020, rendering the creature in his signature semi-realistic style with star-like flesh around the eyes and a crooked beak10. Other notable artists who participated included Chica Umino (Honey and Clover) and Toshinao Aoki10. Sanrio released Hello Kitty products featuring Amabie, including cookies, hard candy packaging, keychains, and reusable shopping bags.

One artist based in Kanazawa, Amayagido, who had been drawing Amabie for over a decade before the meme exploded, told NPR: "We feel that yokai are not just scary, but also somehow cute or friendly"2. That friendliness was central to the meme's appeal. The original 1846 woodblock has a charmingly crude quality, looking more like a modern mascot character than a fearsome monster3. Many artists leaned into this, making their versions bright and approachable rather than dark or threatening.