Self-proclaimed monarch with strange finger pose raises questions in the Kanto region.

Japan, as you’re probably already aware, is a constitutional monarchy. Actual political power is held by an elected parliament and prime minister, while the emperor of Japan serves as a ceremonial symbol of the nation, its people, and its culture.

However, nowhere in this framework is the role of King Oyama defined.

▼ キング大山 = King Oyama

Who is King Oyama? He’s a man in a yellow sweater or sweatshirt, who’s recently been appearing on publicly posted signs in Japan’s eastern Kanto region, including in Tokyo. “Yeah, but who is he?”, you might be asking. Actually, a lot of people are asking that these days, and nobody seems to know.

We first became aware of the King Oyama signs about two weeks ago, when a friend of our Japanese-language reporter P.K. Sanjun said he’d encountered one of the signs in Tokyo’s Nakano Ward. Soon after that, P.K. saw one of the signs with his own eyes in Matsudo, a city in Chiba Prefecture, Tokyo’s neighbor to the east. Looking online, King Oyama has also been spotted in Tokyo’s Adachi and Edogawa Wards, in Kanagawa Prefecture in Yokohama’s Totsuka Ward, and in Chiba in the cities of Ichikawa and Urayasu.

Though the placement and orientation of the “King Oyama” text differs from place to place, the signs all contain an identical photo of a large-framed man with a baseball cap on his head, a picture of an anime girl in his left hand, and his right hand’s fingers arranged in a sort of semi-V-sign, which apparently has enough significance that the signs also need an illustrated diagram of it.

But that’s all the signs contain. There isn’t a single bit of explanatory text, any sort of copyright information, or even a QR code to scan for more information. It’s just “King Oyama,” the photo, and the finger illustration.

If there were only one King Oyama sign, we’d probably have shrugged it off as some sort of quirky attention grab from an individual with an offbeat sense of humor. But like we said, there are at least seven King Oyama signs out there, plus the possibility of others we simply haven’t stumbled across and no one else has published photos of yet. What’s more, these are massive multi-story signs we’re talking about. Whoever/whatever King Oyama is, this is far beyond the level of an Andre the Giant Obey sticker-type unorganized phenomenon.

If we absolutely had to formulate a guess, we’d start with the fact that the picture of the anime girl the man is holding seems to vary by sign. Since the designers seem to think that’s an important bit of variation to include, the message of “King Oyama has many different pieces of hand-sized anime girl artwork” seems like it could be pointing to King Oyama being a trading card shop. However, there’s no current chain called King Oyama, and if the goal was to let people know that one is going to be opening soon, wouldn’t it make more sense to, well, add “Opening soon!” and “card shop” around the signs’ “King Oyama” text?

Right now, the whole thing is as baffling as the case of that guy in Japan who stole all those piano covers, and we’re still searching for clues to unravel this mystery.

Photos ©SoraNews24
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
[ Read in Japanese ]