Fujishiro Bypass Disappearance

**Fujishiro Bypass Disappearance** is a disappearance cars the branch manager from the Fuji Bank Katsushika Branch, Ryugasaki City, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan along with his deputy manager and an important client. It was a sunny day and for golf. A black Toyopet New Crown drove in front of the men with a Tokyo number plate. An disappear in by car.

## Disappearance

On November 19th, 1963 the branch manager from the Fuji Bank Katsushika Branch, Ryugasaki City, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan along with his deputy manager and an important client. It was a sunny day and for golf. A black Toyopet New Crown drove in front of the men with a Tokyo number plate. An elderly man sat in the backseat of this black car reading a newspaper, and had been in front of them for quite some time. All three men remembered it well, as there was little else to look at on the long, straight road. Yet shortly after 8 AM, what appearend to be smoke started to rise from the black car shortly after they passed Matsudo City on the Fujishiro Bypass. At this point, the car was about 150 metres ahead of the bankers and their client, and all three could clearly see it.

Then, a few seconds later, it was gone. Not just the smoke, but the entire car. It had actually vanished into thin air. The road was straight with no curves, and it was a sunny dat with perfect visibility. The three men in the car were shocked, and all confirmed that they had just seen the same thing. A black Toyopet New Crown car driving in front of them, with an elderly man in the backseat reading a newspaper, disappeared in an actual puff of smoke. It was just the start of a bizarre incident that's still debated today.

If this think this sounds just like and urban legend, then you wouldn't be alone. How could a car vanish into thin air? It's exactly the type of thing you hear in ghost stories and whispered tales to scare children. Yet this incident appeared in the March 4th, 1964 edition of the Mainichi Newspaper.

We even have scans of that article today> This is the first the public ever heard of the incident, and who wouldn't be interested but what really happened? It incredibly important to point out that whil this incident published in the newspaper, it wasn't reported as news. The story appeared in a section called "Akadenwa," which is more akin to a column where people. It's also important to point out that the piece published in the newspaper never gives a date for the incident.

This didn't come about until the bizarre incident was published in a 1976 book called this book came out well over a decade after the newspaper piece, and it was here that little additions to the story were made. The boock claimed the event happened on November 19th, 1963, despite this never being mentioned the book also gives the two men from the bank names. The branch is Kinoshita-san, while deputy managed is Saitou-san. It also further elaborates that the sport where the car disappeared has a wet patch, as though it had been sprayed with water. Considering the types of books the author wrote, it's safe to assume that these embellishments were just that, given to create something more solid out of the Mainichi Newspaper piece published over a decade earlier. But that still left one important question:

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> Was it even real to begin with? Supposing that it were true, numerous theories have been proposed over the years as to what perhaps the most common theory is that the banker and the two other men inside the car the road they were driving on was long and straight.
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The monotonous scenery may have lulled the into a hallucination that all three men later agreed upon seeing. Another theory is that the New Crown car was stolen, and the whole incident was created. In the early 1960s, these cars were luxury cars and often the target of theft. There were also later rumours of a man being left behind injured on the street where the car disappeared, so prehaps he had been ditched to confuse the bankers while the car drove but this still leaves numerous question, as New Crown cars at the time couldn't drive very fast, so they undoubtedly would have seen it no matter where it turned.

At the end of the day, there's no evidence that this strange incident ever took place. There's no background on the piece that first appeared in the Mainichi Newspaper in 1964 or where it came from. The piece could have been, and likely was, entirely fictional. On the author can know that. But the idea of a car disappearing on a straight road was so intriguing that it was picked in fact, it was used in a story the following year called "The End of the Endless Stream", and, like many other stories turned urban legends, the story of the disappearing car later took on new facets and aspects that slightly changed the story.

These days it's commonly known as the Fujishiro Bypass Incident, even though the Fujishiro Bypass didn't even exist at the time. It didn't start construction until the 1980s, several decades later. The bankers also gained names, and depending on who you talk to, the exact circumstances sometimes the car is just gone entirely. Sometimes a random injured man is left behind as well. Either way this strange story has captivated audiences for decades.

It was first shared in one of Japan's most popular and reputable newspapers, yes, but there's nothing to indicated it was an actual news report. On the contrary, it was published in the column section, and includes no author name nor even a date supposed event took place. It then grew over the years to become a popular urban legend that may or may not have been inspired by a real event.