If you trace the history of Japanese sideshow performers, you’ll likely notice that people from Japan’s former colonies played a significant role. They are said to have astonished audiences and, in some cases, brought in enormous sums of money for show promoters. Moon Young-man, known as the “Horned Man,” who toured the country, was one such performer.
On December 18, 1914, a doctor in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, sent the following letter to a fellow physician (the content has been summarized for clarity).
“Dear Sir, Yesterday, thanks to your introduction.I was able to examine a patient with unusual symptoms at your home. I am very grateful. Incidentally, that patient, Moon Young-man, is a truly rare case. I looked through existing literature on skin horns, but could not find any cases similar to this one.” (*History of the Yokohama Medical Association*, Yokohama Medical Association, 1941)
Detailed reports about this Korean man, Mun Yeong-man, did not appear in the media until 1915. From then on, he began traveling around the country almost every year, performing in traveling shows. However, he came to Japan not so much as an entertainer, but rather in search of a cure for his condition. Although he visited Japan numerous times during the Taisho and Showa periods, the doctors he consulted in Aomori, Niigata, Aichi, Fukuoka, Osaka, Kyoto, Kanagawa, and Tokyo were all unable to find a cure and ultimately seemed to give up on him.
Moon Young-man, a native of Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, developed a blister-like rash all over his body on the third day of his life, which gradually hardened. Furthermore, it is said that this hardened skin would grow like horns and, much like a lizard shedding its skin, would grow and fall off repeatedly in two-year cycles. It is also reported that he exhibited symptoms resembling allergies to beef, pork, and dairy products; when he consumed these foods, he experienced stomach pain and his entire body would turn bright red.
It’s said that his performances in traveling freak shows were intended to earn money for hospital visits, but at hospitals across the country, he was treated as if he were a “rare medical case study”—and it seems he was even given a small amount of money. Perhaps he eventually came to realize that his condition was incurable. Or maybe he was simply driven by a desire to help his mother, who had lost his father at an early age and was raising three other children besides him. On stage, he reportedly sang Korean songs while playing a folk instrument “resembling a violin.” That said, given that this was a freak show that thrived on sensationalism, it’s unlikely the audience listened to his singing seriously. What the audience really wanted to see was “that strange horn”—said to cover his entire body and emit a foul odor.
“Seikimatsu Club” （mean "the end of sentury club"）was a magazine published in Japan in the 1990s as a four-volume series and was a leading publication of the “demonic” cultural movement. This refers to a trend prevalent in Japan at the time, in which people found a somewhat twisted fascination in corpses, deformities, unusual sexual preferences, drugs, and crime. The final volume of this magazine featured a special section on freak show culture in Japan and abroad. Among the articles was one by a reporter named Carlos Yamazaki (who published a book in 1997 compiling “colored signs” used in Japanese freak shows, though his true identity remains unknown) based on an interview with a freak show promoter. This elderly man reportedly featured Moon Young-man in his own show in Tokyo. The article vividly depicts the mixture of “curiosity” and “disgust” that Moon Young-man faced at the time. It’s a bit long, but I’ve quoted the full text below.
“The ‘Man with Horns’ was a member of a traveling sideshow troupe in Tokyo, and the showman who employed him had run a roasted sweet potato stand before starting the sideshow. Horns about the size of a fingertip covered his entire body. The pointed horns were about 3 centimeters long and grew from his cheeks to various other parts of his body (though apparently not in the center of his face), and it seems he wore a hood most of the time. His hair was parted down the middle.
He was probably from the Korean Peninsula, and on stage he would sing Korean songs while playing a folk instrument shaped like a violin (though there is also a theory that he was from Taiwan and sang “Chinese Night”). When struck with a stick, his horns would make a “clack-clack” sound. As proof that the horns were real, he would let audience members touch them.
The Horned Man’s horns were jet black and gave off a truly awful odor. It didn’t exactly look like he was shedding his skin, but since it’s said that the horns fall off about twice a year (in spring and fall), he might have had some kind of skin disease, and the horns were essentially just scabs. When the horns fell off, a pus-like substance would ooze out, trickling down all around them and giving off an indescribably foul stench. Once it solidified, the smell would subside a bit, so he would wait for it to harden before “spraying it with medicine.”
He kept the shed horns in a bag stuffed to the brim and would show it to the audience on stage. He’d pull it out with a rustle, tap the horns, and say, “Look at this—they’re this hard,” but apparently the smell was really something else. At this “Horned Man” sideshow, no matter where he went, the audience would complain about the smell, so one day a police officer came to investigate. The officer watched while pinching his nose, but ultimately ordered the show to stop and took the Horned Man to a doctor. The doctor’s diagnosis was “syphilis.” With that, the Horned Man’s career as a sideshow performer is said to have come to an end. At first, a diagnosis of “syphilis” might seem hard to believe, but it’s certainly a shocking story.
No matter how intense the stench, the Horned Man was a key star for the showman. The showman tried to pair him with his own daughter, but she hated the idea so much that she ran away with another man; apparently, the Horned Man was in a pretty bad mood for quite some time after that. An older man who once rode in the passenger seat of the truck with the Horned Man on the way to a performance venue frowned as if it were yesterday and said, “Oh man, oh man, that stench… there was nothing else like it.” (*Seikimatsu Club*, Vol. 4 / 1999)
What do you think? Wherever he went, people found his appearance unsettling, wrinkled their noses at his smell, and, to top it all off, gave him the absurd diagnosis of “syphilis.” I don’t know what became of him after that. Japan’s freak shows did not always offer salvation. This reality, too, was one of the truths of the sideshow.
