This video garnered over a million views on X and has also been circulating on platforms such as TikTok, with posters such as the one below insinuating that something “extraordinarily bizarre” is occurring on a global scale. The video depicts streaks of flames moving across the night sky over a residential area in Japan, and many posters are speculating about a “mysterious” or nefarious origin.With similar theories and videos (some manipulated) about UFOs over American skies becoming a mainstay on social media, this claim has also been folded into broader conspiracies about drones, secret surveillance, or even alien attacks.
We decided to first trace the video’s origin to get all the details. This proved trickier than usual as a reverse image search from google produced multiple reposts of the same clips with a specific watermark of an alien on it. This has been the version of the clip most widely shared. However, we suspected that this watermark was added onto an original clip – perhaps by a poster seeking to imply an alien-related origin.
Our next step was to search for Japanese sources. Accompanying text with some of the reposted videos identified it as being specifically located in the Kagoshima region – and that it took place in late December. By using Google Translate with several key terms (such as “Kagoshima” and “UFO” and “fireball”) we found several articles from reputable Japanese news platforms which shed light on the claim video’s origin.
According to these articles, the specific video being circulated was taken by a fisherman, Tomokazu Kawabata, on 19 December at 4 am on his way back from work. Kawabata gave brief comments to these news platforms confirming that he captured the streaks of fire, and the video screenshots from the Japanese articles do not appear to have the alien watermark.
As pointed out by the same articles, the streaks of flames captured in the video are thought to be satellite debris that is in the process of splitting up and burning on re-entry from orbit in space. This is a known phenomenon where defunct man-made objects that remain in space (also known as space junk) end up falling back into Earth’s atmosphere. This can include decommissioned satellites, space mission debris, or abandoned spacecraft. Most space junk burns up and disintegrates in the atmosphere – and is likely what has been captured in the video.
An English article from Japanese news platform The Asahi Shimbun seems to support this theory, also posting a separate video taken in Kagoshima on 19 December that depicts the same streaks of fire.The article also cites an expert who believes the debris is specifically part of recently de-orbited Chinese cargo spacecraft Tianzhou 7 whose main body re-entered the atmosphere and burned up on 17 November. The expert believes that the flames were from a module which detached from Tianzhou 7 and only re-entered Earth later. While has not been confirmed by any official sources, the likelihood of the flames captured in the video being from space debris is high.
Videos and reports we found from similar incidents (with very similar characteristics) across the world – from Australia to the United States – have been definitively traced to other space debris. In fact, as recently as 21 December another Chinese satellite was spotted burning up in the sky across southern states in the United States, with close-up footage looking almost indistinguishable from the claim video located in Japan.Therefore, the claim that the video depicts a suspicious, unknown, or bizarre phenomenon is inaccurate and misleading. We give it rating of likely false – the video very likely shows space debris burning up on re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere.
The lack of context from the claim post’s failure to link sources or offer any credible information was compounded by the language barrier. Japanese-language platforms are less easily found through Google or reverse image searches, and the claim video has a clipped and re-watermarked version that adds another layer of distance from reputable sources with accurate information.
The recent rise in focus on UFOs and other flying objects is something we have observed on social media in recent weeks, with many videos being posted that claim to show mysterious drones or extra-terrestrial objects. As other posters pick up on this uptick, we anticipate more claims such as this one being spread – similar headlines or unlabelled and unattributed videos should be approached with a great deal of scepticism.