This form follows the kawaraban thought to have been printed in 1846. Amabie appears from a light in the sea and gives its prophecy to an investigating official. Because the text says only that the creature looked 'like the picture,' its long hair, beaklike mouth, scaled body, and three legs or fins can be described from the image on the same sheet, but should not be freely combined with features found in later Amabiko materials.

The heart of the account is the prophecy and the circulation of the image. Amabie announces that the next six years will bring abundant harvests and an epidemic at the same time, then tells people to copy its form and show it to others without delay. The kawaraban does not explicitly say that the picture itself will end the epidemic. Its use as an apotropaic image grew from the way later readers and communities received those words.

Amabie is usually located in the sea off Higo Province, yet similar prophetic-creature stories circulated in many parts of Japan under different names and with different details. The figure therefore reveals both an Edo-period desire for protection in times of disease and the power of images to gather new meanings. It also demands historical restraint: the surviving evidence consists of a single kawaraban, while much of Amabie's familiar protective symbolism belongs to its later reception.