A Japnese mountaineer is attempting to settle once and for all the decades-long debate over the existence of the so-called abominable snowman of the Himalayas, claiming that his years of study have shown that the legendary apelike monster — also known as a yeti — is in fact a brown bear.

Makoto Nebuka, 56, a senior member of the Japanese Alpine Club, plans to publish the results of his 12 years of research which led him to conclude the mysterious creature is really the endangered Himalayan brown bear.

“Reality is rarely as terrifying as one’s fears,” a smiling Nebuka said in Tokyo prior to a visit later this month to Nepal to complete his research.

“Fortunately or unfortunately the romantic pursuit of the creature is going to end, but I’m full of satisfaction that I’m turning the unknown into a known fact,” he said.

Nebuka’s theory rests on a linguistic discovery: Through a series of interviews with local people in Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan, he has found that yeti is a regional dialect word for “meti,” meaning bear.

Ethnic Tibetan tribes who are scared of the powerful bears which often attack their villages, worship the meti/yeti as a dreadful, supernatural creature, Nebuka said.

“Combining the deified image with people’s imaginations, the figure of the abominable snowman has been rooted in people’s minds and the apelike monster image has spread too far,” Nebuka said.

Six years ago, he took pictures of the head and paws of a meti/yeti — clearly a bear — which had been kept by a local sherpa, or a mountain guide, as a talisman.

Nebuka advised another Japanese expedition, now on a two-month trek to find the elusive snowman, to end their futile efforts.

Yoshiteru Takahashi, 60, and his six-member team left Kathmandu for the basecamp at the foot of the Dhaulagiri mountain range in the Himalayas in mid-August to try to prove the existence of the yeti.

“If they want to go and find it, please go ahead. But let me see what they can find, which cannot be anything but a bear,” Nebuka said.

“It’s okay to spend their own money to pursue their dream, but it is arguably wrong to collect money from other people knowing that no such creature exists on Earth,” he said.

Curious Westerners have been searching for the yeti since the 19th century, but the tale of the abominable snowman really captured imaginations worldwide in 1951 after large footprints were found on a glacier high in the Himalayas.

Numerous unconfirmed sightings of the beast have since been reported.

Among the most famous yeti hunters are Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner and Edmund Hillary, who first conquered Everest on May 29, 1953. In 1960, Hillary took part in a 10-month expedition to attempt to prove the yeti’s existence in the Khumbu Valley, south of Everest.

But it was in vain. The most convincing evidence was a scalp brought back from a monastery. But scientific analysis proved it was a forgery.

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