The shell is large for the genus (maximum length 52 mm) and fusiform. The spire is high and acute, consisting of about two nuclear whorls and six obtusely angulate postnuclear whorls. The suture is weakly impressed. The body whorl is long and fusoid. The aperture is large and ovate to lenticular, with a shallow, narrow anal sulcus. The outer apertural lip is thin and very weakly crenulate. The columellar lip is detached and erect, except parictally, where it is represented by a moderately broad callus. The siphonal canal is long, narrowly open, bent to the left and distally to the right, and curved dorsally at its tip.
The hody whorl bears five or six thin, lamellate, spiny varices. Spiral sculpture consists of seven weak cords, four on the body and three on the canal. At the intersection of each cord with a varix, a thinwalled, moderately sharp, open, dorsally curving spine is formed. The spine formed by the shouldermargin cord is twice as long and strong as any other, and is bent not only dorsally but also weakly posteriorly.
Shell color is white to pale fleshy yellow-white. The spines and the aperture are white. Indications of a thin, flat-white intritacalx persist on the specimens we have seen.

-200m, Tokyo Bay, Kanaya, Futtsu, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, 38.2mm., 1997/iv.
The « Gorgon Trophon » is a delicate muricid ranging from Chiba Prefecture, Japan to Taiwan. The more spinous specimens with shorter intervarice distance as shown has long been referred to as the « Prickly Trophon », Nipponotrophon echinus (Dall, 1918), but Hasegawa & Okutani concluded in 2011 that it is merely a form of N. gorgon. Although TC Lan included it as one of the « Rare Shells of Taiwan » (1979), today it is only somewhat uncommon. A carnivorous predatory gastropod, it inhabits sand to gravel bottoms of rather deep water around -100~600m. It is a rather variable species in terms of number of varices per whorl (usually 5-7), length of spines, and spine recurvedness. Typical shell length around 40mm., very large specimens may exceed 50mm.

Known to us from off southern Japan (Hondo, tppe locality) and from off southeastern Japan.