Japan battles spike in bear attacks

The sense of fear is palpable in parts of northern Japan, where some locals have attached bells to their bags in hopes the noise will scare away bears and signs warn people to be on alert.

Since April, the animals have killed a record 13 individuals across the country, with ongoing reports of bears breaking into homes, roaming near schools and rampaging through supermarkets.

“Almost every day we hear news of people being attacked or injured,” said Kakeru Matsuhashi, 28, a traditional matagi hunter, as he walked through the forest holding a knife.

“It becomes personal and just scary,” he added in the northern prefecture of Akita, an area hit by a series of attacks.

This year's death toll is double the previous record of 2023-24, and there are still five months of the financial year to go.

Data is patchy in some regions, but Japan has had one of the world's highest numbers of deadly attacks in recent years.

Keiji Minatoya, also from Akita, knows this all too well: in 2023, a bear jumped out of his garage, pinned him to the ground and sunk its teeth into his face.

“I thought, 'This is how I'm going to die,'” said Minatoya, 68, who managed to escape and take refuge in his home.

The government is now struggling to deal with a rise in attacks, which scientists say is caused by a booming bear population combined with a poor acorn harvest this year, leaving some mountains “overpopulated” with hungry bears.

Troops have been deployed to provide logistical assistance in trapping and hunting the bears, and riot police will be allowed to fire rifles at the animals, which can weigh half a ton and outpace a human.

The victims included a 67-year-old man from Iwate, a region near Akita, whose body was found near his home with signs of animal bites and scars.

Hunters were called to the scene and shot the bear near the house.

Also in Iwata, a 60-year-old man was allegedly attacked while cleaning an outdoor bathtub at a remote hot spring resort. His body was discovered in a nearby forest.

Official figures show the number of injured could also hit a record high, with more than 100 people wounded in the six months to September.

“Crowded” with bears

A major concern is the growing bear population, which is growing rapidly due to an abundance of food, including acorns, deer and wild boar, driven by a warming climate, experts say.

Japan's brown bear population has doubled in three decades and now stands at about 12,000, while the number of Asiatic black bears on the main island of Honshu has risen to 42,000, according to a recent government report.

Some mountains have become “overpopulated,” according to Naoki Onishi, a researcher at the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute.

“Simply put, the bear population has outstripped the mountains’ ability to contain them,” he said.

Although rising temperatures have led to a more frequent harvest of acorns, the nuts still produce good and bad harvests every two to five years as part of the normal harvest cycle.

This year, as in 2023 – the year of the attack on Minatoya – there are insufficient supplies.

Although most bears still remain in the mountains, recent crop failures have forced some of them and their cubs to wander into cities in search of food, said Shinsuke Koike, a professor at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology.

When exposed to humans, the cubs in particular become less fearful and develop a taste for farmed foods and common fruits such as persimmons, Koike added.

Sustained depopulation of rural areas due to chronically low birth rates and the movement of young people to cities has also led to a decline human presence on the edges of forests and mountains, erasing traditional boundaries between people and bears.

“In 2023, bear habitats have moved closer to human habitats,” Onishi said. “They are taking it one step further this year because they are picking up right where they left off.”

“Watching a Disaster”

Hajime Nakae, a professor in the department of emergency and critical care medicine at Akita University Hospital, said frequent bear sightings made him feel like he was “living inside… a bear safari park.”

A doctor who has treated bear injuries for three decades explained that the nature of the wounds is changing as bears become less afraid of people.

During confrontations many years ago, a frightened bear might punch a person in the face before running away, but now “they charge at you from about 10 meters and then jump on you.”

He said that without meaningful intervention, he expects the number of bear injuries to increase and spread to other parts of the country, adding: “We are witnessing a disaster.”

“Careful culling” to reduce bear numbers is the only effective way to reduce the risk to local populations, said researcher Onishi.

Last year, the government added bears to the list of animals subject to population control, removing protections that had helped the bears thrive.

But rural resources are depleted, and the number of hunters is less than half what it was in 1980.

As of 2020, there were about 220,000, mostly aged 60 and over, according to the latest statistics available.

More than 9,000 bears were killed in Japan between 2023 and 2024, and more than 4,200 between April and September this year.

Akita alone has so far culled over 1,000 individuals.

In the near future, Japan's worries should ease, at least for a while.

Experts Koike and Onishi said the hibernation pattern has not changed and bears I'll soon go to bed for the winter.

© 2025 AFP