BEARS IN JAPAN: CHARACTERISTICS, BEHAVIOR, SPECIES, HUMANS

ASIATIC BLACK BEARS IN JAPAN

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There are two species of bear found in Japan: the Asiatic black bear and Ezo brown bear. Black bears are found throughout Honshu and a few places in Shikoku. Some have even been seen prowling around the streets of Kyoto. They are the same as Asiatic black bears found in China, India, Southeast Asia and Russia.

The Japanese black bear (Ursus thibetanus japonicus) is a subspecies of the Asian black bear. Japanese black bears are divided into seven recognized subspecies. There are healthy numbers of the main subspecies that lives mostly in mountainous areas of central and northern Honshu but the other six — in Kyushu, Shikoku, eastern and western Chugoko, the Kii Penninsual of Wakayama Prefecture, on the Himokita Peninsula in Aomori Prefecture — have been designated as endangered. The Kyushu subspecies is probably already extinct.

The habitat of black bears has been expanding. A 2023 analysis by Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper estimated their numbers at roughly 44,000, a threefold increase from 2012. According to Reuters: Restrictions on hunting practices and greater emphasis on conservation contributed to a surge in bear sightings over recent decades, according to Japan's Forest Research and Management Organisation. With Japan's rural areas experiencing rapid demographic decline, bears are venturing closer to towns and villages and into abandoned farmland, an environment ministry expert panel. [Source: Sakura Murakami, Adolfo Arranz and Han Huang, Reuters, December 3, 2024]

A study by the Environmental Ministry in 1991 estimated the number of black bears to be between 8,400 and 12,600 at that time. Today, some live a few dozen kilometers west of central Tokyo in the Kaone Mountains and Tanzawa Mountains of western Kanagawa Prefecture. The population of black bears on Shikoku is endangered at less than 30 individuals and the last confirmed sighting of a bear on the island of Kyushu was in 1987, making them likely extinct there.

The Asiatic black bear is classified as “vulnerable” on the International Union of the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of endangered species. They are threatened by losses to their forest habitat and excessive hunting to gain bile and other body parts for the traditional Asian medicine trade. These are problems that bears face more elsewhere in Asia than in Japan The number of black bears in western Honshu has been dramatically reduced by the prevalence of introduced cedars and cypresses, which produce no acorns for the bears to eat.

Characteristics of Asiatic Black Bears in Japan

Japanese black bears are regarded as smaller than other Asiatic black bear species with males only reaching 60–120 kilograms (130–260 pounds) and females only weighing about 40–100 kilograms (88–220 pounds). Their head and body length is about 120–140 centimetres (47–55 inche) long. [Source: Wikipedia]

Most Asiatic black bears weigh between 50 and 80 kilograms, with large males reaching a weight of 120 kilograms when the are fattened up at the end of autumn. Both males and females are deep black in color except for a white or cream crescent-shaped mark on their chest, which gives them the common name of “moon bear.” The size and shape of the crescent varies greatly and may even be completely absent.

Black bears have excellent hearing and sense of smell but have relatively poor eyesight. They are excellent diggers, tree climbers and swimmers. They can outrun a person on open ground and have been observed swimming 300 meters in Japan. In some places they build feeding platforms — high up in beech and oak trees and made by bending and snapping branches — that are used to feed on nuts and acorns.

Japanese black bears roam forests from sea level to the subalpine zone high on mountainsides. They are omnivores that eat nuts, fruits, insects, ants, insect grubs, river crabs, honey, leaves, acorns, other items from the forest and meat. Most of the meat they eat comes from carcasses although they have been observed hunting small deer and other animals. Acorns are the primary food source for black bears in Japan. Their diet changes with season. In the spring and summer they load up on new shoots, buds, flowers, bulbs and tubers. In the autumn they feast on acorns, chestnuts and beechnuts as well as berries if they can find them.

Behavior of Asiatic Black Bears in Japan

Bears in Japan hibernate for around four months generally beginning in late November. When they become sufficiently fattened up they seek a cozy den in a cave, rock shelter, partially rotted log or the hollow of an old tree. While they are hibernating their body temperature drops only a few degrees and they can easily be woken up. Bears are very active in the autumn as they seek food to sustain themselves through winter hibernation. When autumn food is in short supply some bears will remain active through much of the winter. At the Ueno Zoo a bear has been artificially-induced to hibernate by replicating the conditions in the bear’s home territory.

Black bears mate in the early summer with females giving birth in their winter den. A females gives birth to one or two cubs every two or three years, a relatively slow rate of reproduction. Young bears stay close to their mothers for the first two years of their lives, gaining protection and learning skills they need to survive on their own.

In Japan, black bears sometimes make treetop bear’s nest known as are enza “ in Japanese. Terry Domico wrote in “Bears of the World”: “Resembling crows’ nest, the structures are common in cherry, beech, oak and dogwood trees. “ Enza “ are formed by the bear as it sits in a high fork, bending branches backwards in order ro reach its fruit, as broken branches accumulate around and under the bear, a kind of nest is formed. I have seen up to six or seven “ enza “ in a single oak grove...Asian black bears are also said to build “basking couches.” These elevated, oval-shaped beds constructed of twigs and branches probably allow the bears to conserve body hear by getting off the ground during wet and cold ls spells. Some beds have been reported as high as 65 feet (20 meters) in the tree, while others are only centimeters off the ground.”

Brown Bears in Japan

Ezo brown bears live in Hokkaido. Officially known as Ussuri brown bears (Ursus arctos lasiotus) and also known as Russian grizzly bears, they are a subspecies of brown bears (Ursus arctos). American grizzly bears and Japanese brown bears are the same species but different subspecies. Ussuri brown bears also live in southeast Russia (the Ussuri region), Sakhalin island and maybe northern North Korea and northeast China. They are very similar to Kamchatka brown bears, another brown bear species which is very big and has a slightly different skull shape. Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, is only about 77,000 square kilometers (30,000 square miles) in size yet there are nearly four times as many brown bears there as there are in the entire continental United States. [Source: Wikipedia]

Brown bears found in Hokkaido typically weigh 200 to 300 kilograms (440 to 660 pounds), but a particularly large specimen weighing 400 kilograms (880 pounds) was captured in 2015. Brown bears in Kamchatka are said to weigh as much as 450 to 550 kilograms (990 to 1,210 lb), but this is not supported by Russian hunting records. Brown bears in Hokkaido usually hibernate from mid-December to late March.

In Hokkaido, brown bears eat plant shoots .small and large mammals, fish, birds, and insects such as ants. They sometimes attack Yezo shika deer. Some brown bears in Hokkaido eat Pacific salmon returning to the rivers. These bears are often seen on the Rusha River on the Shiretoko Peninsula in Hokkaido. Terry Domico and Mark Newman wrote in “Bears of the World”: In Japan, the brown bear’s primary food source is plants: hog’s fennel, acorns, fruits and berries. A study of their scats (feces) showed that 98.7 percent of their fare was of plant origin. This diet is supplemented by licking up winged insects that concentrate under flat rocks on lake shores, and, occasionally, by eating domestic livestock.” [Source: “Bears of the World” by Terry Domico and Mark Newman, 1988]

The habitat of brown bears has been expanding. According to Japan's environment ministry. ministry the number of brown bears in Hokkaido more than doubled to about 11,700 in the three decades through 2020. The population of brown bears growing, causing increasing problems as they come into contact with humans. Brown bears were also blamed for around $2 million worth of damage to crops in 2022, the highest on record. [Source: AFP, August 22, 2023; Sakura Murakami, Adolfo Arranz and Han Huang, Reuters, December 3, 2024]

In the 2000s, there were estimated to be around 3,000 brown bears in Japan, all of them in Hokkaido. This is about four times the number of grizzly bears found in the continental United States. They occasionally eat livestock and kill people. Mushroom hunters and fishermen have been mauled but mostly the bears keep their distance from people. For a long time brown bears were viewed as pests in Japan. Only fairly recently have they been embraced by animal lovers and conservationists. Brown bears are threatened by loss of habitat to farming and logging and human control of salmon rivers. In 2012, a photograph of an abnormally skinny bear was shown in the media that implied some bears were starving.

Ussuri Brown Bears (Japanese Brown Bears)

The brown bears found on Hokkaido in Japan and the Russian Far East are regarded as the same species —Ussuri brown bears (Ursus arctos lasiotus), also known as Amur brown bears, Ezo brown bear, Japanese brown bears, Manchurian grizzly bear, and black grizzly bears. In addition to be found in Hokkaido, these bears are found in Russia the southern Kuril Islands, Sakhalin, the Maritime Territory and the Ussuri/Amur River region south of the Stanovoy Range. Elsewhere they may reside in Heilongjiang, China (part of Manchuria) and North Korea. [Source: Wikipedia]

Ussuri brown bears vary a great deal in size. Skull dimensions from mainland Russia — Primorsky and the Khabarovsk — indicate they can rival Kamchatkan brown bears in size. By contrast, the population found in Hokkaido is one of the smallest northern forms of the brown bear. Nonetheless, individuals from Hokkaido can reportedly get larger than expected and have reached 400 to 550 kilograms (880 to 1,210 pounds) by feeding on cultivated crops.

Ussuri brown bears are believed to be the ancestor of grizzly bears. They are perhaps the darkest-colored brown bears with some individuals almost completely black in colour, although lighter brown and intermediate forms are known, people in Japan. Due to their dark coloring, Ussuri brown bears have been informally called "black grizzly bears".

Ainu Bear Rituals

The Ainu are the indigenous people of northern Japan. They had great reverence for bears, Bears were providers of food, fur and bone for tools. They hunted them, kept them as pets, and performed exorcisms involving bear spirits. Sometimes bear cubs were caught and nursed by women. The bear supplied fur and meat and brought gifts from the deities and was regarded as the important mountain god in disguise.

The most important Ainu rite was the “iyomante”, or the bear sending ritual. Conducted in the spring, it was essentially a funeral ritual for the most important Ainu deity and was intended to give the bear and mountain god spirit a proper send off before it returned to the mountains. A female bear and her cubs were caught. The bear was killed and her spirit was sent to the gods in a special ceremony. Her cubs were then raised by the Ainu for several years and they too were returned to the gods.

Ainu man and a bear

During the ceremony people donned their best clothes and there was a lot of drinking, dancing and feasting. Prayers were said to the fire, house and mountain gods. The bear was taken from the bear house and killed with arrows and by strangling it between logs. The bear was then skinned and dressed and placed before an altar hung with treasures and then placed through a sacred window. The ceremony ended when the head of the bear was placed on the altar and arrows are fired to the east so its spirit could return to the mountains. Among some Ainus a male bear was killed and its penis, head and other body parts were taken to a sacred place on the mountains. The four-day-long ceremony was supposed to send the bear back to the mountains gods as an honored messenger of the village.

Without guns the Ainu killed bears used bamboo arrows poisoned with a preparation made from the roots of a small purple-flowered plant called are “Aconitum yesoense” . Hunters tested the potency of the poison by placing a tiny bit on their tongue or between their fingers. If there was a burning sensation it was strong enough. When struck by a poisoned arrow the bear ran 50 to 100 meters and collapsed as a result of the fast-acting poison. [Source: the book “Bears of the World” by Terry Domico]

Bears that were ritually killed and eaten were bears captured as cubs that were usually raised for about two years in the local community. The cub was raised by village women who often took turns nursing them with their own breasts. Noako Maeda, curator at the Noboribersu Bear Park, has studied the Ainu and bears and suckled bear cubs with her breasts. She told the writer Terry Domico they nurse very gently, more gently than her own children.

The ceremony was presided over by the community leader. Even though iyomante was prohibited by the Japanese it was practiced into the 20th century. The Japanese government formally forbade the Ainu bear festival in the early 1960s. Today, watered-down versions of the festivals are sometimes performed for tourists. The Ainu continue to worship and revere bears but they no longer ritually kill them.

Bear Hunting in Japan

After the introduction of Buddhism in Japan, which prohibited the killing of animals, the Japanese compromised by devising different strategies in hunting bears. Some, such as the inhabitants of the Kiso area in the Nagano Prefecture, prohibited the practise altogether, while others developed rituals in order to placate the spirits of killed bears. In some Japanese hunting communities, black bears lacking the white chest mark are considered sacred. In the Akita Prefecture, bears lacking the mark were known by matagi huntsmen as minaguro (all black) or munaguro (black chested), and were also considered messengers of yama no kami. If such a bear was shot, the huntsman would offer it to yama no kami, and give up hunting from that time on. Similar beliefs were held in Nagano, where the completely black bears were termed nekoguma or cat-bear. [Source: Wikipedia]

Matagi communities believed that killing a bear in the mountains would result in a bad storm, which was linked to the belief that bear spirits could affect weather. The matagi would generally hunt bears in spring or from late autumn to early winter, before they hibernated. In mountain regions, bears were hunted by driving them upland to a waiting hunter who would shoot it. Bear hunting expeditions were preceded by rituals, and could last up to two weeks. After killing the bear, the matagi would pray for the bear's soul. Bear hunts in Japan are often termed kuma taiji, meaning "bear conquest". The word taiji itself is often used in Japanese folklore to describe the slaying of monsters and demons.

Bears as Pests in Japan

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In recent years bears have increased in numbers, expanded their range and lost their fear of people and have increasingly come in contact with them. They have traditionally been most visible between May and August when they descend from the mountains in search of food like sprouts and skunk cabbage.

In 1996, 1,725 bears regarded as pests were shot. In Kyoto, one bear cut off electricity to 850 houses when he climbed a utility pole and was electrocuted. Some bears reportedly killed for destroying crops were in fact killed so their gall bladders could be sold. Sometimes gall bladders can fetch $100 a gram. A total of 7,001 bears were killed between March 2005 and March 2007.

Hunting of brown bears was banned in 1982. Since then the sighting of the bears has increased — from 41 in 1993 to 489 in 2003 — and there has been more potentially dangerous encounters. Because they are no longer hunted brown bears don’t fear people like they used to. They no longer are fazed by noise makers, whistles or bells and have made half -hearted charges at tourists. In 2004 some footpaths were closed because of worries about bear attacks and elevated walkways were built to protect tourist in the future.

Bears have been blamed for destroying apple and permission orchards. They are particularly fond of persimmon and often raid crops in places where there is thick bush for them to hide and the population is made up primarily of relatively non-threatening elderly people. A study of bears in Tochigi prefecture found that bears there lived mainly on persimmons and cherries from village orchards rather than nuts found in the mountains. Black bears sometimes badly damage timber trees, with reports of a single bear scrapping the bark off 40 trees in a single night.

A lack of food and unseasonably warm weather boosted bear sightings in the winter of 2006-2007. Many bears were spotted when it was thought they should be hibernating. A large number of motherless cubs were also seen which may have been due to their mothers being killed.

Bear and Human Encounters in Japan Increase in the Mid 2010s

Reports of bear sightings increased across Japan in the mid 2010s. According to figures released by the Environment Ministry, the total number of bear sightings from April to September 2016, was 12,820 nationwide, 1.5 times the level in the previous year. The increases are not limited to the Tohoku and Hokuriku regions where large numbers of bears have long resided. Sightings have expanded to places in and around Tokyo — including Kanagawa, Saitama and Yamanashi prefectures — and the Kinki region — including Kyoto and Hyogo prefectures. [Source: Yomiuri Shimbun, November 22, 2016]

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“There was a spate of incidents in which bears entered residential areas and attacked humans. In Fukuchiyama, Kyoto Prefecture, a male resident in his 40s encountered two bear cubs outdoors on Oct. 31. Just after that, he was attacked by a bear deemed to be their parent. The man had his thigh bitten and was seriously injured. In other locations, including Shiso, Hyogo Prefecture, and Otsuki, Yamanashi Prefecture, people were seriously injured in bear attacks between mid-October and early November.

“Why have bears appeared in the human sphere of life? According to the Office of Wildlife Management at the Environment Ministry, there was a poor crop of the acorns that bears like to eat across Hokkaido and Honshu. Thus bears come down from the mountains closer to where humans live as they seek food.

“Shinsuke Koike, an associate professor of ecological science at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, pointed out that satoyama — forests close to human spheres of life — are being used less often, and thus the habitat of bears, boars and other wild animals has expanded to be closer to residential areas. “As bears eat large amounts of food before hibernation in winter, they become most dangerous to humans around this time of year,” Koike said. “People need to be cautious by, for example, not leaving leftover food and raw garbage outdoors, as they can be food for bears.”

Bears in Urban and Residential Areas

Bears are popping up more and more in residential areas. Hiromasa Takeda and Takahiro Komazaki wrote in the Yomiuri Shimbun, “In October 2010, a black bear appeared in a park in a busy district of Uozu, Toyama Prefecture, about 100 meters from JR Uozu Station. Police officers and members of a local hunting association pursued it through a residential area near the park. The bear, estimated to be 5 years old, was finally shot dead after it ran into a house. As the gunshots rang out, local residents were in an uproar.” [Source: Hiromasa Takeda and Takahiro Komazaki, Yomiuri Shimbun, October 24, 2010]

“In Kudoyamacho, Wakayama Prefecture, on the same day, a bear escaped from an animal trap in a field. In Iidemachi, Yamagata Prefecture, three bears that seemed to be a family were spotted in a residential area on Thursday. A couple days before in Sharicho, Hokkaido, two brown bears gave local residents a scare when they appeared in a central district of town.” Bear sightings are being reported almost every day between April and September. A total of 2,366 bears had been caught in that time, most of which were later killed.

In June 2021 a bear ran through the city of Sapporo, attacking a military base and injuring four people, according to The Washington Post. In July 2021, during the Tokyo Olympics, according to AFP, local police confirmed that an Asian black bear was seen on an Olympics softball field at night and the next morning hours hours before a game between Japan and Australia was set to start. The game went ahead as scheduled and there no bear-related issues. “"We couldn't find or capture the bear, and while there won't be any spectators at the stadium, we are on alert and searching for the bear around the site," a police spokesperson told AFP. [Source: Scott Davis, Business Insider, July 22, 2021]

Bears in Tokyo

In the mid 2010s, sightings of bears became common in residential areas of the western part of Tokyo, especially Ome, where three bears were shot in just a couple weeks in the fall of 2016. Residents there were told be particularly on the alert when before bears started hibernating in early December. “We used firecrackers but instead of running away, it ran toward us. I was scared,” said Yasuhiro Takishima, 66, recalling his experience of exterminating a bear on Oct. 22. Takishima is a member of the Ome branch of the Tokyo Hunting Association, and took part in a hunt in a bamboo forest close to a residential area of the city.[Source: Yomiuri Shimbun, November 22, 2016]

The Yomiuri Shimbun reported: “They released hunting dogs. Then Takishima heard the footsteps of a big creature approaching from the bamboo forest. When the animal reached a spot about 10 meters away from him, a fellow hunter killed it with a shotgun. It was a male Asian black bear measuring 1.35 meters tall and weighing 120 kilograms.

“Wild animals have been causing damage in Ome since mid-October. In one case, a wild animal foraged inside a freezer. In another, a wild animal ate about 15 kilograms of ume plums that a resident was simmering in a pot. The bear that was shot to death is believed to have been involved in both incidents. “There were fears the bear could harm residents, so we had no other choice but to eliminate it,” Takishima said. On Oct. 23, the day following the killing, a female Asian black bear was shot to death in a forest near the Tamagawa river, about 1.5 kilometers from the city center. The bear was 1.28 meters tall and weighed 80 kilograms. Later, three bears thought to be a family were spotted on November eight and 9. On November. a female Asian black bear that was 1.2 meters tall and weighed 60 kilograms was shot to death in a mountain in the north.

“Only one bear was shot to death in the city in the decade from 2006 to 2015. This year’s situation of three bears being killed in less than three weeks is unprecedented. According to the Okutama Visitor Center of the Tokyo metropolitan government in Okutama, a town neighboring Ome, bear sightings in Ome, Okutama and nearby areas numbered 61 by the end of October. The number has already exceeded the 47 seen in 2014, the previously highest level in recent years. Bears were spotted near trekking trails in many cases. An official of the center said, “It is very rare for sightings to be reported in a residential area like Ome.”

Bears Moving Into Japan’s Shrinking Rural Towns

Experts in Japan insist that one of the main reasons for increased human and bear encounters is demographics. Nathanial Gronewold wrote in E&E News: As the human population ages and slightly declines, rural Japan is becoming quieter. Nature is filling the void, bringing animals closer to shrinking cities. The newly emboldened animals are running into the remaining rural residents, usually older people. "The mountain settlements are losing human population, and at the same time the bears’ habitat range is expanding," said Yoshiaki Izumiyama, a wildlife protection official for the Akita prefectural government. "Thus, the rising number of shrinking human settlements near bear territory is closely connected, we believe." [Source: Nathanial Gronewold, E&E News, Politico, July 5, 2018]

According to the Yomiuri Shimbun: “Due to the declining population and lack of regular maintenance, more and more community forests in mountain areas are going wild. Because of a decline in the number of hunters, it is becoming harder to drive bears away to the mountains. A survey conducted by the JBN over a 10-year period from 2004 to 2013 confirmed that bear habitats were expanding across the country, excluding the Kyushu region. “JBN representative and Ishikawa Prefectural University Prof. Toru Oi said, "Because bears have settled near where humans are living, it's easy for them to enter areas with humans in them when in search of food. …as of August 2016, 2,708 bear sightsing in Iwate Prefecture, 771 in Akita Prefecture and 489 in Yamagata Prefecture. [Source: Tomoko Tsuda and Teruo Miyazawa, The Daily Yomiuri, November 20, 2016]

When areas return to the forest it gives bears “a chance to expand their range," biologist Koji Yamazaki, from Tokyo University of Agriculture, told CBS News. Japan is one of the only places on the planet where a large mammal is reclaiming habitat — good news for the bears. So if, as biologists think, the bear population is growing, the country will have to figure out how to protect people from bears, and bears from people. [Source: Elizabeth Palmer, CBS News, December 29, 2023]

Bear Meat Vending Machine in Akita

Aditi Bharade wrote in Business Insider: At the Tazawako bullet train station in Semboku city, Akita prefecture, commuters can stop by a vending machine and purchase hunks of meat from a freshly slaughtered bear, per a Japanese news outlet, The Mainichi. The machine features signs that say "open 24 hours," "black bear," "bear meat" and "2,200 yen for 250 grams," The Mainichi reported. Priced at about $17 for half a pound, the meat comes from bears captured by a local hunting club. The dead bears are processed at a slaughterhouse in the city, per The Mainichi. [Source: Aditi Bharade, Business Insider, April 3, 2023]

The vending machine was installed by people associated with the Soba Goro restaurant, which has an outlet at the Tazawako bullet train station, per The Mainichi. Soba Goro is trying to turn bear meat into a souvenir from Akita prefecture, a representative for the restaurant told The Mainichi. A Soba Goro representative told The Mainichi that bear meat "tastes clean, and it doesn't get tough, even when cold." "It can be enjoyed in a wide range of dishes, from stew to steaks," the representative told The Mainichi. The machine's operators estimate that 10 to 15 packs of bear meat are sold weekly through the grab-and-go vending machine. But the meat's availability depends on whether it is bear hunting season, per The Mainichi.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; National Geographic, Live Science, Natural History magazine, David Attenborough books, Daily Yomiuri, Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan National Tourist Organization (JNTO), New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Discover magazine, The New Yorker, Time, BBC, CNN, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Wikipedia, The Guardian, Top Secret Animal Attack Files website and various books and other publications.

Last updated March 2025