ASIATIC BLACK BEARS IN JAPAN
There are two species of bear found in Japan: the Asiatic black bear and Ezo brown bear. Black bears are found throughout Honshu and 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.
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.
No one knows how many black bears there are. A study by the Environmental Ministry in 1991 estimated the number to be between 8,400 and 12,600. There are currently thought to be 10,000 to 20,000 of them, with some living a few dozen kilometers west of central Tokyo in the Kaone Mountains and Tanzawa Mountains of western Kanagawa Prefecture.
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. See China, Health, Chinese Medicine
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.
Asiatic Black Bear Characteristics and Behavior in Japan
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.
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.”
Asiatic Black Bears, See Separate Article Under Animals in Asian Topics
Brown Bears in Japan
Ezo brown bears live in Hokkaido. Some eat Pacific salmon returning to the rivers. These bears are often seen on the Rusha River on the Shiretoko Peninsula in Hokkaido. They are closely related to brown bears found in Siberia and distantly related to grizzly bears in North America. Brown bears in Hokkaido usually hibernate from mid-December to late March. They eat plant shoots and salmon and sometimes attack Yezo shika deer.
By some estimates there are 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.
See Separate Article BROWN BEARS factsanddetails.com
Ainu Bear Rituals
The Ainu 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.
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
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.
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.
Dealing with Pesky Bears in Japan
In 2004, the year of a high number of bear attacks, people became very scared. Rural people began wearing bells and other noisemakers. Children were escorted to schools. Elderly people traveled in groups. After numerous bear sightings in 2010, Hiromasa Takeda and Takahiro Komazaki wrote in the Yomiuri Shimbun, “Patrols have been organized and other precautions taken in areas frequented by bears...The city government of Uozu has issued an emergency warning about wild bears, and the town government of Iidemachi has advised residents to refrain from going outdoors in the morning and evening, when bear sightings have been most common. The Iidemachi government has given all local primary and middle schools loud bells to drive away bears, and some primary schools have asked parents to transport their children to and from school by car.” [Source: Hiromasa Takeda and Takahiro Komazaki, Yomiuri Shimbun, October 24, 2010]
“Sakue Ono, 60, who cultivates apples in Numata, Gunma Prefecture, sets off flares every morning to scare away any bears that might be near his property. He also installed electric fences, but even that has failed to stop bears from intruding in his field.” "I'm afraid the bears might have learned how to get around the fences. For example, maybe they push a fence over by using their hip, so the thick fur protects it from electric shock," he told the Yomiuri Shimbun.
“A local government in Kyoto Prefecture has set up buffer zones between forests and residential communities by clearing undergrowth at the foot of mountains, where wild animals sometimes hide, so that people can easily spot them. While many such trial-and-error efforts are continuing across the nation, none have been successful in totally preventing bears from approaching areas where humans live.” An official of the local government in Kyoto Prefecture said: "We're dealing with wild animals. All we can do is try every possible option, one by one."
In Hyogo Prefecture black bears have been trained to fear humans. Pesky bears that have frequently showed up in residential areas have been caught and frightened with firecrackers and pepper spray and other means and then released with transmitters so their movements could be monitored. After being released 75 percent of the bears avoided residential areas. Of these 62 percent did not go within two kilometers of residential areas and 12 percent came near residential area but did not enter them.
The Fukui government spent $800,000 to outfit four bears with radio collars and GPS device to monitor their progress. In Tochigi Prefecture their travel patterns are observed using a satellite designed to check the migratory patterns of whales.
Killing Pesky Bears in Japan
In 2006, another year of a high number of bear attacks, the number of black bears trapped or killed because they were pests totaled 4,737, twice as the number of the previous record in 2004. Of these 4,251 were killed at the time or destroyed later. By some estimates this was 30 percent to 50 percent of the total bear population in Japan. Most were caught in Tohuku in northern Japan and the Nagano-Niigata regions. The high number of bears wandering into areas with human populations was again blamed on low yields of acorns and natural nuts.
In October 2006, hunters in Nagano were asked to voluntarily refrain from hunting black bears out of concern that their numbers might be declining as so many bears had been killed as pests.
It is not rare for bears to be caught and killed, but there are increasingly fewer hunters doing the job. Tadashi Kawagoe, 70, is chief of a division of the Yamagata prefectural hunters association that is responsible for eliminating harmful animals. He told the Yomiuri Shimbun "There are about 300 members who can work in the prefecture, and they've been dispatched almost every day since late August. I also canceled a planned trip to deal with the bears.”
“Some people are stressing for the need to protect bears as wildlife,” Takeda and Komazaki wrote. “In Karuizawamachi, Nagano Prefecture, a nonprofit organization called Picchio tries to teach bears of the risks of approaching populated areas, without killing them. Bears that become caught in traps are harassed for a time by barking dogs and then released back to the wild, hopefully with a lesson learned.”
In mid 2000s, a hunter had to be rescued after getting stuck in the cave of a hibernating bear for 24 hours in mountains in Takayama, Gifu Prefecture. The hunter got stuck in the three-meter-long cave while trying to pull the bear out after killing it with a shotgun. He stayed warm by huddling next his dog. A rescue was launched after his wife reported that he had not come home.
Image Sources: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) Animal Trials 6) Ray Kinnane 7) 8) Japan-Animals blog 9) Wikipedia 10) Hubpages 11) Akita Prefecture site
Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Daily Yomiuri, Times of London, Japan National Tourist Organization (JNTO), National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.
Last updated January 2013