Death by bear is far more likely in Japan than in North America, if the data are boldly interpreted and a few assumptions made, and this has probably been the case for more than a century. The Japanese bear seems to be a statistically significant outlier in the ursine world.
The math has been much the same regardless of what’s happening in the country. Whether the human population is rising or falling, whether Japan is unusually warm or cold, bears have been attacking and killing people at an alarming rate, from the remote corners of Hokkaido to the rural villages of Honshu.
Evidence suggests that the recent uptick — with 13 people killed by bears so far in the fiscal year that began April 1 — is less of an anomaly and more of a return to the historical range, and that the baseline for killer bears in Japan is exceptionally high. The records being set now might not be records.
“Japan likely has the highest number of bear-human incidents in the world,” says Koji Yamazaki, a professor of animal ecology at Tokyo University of Agriculture.
Something about bears in Japan sets them apart from their peers in other countries. Judging by news reports, videos and anecdotes, their attacks can be more random, more sustained and more vicious than bear attacks elsewhere. The assaults are sometimes characterized by almost cinematic brutality that belies the established narrative about the animal just wanting to be left alone.
Bears in Japan have at times stalked humans for days on end and attacked with a ferocity that indicates a more predatory behavior than defensive, fighting harder and longer, charging repeatedly and bluffing less. A newspaper deliveryman is dragged away while on his route. Campers are methodically pursued as they attempt an escape, picked off one by one. Hikers are plucked off the trail.
Multiple fatalities by a single bear over a short period of time are unusually common in Japan — two, three, four and, once, seven victims in a single incident.
Much of what can be said about the Japanese bear can be said about bears elsewhere in the world. Any animal attack is bad, and attacks are invariably unexpected and shocking. Multiple-fatality incidents have been reported globally, as have eerily persistent bears. A nod must be given to Romania, where the number of fatal bear attacks has been off the charts in recent years, while it’s hard to get a handle on the situation in China, Russia and India because many attacks could be happening in remote areas and not reported. It’s possible that bears in some countries are behaving much the same as they do in Japan.
Academics and other researchers warn against cherry-picking the most sensational incidents in Japan and point out that most attacks occur when bears are surprised in the mountains or confused when they find themselves in residential areas.
It’s just that the numbers in Japan are so obviously out of line with expectations and norms, and consistently over such a long period of time. The behavior of bears in the country is often so bizarre that it’s hard not to wonder whether there’s something more to the story than the conventional wisdom, which leans heavily on depopulation and acorn shortages to explain away what’s happening.
Information on bear-related fatalities in Japan published by the Environment Ministry goes back to 2008. The list covers all types of bears. The Hokkaido Prefectural Government has records compiled since 1962 for brown bears only. The United States lacks any centralized database of bear attacks at all. Information available there has simply been crowdsourced from news reports.
A brown bear gnaws at the cage it is trapped in in Sunagawa, Hokkaido, in October 2024.
| REUTERS
Since 2008, the number of fatal bear attacks in Japan has averaged about three per year. In the United States, that figure is around two per year when all states are included, and under 1.5 when only attacks in the Lower 48 states are counted. Adjusting for population — and making a simple and arguably unscientific calculation — a person is 4.2 times more likely to be killed by a bear in Japan than in the United States.
North America as a whole has recorded on average around 3.2 bear-related fatalities a year since 2008, slightly more than Japan over the same period. These numbers indicate that a person in Japan is three times more likely to be killed by a bear than a person in North America is.
Deadly brown bear attacks peaked in Hokkaido in 1964, at a total of five people killed in a single year — and that’s only brown bears and only in Hokkaido. This suggests that the high rate of fatalities is a historical reality rather than just a recent phenomenon, and that Japan’s situation has been unusual for some time. In the United States, bear-related fatalities averaged about one per year prior to 2000.
Records from the time before statistics were systematically maintained support much of what the data indicate and paint a particularly dark picture of bears in the country. While the information is spotty and probably incomplete — and possibly peppered with false and exaggerated claims — it’s clear that the number of fatal bear attacks in Japan has been high for ages and was probably highest in the early 20th century.
In 1878, a brown bear killed three people during a two-day period in the village of Okadama, Hokkaido, which is now part of Sapporo. In 1915, seven people were killed in a six-day rampage in western Hokkaido in what has become known as the Sankebetsu brown bear incident, likely the second-most deadly bear attack ever. Only the Mysore sloth bear incident in India, which is said to have claimed 12 lives in 1957, might have been more deadly. In 1923, in Hokkaido not far from the site of the 1915 attack, four people were killed in what has become known as the Ishikari-Numata-Horoshin incident.
A monument in northern Hokkaido commemorates what’s known as the Sankebetsu brown bear incident. Note the helmet on the fence for scale.
| BABI HIJAU/ VIA WIKIPEDIA, PUBLIC DOMAIN
According to data drawn from newspaper reports and compiled by writer Shigeo Nakayama, total bear-related casualties were high overall during this period. It was not just a series of one-offs. In 1901, 1908, 1912, 1913 and 1915, more than 10 people in each of those years were killed by brown bears in Hokkaido. The total for all bears in the country was probably higher. In 1913, brown bears may have killed as many as 18 people — although seven of the victims, from a film production company, vanished while on tour in what was then Karafuto Prefecture, now the southern part of Russia’s Sakhalin Oblast.
A country brimming with bears
Mass-casualty bear attacks in Japan continued in the postwar period. In 1970, three members of the Fukuoka University Wandervogel club were killed by a bear that harassed them for three days while they were hiking in the Hidaka Mountains in southeastern Hokkaido. In 1988, three people were killed by an Asiatic black bear in the village of Tozawa, Yamagata Prefecture, over several months, and in 2016, four people were killed by what might have been a single black bear over a three-week period in Akita Prefecture.
The total number of bears in Japan might help explain the unusually high number of violent incidents. The archipelago is teeming with apex predators, and fatal encounters between humans and bears could just be a function of how frequently the two meet.
Japan has about 13,000 brown bears, all living in Hokkaido. Officials there estimate the number could actually exceed 20,000. That’s a lot of bears for one island. North America, by contrast, has around 55,000 brown bears — including about 2,000 in the contiguous United States — and nearly 1 million black bears. Japan’s own black bear population is estimated at 50,000, found on Honshu and Shikoku.
“In terms of density, it’s very high,” says Toshio Tsubota, a professor of wildlife biology and medicine at Hokkaido University.
The back-of-the-envelope numbers indicate that North America has one black bear per 26 square kilometers, and Japan one per 7 square kilometers. A map published by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government illustrating recent bear sightings within the city limits makes it clear that bears are everywhere in the mountainous areas, dots representing each encounter too numerous and close together to ignore.
A bear appeared in security camera footage last month entering a supermarket in Numata, Gunma Prefecture.
| THE GUNMA PREFECTURAL POLICE/ VIA JIJI
“Japan probably ranks the highest in terms of the number of incidents,” Yamazaki says, discussing the recent bear attacks. “The reason for that is that — at least for Asiatic black bears — Japan has the highest population density per unit area even among countries in Asia.”
The way people live, and where they live, might also be relevant. Japan’s topography and vegetation push the human and ursine populations into close proximity, with inevitable results.
“Japan is small, and nearly 70% is covered in forests,” Tsubota says. “People live on the remaining flatlands, right up against the mountains, and as a result, the boundary between bear habitats and human settlements is almost overlapping.
“That creates an environment where bears can easily wander into residential areas.”
Frank van Manen, a scientist emeritus at the U.S. Geological Survey, says that while doing fieldwork in Japan, he was struck by the abrupt divide between bear and human habitats, especially for black bears.
“You go from what is probably really good bear habitat in the mountainous areas — well-maintained forest — to urban areas within a very short distance, and so that creates a lot of potential for conflict,” he says.
A bear wanders about a field in the town of Kuzumaki in Iwate Prefecture last month.
| KUZUMAKI TOWN/ VIA JIJI
The incidence of human-bear encounters has fluctuated over time as the attitude toward bear culling has changed. When bears are exterminated, the chance of a conflict is reduced and the number of bear-related deaths drops predictably.
In 1966, the Hokkaido Prefectural Government introduced an annual spring bear-culling program that lasted until 1990. Death-by-bear numbers dropped off dramatically. Since that program ended, the killing of bears has focused on those that are a nuisance or are obviously dangerous, and the brown bear population has more than doubled. With that increase, the number of killings by bears has risen as well.
The bear population is surprisingly undermanaged in Japan, and this might be a compounding factor. Even estimates on the number of bears are very rough. Nobody really knows how many are actually in the country, which makes dealing with them more difficult. Official estimates for the number of brown bears in Hokkaido in 2023 range from roughly 5,500 to 21,800.
“The underlying issue is that Japan has never really invested the money or effort into wildlife management,” says Shinsuke Koike, head of the Japan Bear Network and a professor at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. “Up until now, we’ve somehow managed to get by with that approach. But not anymore.”
In the United States, he adds, wildlife officers in many states are required to have a degree in biology or wildlife-related subjects or hold official certifications. In Japan, only about 5% of officials at the prefectural level have any specialized knowledge of wildlife.
Not so cute after all
Japan’s “kawaii” culture might play an indirect role in stymieing efforts at population control. Urbanites fond of cuddly bruins such as the San-X character Rilakkuma or Line’s Brown — and with no direct experience with the animals themselves — often recoil at the notion that bears should be exterminated by the government.
A bear cub is seen close to a trap near a home in the city of Akita on Oct. 30.
| JIJI
People who live closer to bears tend to regard the animals as terrifying and dangerous, or as pests endangering their livelihoods, and are more supportive of efforts, however unpleasant, to keep the numbers down.
“If one bear is shot, calls flood government offices or the homes of hunters from people who view bears through the kawaii image. This polarization of perceptions could become a major obstacle in the future,” says Tokyo University of Agriculture’s Yamazaki.
It’s also possible that Japanese bears are simply different — wired in a way that makes them more aggressive than bears in most other parts of the world. They aren’t the same subspecies as those found in North America, and that could be significant.
An article in Wyoming’s Cowboy State Daily titled “Japan’s bears are much like Wyoming’s — but they’re meaner and attack more people” mentions a never-fully-substantiated genetic theory to explain why bears in Japan might be especially aggressive. They are Asiatic black bears, which evolved in areas on the continent inhabited by Siberian tigers, so they might have developed an instinct to fight to the death against the big cats.
Members of the Japan Self-Defense Forces practice setting up bear traps in Akita Prefecture on Wednesday.
| JIJI
The Asiatic black bear reacts as if it knows it is not the apex predator and must decisively win to survive. American black bears tend to make enough trouble to scare away a threat, or they just retreat.
“They are very docile, not aggressive at all and will almost always retreat from any sort of danger, typically involving humans. They go up in a tree to avoid danger,” says van Manen, who was interviewed for the Cowboy State Daily article, in regards to North American black bears. “That, I think, is potentially a difference between Asiatic black bears and American black bears, and that may also be one reason that you are seeing more human attacks and fatalities.”
The Ezo brown bear that inhabits Japan might have similar traits. It is an Ussuri brown bear, which is more black than brown and also found in Russia, China and North Korea — although on the Kuril Islands the animals are lighter, almost white. Like the Asiatic black bear, it evolved under the threat of attack by Siberian tigers, which may influence its behavior. The Ussuri brown bear is feared in Russia by hunters and biologists. It is seen as being especially crafty and mean — at times an unusually dangerous, mysterious, mercurial monster.
