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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
In 1990 Maita Kazuhiko set out to capture some bears. Maita, who now directs the Institute for Asian Black Bear Research and Preservation in Hiroshima Prefecture, had first been drawn to the powerful animals as a college student in the 1960's. At that time he had little interest in conservation, and, simply wanting to study their behaviour, spent two decades after graduating tracking bears for a regional government office in northern Japan, where he was also in charge of handling complaints from local farmers suffering crop damage from the animals. By the 80's, however, it was clear that Japanese black bears (Ursus thibetanus japonicus) were in a state of crisis.
1 Japan Forestry Agency online statistics (in Japanese).
2 Nationwide statistics are not available for bear-related injuries and deaths prior to the 1980's, when the Ministry of the Environment was created. However Yamazaki Koji (director of Japan Bear Network and council member of IUCN bear specialist group) confirms that bear-human conflict increased during the 80's.
3 Oi Toru and Yamazaki Koji (eds), “The Status of Asiatic Black Bears in Japan,” in Japan Bear Network, Understanding Asian Bears to Secure their Future (Ibaraki: Japan Bear Network, 2006), 126. Also interview with Maita Kazuhiko.
4 FAO, State of the World's Forests 2001. Link.
5 IUCN Red Book of Threatened Species (online), “Ursus Thibetanus.”
6 Email from Maita Kazuhiko. Maita estimates an additional 800 were probably trapped in wire snares used to hunt boar and killed but not reported. Also see Justin McCurry, “Japan's black bears ‘face extinction,‘” The Guardian, Jan. 8, 2007 and statistics from the environment ministry (in Japanese) here. National figures for bears killed by sports hunters are not collected by the Ministry of the Environment.
7 Conrad Totman, “The Green Archipelago: Forestry in Pre-Industrial Japan” (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1998).
8 Knight writes that
[P]erhaps the main danger posed by the forest to the village was wild animals. Wolves were an obvious threat to human life, but even more insistent was the threat from crop-raiding forest animals which could destroy village livelihoods. Villages have long tried to defend themselves from wild boar and deer through a wide range of measures, including the use of protective charms, physical fortifications, human patrols of the village perimeter, all-night vigils beside the rice-fields and preemptive, large-scale hunting (even on occasion total elimination) of wild animal populations… it is reported that when a deer suddenly appeared in a local village, villagers immediately gathered hoes and other sticks, surrounded the animal and beat it to death (Ue 1983:248).“
(Knight, J. 1997. A tale of two forests: Reforestation discourse in Japan. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 3:711).
9 See Walker's fascinating account of the cataclysmic faceoff between boars and villagers that occurred in 1749 in northern Honshu, as farmers attempted to expand their fields into what had been wild boar habitat (Walker, B. 2001a. Commercial Growth and Environmental Change in Early Modern Japan: Hachinohe's Wild Boar Famine of 1749. The Journal of Asian Studies 60:329-351).
10 Although these trees are commonly called Japanese cedar they're actually not true cedars (they are Cryptomeria japonica).
11 Akao Ken-ichi, “Private Forestry,” in Iwai Yoshiya, Forestry and the Forest Industry in Japan (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002), 35.
12 Akao in Iwai, Forestry, 30.
13 Japan Forestry Agency online statistics (in Japanese).
14 Oi and Yamazaki in Understanding Asian Bears, 123
15 IUCN Red Book of Threatened Species
16 International Association for Bear Research and Management, IUCN/ SSC Bear Specialist Group. Link.
17 Japan Forestry Agency online statistics, http://www.rinya.maff.go.jp/toukei/genkyou/shinrin-jinkou.htm,
18 Akira Higuchi, “Shikoku's bears few, far between,” Japan Times, April 21, 2009. WWF Japan says less than 20.
19 Mie Prefecture Red Data Book, 2005 (in Japanese). The number, according to the prefectural government spokesperson, is based on speculation rather than data. Yoshizawa says it is probably an over-estimate.
20 Japan Statistical Yearbook 2003, p. 36.
21 Hazumi Toshihiro in Understanding Asian Bears, 126.
22 Ibid.
23 Conrad Totman, History of Japan, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 616. Figure is for 2000. Also see Stephen Hesse, “World's forests cut to feed voracious Japanese industry,” Japan Times, March 27 2,000.
24 Email from Maezawa Eishi, Forest Program Leader at World Wide Fund for Nature Japan and interview with Hayami Tohru.
25 Email from James Hewitt, contributor to globaltimber.org.uk and independent business consultant assessing markets and trade of wood-based products.
26 Interview with Iwai Yoshiya, ed. Forestry and the Forest Industry in Japan. As of June 2009 there were 27 FSC certified forests in Japan and 82 forests certified by a separate, Japan-only certifying body called the Sustainable Green Ecosystem Council.
27 Democratic Party of Japan website, Index 2009 (in Japanese only).
28 DPJ website, Index 2009 (in Japanese). The text regarding bears is as follows: クマ被害対策 近年、クマの異常出没が急増し、それに伴う人 的被害や農作物被害などが 深刻化しています。 かつてヒトとクマが共生し得た時代が存在した 事実を想起し 、(1)生息地管理(2)中山間地域 の活性化(3)被害防除を3本柱として、ヒトの安 全 確保と農作物被害等の防止のための措置を 確実に講じながら、可能な限りの生態 系の再 生・回復に取り組み、クマ被害の抜本的解決を 目指します。具体的には、 個体の適正管理の ための継続的かつ科学的調査・研究の実施、ク マ遭遇の未然回 避、クマの追い払いなどに効 果が期待できるベアドッグの導入などを進めま す。
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