Four bears were killed in Japan on Monday as the country steps up a culling campaign amid a surge in attacks.
Why It Matters
This year has been the deadliest for bear attacks since Japan began keeping records in the early 2000s, with the Ministry of the Environment reporting 13 fatalities between April and November—three more than in April 2024-March 2025.
The spike has been attributed in part to climate change and the rapid depopulation of rural areas in Japan. The government has rolled out a series of countermeasures, including hiring hunters and training riot police to take part in the culling.
Newsweek reached out to Japan’s Ministry of the Environment by email with a request for comment.
What To Know
Three bears were killed Monday morning after being spotted near a Shinto shrine in Sakata City, Yamagata Prefecture, on Japan’s main island of Honshu, according to local reports.
A fourth bear was culled by a member of a hunting group, with authorization from the mayor, after it climbed through a window into a storage shed in Toyama Prefecture’s Tonami City. The family of four who lived in the house evacuated to the second floor and were uninjured.
“Maybe it smelled something, or maybe it came in because it was cold,” one of the house’s occupants, a farmer, told TV Asahi’s All-Nippon News Network (ANN). He noted that he has been keeping vegetables in the shed.
The increase in attacks has unsettled local communities and also begun to affect tourism.
A Japanese-style hot spring inn, located four miles from a hotel where a worker was mauled to death last month while cleaning an outdoor bath, reported a 20 percent drop in bookings. The number of bath-use-only visitors was down by as much as 70 percent on some days, inn representative Hironori Takahashi told Japan Today.
Japan is home to two bear species: the Japanese black bear, found on the islands of Honshu and Shikoku; and the Ussuri brown bear, a subspecies of Eurasian brown bear that inhabits Hokkaido.
The effects of climate change on traditional bear food sources, a steep population decline in rural areas, and a decline in the number of hunters have all been cited as factors contributing to the increase in bear encounters.
What People Are Saying
Kakeru Matsuhashi, a traditional “Matagi” winter hunter in Akita Prefecture, told Agence France-Presse: “We hear news almost every day about people being attacked or injured. It’s becoming something that feels personal, and it’s simply frightening.”
The Chubu regional office of the Ministry of Environment warned people in affected areas: “To alert bears to your presence or approach, carry something that makes noise, such as a bell or a radio. It’s also important to stay aware of your surroundings at all times and to avoid acting alone.”
What Happens Next
It remains to be seen how effective the joint ministry bear countermeasures will be at reducing attacks. The defense ministry has also said it is deploying troops to provide logistics support to those engaged in trapping and hunting.
