Fatal Bear Attacks in Japan Double Previous Record, 13 killed

 

Image of American black bear by Dean Weingarten, American brown/grizzly bear by Troy Nemitz; Image of Asian Black Bear from wikimedia license 4.0; Wikimedia Ussuri Brown bear 2008 CC 2.0 

The highest number of fatal bear attacks recorded in Japan had been six in fiscal 2023. With several months to go in fiscal 2025, 13 people have been killed in Japan by bears this year. The largest number of people attacked, injured and recorded was 213 in 2023. So far in fiscal 2025, the number is 230. Japan uses the fiscal year from April 1 to March 31 for most of its administrative accounting.  Bears in Japan usually start hibernating in December, but attacks are possible in any month.

Japan has used the fiscal year accounting method to record bear attacks since 2006. The japan times suggests relatively low numbers before 2023 may be an anomaly of recent history.  Previously, no central records were kept. It is possible there were more bear attacks before modern record keeping.

The most famous Japanese bear attack has been the Sankebetsu bear event in 1915. A large brown bear started killing humans in a village on December 9. The bear killed six people in two days, mostly children. The bear may have been ineffectively wounded at least twice. After the bear had killed two people, 50 soldiers were sent to the village to protect it. They were armed with WWI rifles, probably Type 30 Arisakas. The cartridge was the 6.5x50mm, a full power military cartridge. The rifles had 31 inch barrels, which made them long for close quarters work.  The cartridge is slightly less powerful than the 6.5x55 Swede. It fires a 139 grain bullet at 2500 fps. The 6.5x55 fires a 140 grain bullet at 2650 fps. The soldiers failed in protecting the villages. Four more children were killed when the bear invaded the house the soldiers had been protecting.  Two hunters eventually tracked down and killed the large bear. It weighed 749 lbs.

Until 1990, bears in Japan were considered pests. From powderlife.com:

Until 1990, Hokkaido had a policy of allowing hunters to exterminate brown bears but this was abolished due to conservation concerns.

Since that time, researchers at Hokkaido University and other institutions have confirmed a rapid increase in the brown bear population, something anecdotally understood by many farmers and residents of Hokkaido’s rural and suburban areas.

Hokkaido's brown bears are a subspecies of the world wide brown bear, ursus arctos, the same species as the American grizzly and Kodiak bears. In the rest of Japan there are rapidly growing populations of the Asiatic black bear, a more aggressive relative of the American black bear. Hunting of both bears was increasingly restricted since 1990.

The restrictions and extreme firearms regulations in Japan, along with a shrinking population, have resulted in the number of licensed bear hunters dropping from 517,800 in 1975 to 218,500 in 2020. In 1975, 98% of the licenses were to shoot bears. In 2020, only 42% or 91,770 were licensed to shoot bears, with 58% only allowed to trap bears.

To illustrate the problems a bear hunter faces in Japan, two bear hunters were asked to eliminate a brown bear in the village of Sunagawa. The hunters were reluctant to shoot the young bear, but the police and village officials were insistent. One of the hunters shot and killed the bear. The bullet penetrated the bear, hit a hidden rock, ricocheted, and struck the other hunter's rifle. The ricochet became known to the authorities months later. In response, the authorities canceled the first hunter's permit to own firearms. The Hunter association responded by refusing any further requests to aid municipalities in the shooting of bears.

Bear hunters in Japan are limited to 50 cartridges a year total, for all purposes. 

In response to the extreme protections given to bears in Japan, the population of brown bears on Hokkaido more than doubled. The population of black bears in the rest of Japan quadrupled. The Japanese government has responded to the increasing numbers of bear attacks by authorizing the killing of more bears. Over 9,000 bears were culled in 2023, over 5,000 in 2024, and over 6,000 by the end of September in 2025. About 5% of the bears taken are killed by private hunters. The total bear population in Japan is estimated at 54,000 Asiatic black bears south of the island of Hokkaido and 12,000 brown bears in Hokkaido.

Japan has highly restricted the ownership of firearms for hundreds of years. It has one of the lowest rates of firearms ownership per person, about .003 firearms per person. The United States has about 1.5 firearms owned per person. There are many other variables, but the United States has fewer people killed by bears than  Japan.

 

©2025 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

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