Japan’s Bear Crisis: Why a Modern Nation Is Turning to Hunters

November 23, 2025 Justin Townsend

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Justin (Choctaw) is an avid hunter, angler, and chef whose passion for the outdoors lead him to create Harvesting Nature in 2011. He continues to hunt, fish, and cook all while sharing his experiences with others through film, podcasts, print, and with recipes. He also proudly serves in the United States Coast Guard.

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Japan is grappling with a growing bear crisis that feels more like a news headline from a frontier past than a hyper-modern nation with bullet trains and neon skylines. As bear attacks, from both brown and black bears, reach record levels, the government has taken the unusual step of planning to hire licensed hunters to help protect rural communities and small cities on the edge of the woods.

This move, first reported by BBC journalist Koh Ewe, comes after a year in which at least a dozen people have been killed and more than a hundred injured by bears across Japan, the highest toll since the country began tracking such incidents in the 2000s.

The Government’s Response: Hunters, Police, and Troops

According to the BBC report, “The Japanese government plans to recruit hunters to cull bears, as anxiety grows over a sharp rise in attacks.” Japan’s environment ministry has said it will set aside funds to hire licensed hunters and other personnel to deal with bears that have been wandering into residential areas, raiding fields, and attacking people.

These measures build on a broader emergency response. In Akita Prefecture, one of the hardest-hit regions, Japan has deployed the Self-Defense Forces to support local authorities amid a surge in attacks and sightings. Reuters reports that “troops will assist in transporting, setting, and checking traps, while trained hunters carry out the culling.” The military won’t be doing the shooting, but their presence underlines how serious the situation has become.

The government has also relaxed specific gun rules, making it easier to shoot bears in residential areas, and is considering allowing police to use service rifles against bears that pose imminent threats to the public. Japan’s defense minister Shinjiro Koizumi summed up the concern bluntly in comments reported by local media: “The lives and livelihoods of people are under threat.”

Bears in Backyards, Schoolyards, and Supermarkets

For many Japanese citizens, the crisis stopped being abstract the moment bears began appearing in familiar places. Conservation Frontlines notes that, “Once secretive forest dwellers, Asiatic black and brown bears are now appearing in supermarkets, schoolyards, and city streets across northern and central Japan.”

Nippon.com describes a similar pattern in Iwate and Akita, where bears have been spotted near banks, university grounds, supermarkets, and high schools. “In Akita Prefecture, bear sightings have been reported near supermarkets and high schools,” one Japanese bear expert warned, arguing that the level of attacks now resembles a natural disaster.

2025 isn’t a one-off bad year. Data collected by Japan’s Ministry of the Environment show a sharp upward trend in encounters and casualties. Between April and October 2025 alone, nearly 200 people were injured or killed by bears, with 12 fatalities, almost matching the worst year on record. The Guardian notes that “a record 13 people have died in bear attacks in Japan this year – more than double the previous high.”

How Did It Get This Bad?

Several overlapping forces are driving Japan’s bear crisis:

1. Climate-driven food shortages
Both Ussuri brown bears and Japanese black bears depend heavily on acorns, beech nuts, and other “mast” crops, along with salmon and scavenged carcasses. When those fail, bears have to travel farther for calories. In 2025, a poor nut year combined with erratic weather appears to have pushed many bears out of the mountains and into farmland and towns.

2. More bears, fewer people managing them
Decades of conservation policy and reduced hunting pressure have allowed bear populations to rebound. Estimates for Japan’s black bears have climbed from roughly 15,000 in 2012 to more than 40,000 today, while brown bear numbers on Hokkaido are also rising. At the same time, the hunting population has collapsed: Japan issued more than 500,000 hunting licenses in the 1970s, but by 2020 that number had dropped to below 220,000, with most license holders over 60 years old.

For rural communities, that means fewer people on the land, fewer local hunters able to respond quickly, and vast areas where wildlife goes largely unmanaged.

3. Rural depopulation and abandoned landscapes
Japan’s countryside is emptying. Farms are being abandoned, villages are shrinking, and vegetation is reclaiming once-managed land. Britannica points out that as younger people leave, “overgrown shrubs and grasses give the bears cover as they raid crops and look for other sources of food.”

What This Means for Hunters and Wild Food Advocates

This story echoes both the power and responsibility of hunting in a modern conservation context. Japan is not suddenly declaring war on wildlife; it is scrambling to rebuild conservation mechanisms and capacity that have withered over time.

As Conservation Frontlines puts it, Japan’s surge in bear encounters “underscores a deeper turning point where human withdrawal and ecological change are reshaping the balance between people and wildlife.” Short-term culls and emergency responses might reduce immediate danger, but they will not solve the underlying problem of how to live alongside large carnivores in rapidly changing landscapes.

At the same time, the Japanese case is a reminder that wildlife management is never just about pulling the trigger. Effective coexistence demands:

Skilled local hunters and wildlife professionals who understand behavior, seasons, and terrain.
Clear legal frameworks that allow a timely response to dangerous animals, while still maintaining high safety and ethical standards.
Habitat and food management, from replanting native mast-producing trees to securing garbage, crops, and livestock.
Community engagement and education so residents know how to avoid attracting bears and how to respond safely when encounters occur.

For hunters, there’s also a cultural point: when hunting disappears from a landscape, something else often fills that vacuum, whether it is increasing animal-vehicle collisions, crop damage, or, in Japan’s case, fatal attacks. Japan is now considering “government hunters” and expanded culling precisely because the traditional hunting community has thinned out so dramatically.

Lessons Beyond Japan

Japan may feel far away, but many of the drivers behind its bear crisis are global: climate-driven food stress, aging rural communities, and wildlife populations rebounding into places that no longer have a strong hunting culture or management presence.

In North America and Europe, we can see reminders of this in rising conflicts with bears, wolves, and wild pigs. The challenge is to ensure that conservation success does not turn into unmanaged chaos by maintaining healthy hunting and trapping traditions and supporting science-based policies and management that treat wild meat and wild animals as part of a living system rather than separate, opposing forces.

For those of us who hunt, fish, and forage, Japan’s story is a warning and a call to action. We need to invest in mentorship, keep younger hunters engaged, and stay involved in the hard conversations about predator management. Coexistence does not mean never killing a bear; it means making sure any lethal control is part of a broader, thoughtful strategy to keep both people and wildlife on the landscape.

Despite the danger they can pose, both black bears and brown bears remain legitimate, traditional, and highly edible game animals when harvested legally and handled correctly. Across North America and parts of Eurasia, bear meat has long been valued for its richness, its deep red color, and its versatility in stews, roasts, sausages, and slow-cooked dishes.

Original reporting by BBC News and other outlets; summarized and discussed here for Harvesting Nature readers.