Jeff Kingston credits his dogs with saving his life when he was attacked by a bear on a mountain trail in central Japan, although the marks left by the creature’s claws will forever remain on his forehead, arms and shoulders.
Like many residents of rural parts of Japan, he believes encounters between humans and bears will continue to increase in recent years, perhaps with fatal consequences.
“I think I’ve encountered bears about 100 times in the mountains and been charged about 15 times,” said Kingston, an American academic who likes to escape Tokyo on weekends for his cabin in rural Gunma Prefecture. “And I think they’re changing. They seem more attractive and hungry than before.”
He said the incident that injured Kingston occurred in 2014, when he encountered a bear, which tackled him into the bushes.
The bear continued his attack until Kingston’s dogs intervened and eventually drove him off. With his face still bleeding, he somehow reached the nearest hospital and received nine stitches.
The following year, he was better prepared and fought another bear with repellent spray, but only when he got within a meter of it.
“Since then, I have been a less avid traveler in the summer months, from late June to early September,” Kingston told DW.
Bear-human encounters have increased across Japan
The Japanese government’s 2026 environmental white paper, released last week, declares that bears have become “a serious threat to public safety and peace.”
The report said there were more than 50,000 sightings in the financial year to March 31, with a record 238 people injured in the collisions and 13 killed. It already appears that records will be broken this year, with 25 people injured and four confirmed dead in attacks since April 1.
And it’s not just in the most remote parts of Japan where people are coming face to face with bears. A large bear was captured on security cameras running through a shopping arcade in the center of the country’s northern city of Utsunomiya early Sunday.
A week earlier, four people were injured in a black bear attack in Japan’s northeastern city of Fukushima, according to officials and media reports.
In May, a Russian hiker was seriously injured while hiking in the Okutama district of western Tokyo.
Kevin Short, naturalist and former professor of cultural anthropology at Tokyo Informatics University, said, “There is a combination of factors behind the increase in conflicts between bears and people, but no one at the national or prefectural level has been able to come up with an effective plan to deal with the problem.”
“One of the biggest contributing factors, I believe, is the loss of bears’ traditional food habitats,” he said.
“If bears can’t get access to enough beech nuts or acorns, they’re going to expand their range into farmland and paddy fields closer to villages and towns,” Short said. “And they’re finding apple and persimmon trees that they like, as well as garbage that provides them with easy food.”
Fewer hunters lead to more bear encounters
Another factor cited by Short is the decline in hunter numbers in rural communities, which has encouraged bears to roam the suburbs.
Short says research conducted on euthanized bears shows that the animals have become less fearful of humans, their stress levels are lower today and they are more willing to enter areas heavily populated by humans.
“We are getting a new generation that has grown up in villages or near suburban areas but their mothers are still somewhat reluctant to move closer to human habitation,” he said. “But that fear is gone with these animals.”
Another contributing factor, Short said, is the impact of global warming on the nuts and berries that bears eat in the months before going into hibernation. In a bad year, bears have to forage longer and become more aggressive as they try to gather in large numbers to survive the winter.
Equally, the relatively warm winter and early spring across Japan meant that bears emerged earlier than usual and prepared to replace their lost weight, causing them to seek out subterranean opportunities.
The government’s white paper calls for more people in rural areas to adopt hunting as a pastime as a partial solution, while others are turning to technology.
A company in Hokkaido has developed Monster Wolf, a larger-than-life animatronic scarecrow with long, shaggy hair and eyes that glow red when it senses something approaching. The company Ohta Seiki says it has received 50 orders since April 1, which is more than it usually sells in an entire year.
AI tracks increasing bear encounter risk
Yusuke Fukazawa, associate professor of applied machine learning at Sophia University in Tokyo, has developed a system that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to determine the probability of encountering a bear within an area of 1 square kilometer (about 0.4 square miles).
The app applies a series of data points, including a number of environmental and historical factors, to determine the likelihood of a person encountering a bear in different parts of Japan.
Fukazawa has increased the AI accuracy rate to 70%, but is still aiming higher.
A keen runner and hiker, Fukazawa said he was inspired by Sharp increase in the number of bear sightings In recent years, reports have ranged from about 800 encounters in Japan’s northern Akita Prefecture in 2022 to more than 3,910 the following year.
“There were a much larger number of encounters last year, which helped me improve the accuracy of my predictions,” he said. Fukazawa said a major factor is the availability of acorns and nuts, with a bountiful year usually followed by a poor harvest the following year and, as a result, more conflicts between humans and bears.
“Some scientists are saying bears are no longer afraid of humans,” he said. “In the past, a mother would keep her babies away from people, but if they are hungry, the priority will always be food and they are willing to risk contact with humans.”
Edited by: Keith Walker