November 5, 2025: Japan has deployed troops against the bears.
And it is no joke.
I’ve been following this recently and believe that some bear footage from Japan, at least in the last month or two, might be AI– at least one person said on X that she had made such videos.
But the attacks and invasions are real, and not limited to the two attacks mentioned in this video:
Original post
Last week’s black-bear sweet tooths in Alaska were adorable; even their ‘victim’ — Krispy Kreme — was cool with the one-off van invasion.
And next Thursday, the fun continues. It’s brown-bear Fat Bear time (again, in Alaska).
Yay!!!! ❤🐻🐼❤
But…what if you’re on a crowded island with wild bears? And they’re a different species, with unpredictable behaviors?
For anyone who’s been hiking in the mountains of North America, and some parts of Europe, potential bear encounters are a normal part of outdoor activities. However, for most other countries, we are not familiar with such a risk and are unaware of what to expect in these environments. For many travellers to Japan, it’s quite a surprise to find out that we do indeed share the mountains with bears, and the number of sightings have been increasing for the past 15 years [1]. It then comes as a further surprise that despite how cautious Japanese culture normally is regarding safety in most aspects of daily life, in comparison to North America there seems to be less proactive effort here for the prevention and control of bear attacks. This is partially due to the rarity of sightings on popular hiking trails. Ask the expats and locals who live here, and most of them will tell you that they’ve never seen a bear, that the bears simply run away, that you have nothing to worry about, or that you just need to wear a bear bell. They also point out that wild boar, hornets, and monkeys are much more likely to cause trouble while hiking. But what about the increase in sightings? What about the growth in bear population? What about the behavioural difference compared to bears in North America?
— Source (a good read)
I was planning a fun post for today after seeing this:
There might be drones now, per the London Times, though you’ll need to set up a free account to read that far in the article (I didn’t).
“Oh, those cute, crazy awesome and heroic Japanese…”
So I did some online research and was horrified. Here is a nongory but informative article about the problem, particularly with brown bears on the northern island of Hokkaido.
Asiatic black bears are out there, too, as this bear attack video shows (it’s not horrible or bloody, and the only scary stuff I noticed was the setting — I don’t have a head for heights):
Like me, you might be wondering how that climber stayed calm — quite a few of us would probably have fallen at some point.
Here’s the text accompanying that video (click “YouTube” to visit it):
October 1, 2022
I was attacked by a bear from behind while descending the rocky ridge of Mt.Futago in Chichibu City, Saitama Prefecture, Japan.Instead of fear, I switched to the feeling that if it was coming, I had no choice but to face it.
・Keep screaming and intimidating
・Pound with Hammer Fist
・ Front kickLooking back at the video, it seems that the bear attacked me to protect the cub.
I invaded bear territory, but since they attacked me, I defended myself with self-defense.I learned karate when I was a child, but I liked mixed martial arts now, so maybe I could use hammer fist instead of punches.
…
Please limit interview requests to me to mountaineering media.
Example) https://funq.jp/peaks/article/838724/
Please limit the citation of the video to web media, and cite the source and link to the video. I would appreciate it if you could report it to me.I always have a bear bell,but I mute it when descending rocks because it is noisy.
The bear family went down, so I climbed back up to the summit. After taking a breather, I returned the way I came and descended.
My hands were scratched and cut from desperately holding on to the rock.My right wrist was slightly sprained after hammering the rock and the bear.
I have read all the comments, but I will give up reading because there are too many. Sorry for not being able to answer your question.
Equipment: GoPro HERO10 (4K,30fps,wide-angle HyperSmooth 4.0 – normal)
“My right wrist was slightly sprained after hammering the rock and the bear.”
I have gone back up this post and crossed out the bit about ‘cute and crazy’!
But, unfortunately, most people who encounter a bear unprepared and unexpectedly, anywhere in the world, are not as centered, compassionate, and athletic as this individual.
By the way, I don’t know much Japanese local geography but Mt. Futago is said to be close to the town of Hakone, which has wonderful views of Mount Fuji.
That bear-human contact, therefore, did not happen in the wilderness — perhaps both were up there to escape an otherwise crowded urban landscape?
In other words, there will be more incidents, probably in places where contact is less likely to be cut short by gravity and scarce hand/paw holds.
My blog time is almost full up with volcanoes, cats, canids (now), and the ongoing background project of reading up on cat evolution and/or the Precambrian.
Here, I can only mention this to raise awareness that both bears and people are endangered in Japan — and solutions that work in North America/Western Eurasia might not be so helpful here.
More information:
- Asiatic black bear Red List page: Vulnerable to Extinction
- Brown bear Red List page: Least Concern. (Apparently Hokkaido’s brown bears are the same species as Alaska’s?)
- Saving Nagano’s bears and people (Note: Saturday, we’ll meet the Karelian bear dog breed mentioned in this post.)
Some lagniappe:
How ’bout a complete change of pace, while staying in Japan this weekend (except for Saturday)?
Featured image: Art G., CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Flight To Wonder 