A man in Japan was mauled to death by a bear on Friday, the same week a bear pounced at shoppers at a grocery store in an area north of Tokyo and another person was found decapitated in a suspected bear attack, marking an uptick in such confrontations, Japanese officials said.
According to the Japan Times, a man in his 70s who went missing after going to harvest mushrooms in the woods was found dead after a mauling.
“We suspect he was attacked by a bear based on scratch marks,” an official from the Iwate Prefectural Police told the Japanese news outlet.
Between April and September, five bear-related deaths have been confirmed in Japan, and 108 people have been injured. Several incidents under investigation, including the man found on Friday, could result in a record number of bear-related deaths in the country since 2023, according to the AFP.
On Wednesday, Iwate police found another dead man, allegedly killed by a bear, whose head had been separated from his body, officials said.
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Then, on Saturday in the Nagano Prefecture, the body of a 78-year-old man with multiple claw marks was found.
The victims are all believed to have been killed by bears, though investigations are still ongoing.
On Sunday, a Spanish tourist was attacked by a bear at a bus stop in the Shirakawago settlement in Gifu Prefecture, the Japanese Times said.
Among the latest confirmed mauling fatalities is a woman in her 70s who died last week while picking mushrooms in the Miyagi Prefecture. She was with three friends, one of whom is missing, it added.
May 14, 2025: Photo taken on May 14, 2025, shows a bear and two cubs walking on a road in Shiretoko National Park in the northern Japanese town of Shari in Hokkaido. In Japan, sightings of bears coming down to populated areas in search of food, as well as reports of attacks on humans by the animals, are on the rise.
(Credit Image: © Kyodonews via ZUMA Press)
Last Tuesday, two people suffered minor injuries after a bear wandered into a grocery store in Numata City, an urban area northwest of Tokyo.
Japan’s national public broadcaster, NHK, wrote that police were called to reports of a bear lying on top of a customer after it reportedly attacked a person in the store’s parking lot.
According to AFP, the bear was approximately 1.4 metres long and scoured the store’s fish and sushi selections before stamping on avocados in the fruit section.
The shop, located near mountainous regions where bears are found, had never experienced a bear attack, Hiroshi Horikawa, a management planning official at the grocery store chain, told AFP.
Reports of bear attacks in Japan, including in residential neighbourhoods, have become more common in recent years, partly due to a declining human population and climate change, which have impacted bears’ access to food sources and, in turn, their hibernation cycles.
Bear populations are growing in Japan, which is home to two species of bears: the Japanese black bear and the Hokkaido brown bear.
According to Reuters, Japanese bear populations are on the rise partly due to an aging population of professional hunters struggling to manage them, as well as broader conservation efforts that include hunting bans and a decline in rural human populations, leaving space for bears to expand their habitats.
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