Japan Faces Worst Wild Bear Attacks in Five Years During Virus
A mix of factors, from coronavirus lockdowns to a bad year for acorns, drive bears to seek food where humans live
Wild bears were spotted more than 13,000 times across Japan between April and September 2020.
Photographer: Hiroshi Yokota via Shinsuke Koike
On the morning of October 23, a 56-year-old employee at West Japan Railway Co. was inspecting trains when he encountered an Asian black bear just outside the Tsuruga station in Japan’s northwestern Fukui prefecture. He escaped with just a scratch, but about 10 minutes later, the same bear fractured the leg of another worker at a nearby construction site.
Four days before the incident, a male bear entered a four-story shopping center in neighboring Ishikawa prefecture. The 1.3-meter-tall bear holed up in a storage room for 13 hours, until it was shot by a local hunting group.