Japan police investigate another suspected fatal bear attack
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Bear attacks have been on the rise in Japan in recent years.
PHOTO: AFP
- Japanese police are investigating a suspected fatal bear attack on a man found dead in Aomori prefecture with bear bite marks.
- Fatal bear attacks in Japan have increased fivefold since April 2026, with five deaths reported and a record 13 in 2025.
- Bear sightings have more than doubled recently, causing dangerous encounters including attacks on people and a bear roaming urban streets.
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TOKYO – Japanese police are investigating another suspected fatal bear attack, a local official told AFP on June 30, as the number of such deaths remains unusually high.
Bear attacks have been on the rise in Japan in recent years, something scientists attribute to a spike in the animals’ population and a declining number of people in rural areas.
Authorities in northern Aomori prefecture said on June 29 that a man found dead on a mountain that day may have been attacked by a bear.
“Police are still investigating the cause” of the man’s death, but bear bite marks had been found on his body, a local official told AFP on June 30, not giving his name in line with common practice in Japan.
Fatal maulings in the last three months have jumped fivefold compared to 2025, according to government data.
Five people have died due to bear attacks since April, according to separate statistics from the environment ministry.
Publicly available ministry data, dating back to the fiscal year ending March 2018, shows that 2026 is the first to see more than two deaths in the period from April to June.
A record 13 people were killed by bears in Japan in 2025, and there has been a jump in encounters as the animals emerge hungry from hibernation.
In the year to March, bear sightings nationwide topped 50,000 – more than double the previous record set two years earlier, according to official data.
Earlier in June, dozens of police officers, hunters and city officials were deployed in the city of Utsunomiya, north of Tokyo, to catch a bear that roamed the streets for four days, forcing mass school closures.
In the Fukushima region in June, a bear atttacked four people at two factories and in a residential area, before escaping hunters. AFP