Japan yesterday confirmed the first fatal bear attack of the year after a record 13 deaths last year, with reports pointing to a jump in sightings as the animals emerge hungry from hibernation.
A spate of bear encounters including at hot spring resorts and in supermarkets last year sparked alarm, with the government deploying troops to help trap and hunt the animals.
Record sightings have been reported again this year as the bears emerge from their winter slumber, local media reported.
Photo: Reuters
This year’s first confirmed fatality, reportedly a 55-year-old woman, was discovered on April 21 in Iwate Prefecture, the Japanese Ministry of the Environment said.
Two more sets of human remains were found this week, police said, with media reports drawing a link to bear attacks.
One of the two bodies was discovered elsewhere in the Iwate Prefecture on Thursday, while another was found in a forest in Yamagata Prefecture on Tuesday, police said, without providing the cause of the deaths.
Broadcaster NHK identified one of the two as Chiyoko Kumagai, 69, who went missing after going to a mountain forest to pick edible wild plants.
Police and rescuers on Thursday launched a search in the forest where her car was parked and found her body shortly after 8am, NHK reported.
She reportedly had injuries on her face and head that appeared to have been caused by an animal’s claws.
City officials said local hunters were expected to begin patrolling the area yesterday.
Last year’s record number of fatal attacks was more than double the previous high of six. More than 200 people were also injured.
The animals were seen entering homes, roaming near schools, and rampaging in supermarkets and hot spring resorts almost on a daily basis.
Between April 1, 2025, and March 31 last year more than 14,000 bears were culled, official data showed, almost three times the previous year.
Scientists say that last year’s upsurge was driven by fast-growing numbers of bears, combined with a falling human population, especially in rural areas.
Bears are thriving thanks in part to an abundance of food — including acorns, deer and boars — due to a warming climate, experts say.
The brown bear population has doubled in three decades and now stands at about 12,000, while the number of Asian black bears has climbed on Honshu island, reaching 42,000, a 2025 government report said.
This in turn has led to “overcrowding,” forcing some bears to stray out of the mountains toward areas inhabited by humans, experts say.
Cubs in particular can become less fearful, and develop a taste for farmed produce and common fruits such as persimmon, but poor harvests in 2025 pushed bears to seek food elsewhere.
This year forecasts for nuts and other food are better, but as the animals have emerged from winter hibernation there have also been record numbers of sightings, local media reported.
In Miyagi, Akita, and Fukushima prefectures, the number of sightings last month was about four times that of the previous year, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported.
Brown bears — which can outrun a human — are found only in the main northern island of Hokkaido, while smaller Japanese black bears are common across Japan and are responsible for most of the attacks.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
RSS