One week after a bear invaded and refused to leave for over 50 hours, a supermarket in Japan’s Akita City has finally reopened. However, a flood of bear sightings continues to leave residents on edge as the city also deals with anger over the bear’s extermination.
On November 30th, a wild male bear, about one meter long and around 2 years old, made its way into an Itoku supermarket in Akita City, Akita Prefecture, in Japan’s northern Tohoku region. The bear assaulted a 47yo male employee, who later recovered from his injuries.
The creature then proceeded to trash the store as authorities tried to figure out how to remove it. The story made headlines and was the talk of Japanese morning shows for two days.
Authorities eventually euthanized the bear and hauled its body out of the store some 50 hours after it had originally invaded and camped out.
The bear’s killing brought a small wave of protests. Akita City says it received over 100 complaints. Some said the city shouldn’t exterminate wildlife “based on human whims,” with others saying the city should have performed a catch and release.
Japan’s unbearable problem
Many residents, however, say they’re happy to have their supermarket back.
“I come here about four times a week,” said one. “I’m grateful it’s operating again.”
However, since that incident, there have been around three more sightings of bears in the area. That’s raising fears of further trespassing into human territory. Some stores are responding by putting out plastic bottles of water tainted with a smell that bears find irritating.
This isn’t the first instance of bears coming closer to human populations. We wrote last year about a bear who camped out in a tree in front of the Rikuzen-Ochiai Station in Sendai.
Japan’s wild animal problem isn’t limited to bears – boars are also running wild in the nation. As the country’s population ages, there are fewer hunters to cull the naturally occurring wild animal population. Additionally, the country’s accelerating depopulation means that there are more abandoned areas for animals to roam free. That’s allowing them to move steadily closer to Japan’s population centers.
Various towns and prefectures around the country are experimenting with ways to track and cull the wild animal population. In 2022, Yamagata Prefecture experimented with animal-tracking drones.
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Sources
クマ侵入で１週間休業 秋田市のスーパーが営業を再開. NHK News
「クマを殺すな」「山に返せ！」クマ駆除に抗議する人たちに「圧倒的に欠けているもの」の正体…昨今、クマ駆除に“ブチ切れる人”なぜ増えた？Toyo Keizai
「精肉売り場が荒らされていた」スーパーに“約50時間居座り”のクマ捕獲 “猟友会まかせ”の駆除に課題も【Nスタ解説】. TBS News Dig
