Tokyo Has a Bear Problem

You probably won't find one making its way across Shibuya Crossing or shopping in the Ginza district, but Tokyo has a bear problem and officials may soon let hunters target them for the first time in nearly two decades. Citing a surge in bear sightings and encounters on the capital's wooded fringes, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government is weighing an end to its hunting ban, in place since 2008, to allow limited culling aimed at preventing attacks, the Japan Times reports.

• An incident this week involving a man in his 50s injured after unexpectedly coming upon a bear in a western Tokyo forest park has sharpened concerns. The man fell more than 30 feet down a slope after encountering the bear, NHK reports. In May, a man was injured in a bear attack near a town on the western edge of Tokyo Prefecture.

A recent study carried out by the metropolitan government estimates 120 to 378 bears now roam Tokyo, with roughly one bear for every two square kilometers of forest, and experts say the population appears to be growing. Nationwide, bears have been linked to five deaths since April, after a record 13 fatalities in the fiscal year that started in April 2025.

One bit of potentially calming news: foresters predict an unusually strong beechnut crop this fall in the Tokohu region north of Tokyo, which could keep hungry bears deeper in the mountains. Beechnuts are a big part of the Asian black bear's diet and last year's harvest in the region, which saw the highest number of bear attacks in Japan, was "severely poor," authorities say. (Last month, a bear that shut down almost 100 schools in a city 80 miles north of Tokyo was captured.)