Monkeys and Bears and Boars, Oh My!

Wild things roam the land of the rising sun

From time to time attention-grabbing headlines such as “Radioactive wild boars rampaging around Fukushima nuclear site”, “Parents left seven-year-old son in bear-infested woods as punishment,” and “Warning after four people killed in bear attacks in Japan,” burst the urban bubble of daily life in mega-city Tokyo, and remind me, among other things, that Japan still has a surprising amount of nature scattered among its 3,000-plus islands.

I’ve already written about Japan’s wild places in ‘Ka Chou Fuu Getsu: Flower Bird Wind Moon.’ In fact, the chance to explore such unique and photogenic places as the smoking volcanoes of Kyushu and Hokkaido, the Jurassic Park interior of Iriomote’s rain forest, and the alpine fastness of the main-island Alps, are part of what have kept this Canada-boy in Japan for going on two decades now.

But landscapes aren’t the only wildness in Japan. A whole bestiary of critters fly and swim and stalk and slither through these jungles and mountains: giant, shovel-headed salamanders, “living fossil” wild cats, raccoon dogs, goat-bearded serows, snow-loving monkeys, and perhaps the king of them all, Hokkaido’s higuma grizzly bear. Plus, of course, those radioactive boars…