Really wild: Japan's hidden animal life
The spot is remote enough, and visitors have to hike in, but simian-seeking pilgrims may be surprised to learn that the troop has been fenced in there for more than 40 years and is quite domesticated.
There’s a walkway by the spring for souvenir photos, and postcards for sale in the gift shop. The snow monkeys live in a sort of zoo, which may disappoint those looking for an authentic wildlife experience.
More than monkeys
So that’s the snow monkeys, then; however urban, crowded Japan -- home to 153 mammal species -- does have its wild side. But it generally takes generous reserves of time and patience to see real wild animals on the archipelago.
That said, it’s relatively easy to spot deer and macaques in the mountains west of Tokyo, or sometimes even in the capital itself, such as the macaque that caused pandemonium in Shibuya Station in 2008.
Getting a little closer to nature, hikers trekking in the Okutama hills currently tend to arm themselves with bear bells to ward off the Asiatic black bear (“tsukinowaguma” in Japanese) after nationwide reports of people being attacked.
Rare beauty
About 1.4 meters tall and weighing up to 200 kilos, this bear is easily recognized for the white ring around its neck. You’re more likely to come across one at Ueno Zoo than on a mountain trail, but the bears are still more common than flying squirrels (“musasabi”) and the Japanese serow (“kamoshika”), an endemic antelope-like animal found in the high mountains of Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu.
Back-country skiers and snowboarders stand the best chances of spotting a serow, perched on a mountain cliff.
Few spots in Japan can match the northernmost island of Hokkaido for wildlife opportunities. Jutting into the Sea of Okhotsk, the Shiretoko Peninsula is one of the most unspoiled parts of the country.
The Shiretoko National Park, dubbed a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005, has the highest concentration of Japan’s brown bears (“higuma”), which can grow up to two meters, as well as Ezo deer (“ezo shika”) and northern foxes (“kita kitsune”).
Endangered species
Japan abounds in rarely seen species, such as the northern pika (“nakiusagi”), a small mouse-like rabbit first recorded in Japan in 1928, and the Japanese stoat (“okojo”), a cute, musteline animal also known as an ermine. Sometimes seen in Nagano’s Shiga Kogen and the Murodo alpine plateau in Toyama Prefecture, the stoat turns snow-white in winter to camouflage itself.
The Japanese ptarmigan (“raicho”), which lives in the mountains of central Japan, does the same, going brown-grey in summer and mostly white in winter.
Only discovered in 1965, the wildcat is about the size of a domestic cat and is the rarest cat species in the world -- fewer than 100 are thought to exist.
When I visited Iriomote recently, I saw many road signs warning motorists about the dangers of hitting a wildcat, but not a single specimen along the jungle trails; but an employee of the local ferry company told me she’d seen two in the past two months.
Like the Iriomote cat, the Japanese giant salamander (“osanshouo”) is an endangered “living fossil” that has changed little in millions of years.
Bringing them back
Still, long-gone animals may one day roam the mountains of Japan again. Japan’s two subspecies of wolf are long extinct, but the authorities in Oita City in Kyushu plans to import gray wolves from Russia and China to control deer and boar populations, which have damaged crops.
Supporters of the plan point to Yellowstone National Park, which successfully imported Canadian wolves to stem deer populations in the 1990s. If the plan goes through, the glorious sound of wolf howls may ring out in Japan for the first time in over a century.
I once took an evening stroll outside the city of Tono in Iwate Prefecture, renowned as the setting for the 1912 “Legends of Tono” folktale anthology, and found myself in a pitch-dark forest face to face with a mysterious four-legged animal.
I couldn’t tell if it was a serow, a deer or some unknown mythical beast. It stood its ground, staring at me in the dark. I tried photographing it but only its glowing eyes appeared in the image.
It wasn’t about to budge, so I beat a hasty retreat back to town. To this day I don’t know what it was (I fancy it was a giant tanuki checking me out) but I’ll never forget one of the wildest experiences I’ve had during a walk in the Japanese woods.
