Beyond the bear bell

Risk management tools for Hyakumeizan fans, with a hint from Italy

17 March: “That’ll be bear scat,” she said pointing at the ground next to my boots. I expressed surprise: after all, we weren’t even on a mountain hike. This was more like a spring morning stroll on a low hill bordering farmland on the edge of the Sensei's hometown. Classic satoyama territory, in fact.

Smoking "fun"? Suspected bear scat from a hill near us.

We do seem to be hearing and seeing more of the ursine types. A few years ago, a cub ran across our trail on Genanpo. We were serenaded from a thicket on Hakusan. And we saw a pawprint in the snow on Honoke, earlier this year. Such personal encounters tend to support what statistics and news reports are suggesting: Honshu’s bear population has come roaring back.

Before you hit up Rakuten for a can of bear spray – more on that later – it’s worth checking whether you are travelling in bear country at all. This information sheet from the Toyota City authorities helps you do so. Bear scat comes in several different forms, it explains, depending on the creature's diet:

Bear essentials: how to recognise their scat and pawprints.
Courtesy of the Toyota City bear information sheet.

Bears also announce themselves through their pawprints, scratches on tree trunks and the so-called nests of tangled branches that they make while gathering nuts or fruit. To prevent confusion, the information sheet also shows the droppings, hoofprints or scratches left by other kinds of forest denizen such as deer and wild boar.

Then, after taking a deep breath, it would be wise to read Emma Goto’s admirably cool and collected risk assessment over on her blog. Despite the rising number of reported bear encounters, including fatal ones, she points out, “the probability of you actually being attacked by a bear on the trail is still statistically very, very low.”

That may be, but ardent Hyakumeizan baggers can’t confine themselves to the mountains of Shikoku, where bears are few, or Kyushu, where none have been sighted for years. In other regions, the Hyakumeizan mountains might be less frequented by bears, as Emma suggests. But this would hold true only for the routes most frequented by hikers.

Bear witness: Kumamap shows you where the heat is.

Fortunately, it’s possible to estimate the risk of encountering a bear on any specific Hyakumeizan peak. This is thanks to the work of Kumamap, who run a database that aggregates reports of bear encounters all over Japan. Helpfully, they have already parsed that data to rank the One Hundred Mountains by bear safety.

The results, the authors say, are surprising – and they certainly surprised me. None of the top three mountains are in Akita or Iwate, the prefectures most in the news for bear attacks. Rather, they are Norikura in Gifu, where a skyline road brings thousands of day trippers straight into bear habitat, Bandai in Fukushima, where trails and ski resorts push deep into bear territories, and Yake-dake in the Northern Alps.

Into the danger zone? Ski-mountaineers on Norikura.

Taking a regional view, there are more encounters in the Chubu and Kanto than in Tohoku. And Hokkaido might not be as dangerous as you may have thought, despite that horrifying incident on Rausu. But you'd better study Kumamap’s full analysis for yourself. It’s required reading for any Hyakumeizan fan.

So how should hikers protect themselves? The usual nostrums include walking in a group, or if hiking solo, choosing a trail with other people on it. There are established guidelines for what to do if you actually see a bear. And, of course, most hikers carry a bear bell, and some pack bear spray too.

Some doubt whether these devices really work. Project Hyakumeizan feels unqualified to join this debate, having never actually set eyes on a bear in Japan. But like the Sensei, who has several times been within nodding distance of one, he does carry a bell. 

Bear belles: a chime in time saves nine ...

And there’s no harm in referring readers to the advice of an expert, as quoted in the Japan Times:

I carry bear spray and three bear bells, [says Muto Shun, a government geologist who ranges through the mountains of Iwate]. My bear spray is set at my right waist, where I can reach it with my right hand immediately. When walking through bushy places or moving at a fast pace, I have my bear spray out from the holster and in my hand in case of close encounters. My bear bells are placed on both sides of my body so that I can be heard well from all directions.

Vested wisdom: Walk, don't run, through her territory....

Can other countries add to this stock of precautionary wisdom? Italy reintroduced the brown bear into its Apennines mountain range during the 2000s. As this population numbers just a hundred or so individuals, bear encounters are far fewer than in Honshu. Nevertheless, since 2014, bears have attacked people eight times.

Six of these cases involved a female bear with yearling cubs, and in one case a female bear killed the victim. It may be that this bear – the infamous JJ4 – was unusually aggressive. It may also be significant that the victim was a trail runner.

The circumstances of the Italian tragedy recall the – fortunately non-fatal – attack that befell Yamanoi Yasushi near Tokyo in 2011. But let Sartaj Ghuman tell the story, as he masterfully does in his profile of the elite climber published in Alpinist 62:

Nine years ago, Yamanoi-san was running in the forested hills near his house. He had to watch where he put his feet on the narrow, rocky path, and he almost bumped into the bear before he saw her. And then he noticed the cub that she was hiding behind her. He put his arm up instinctively, and the bear’s teeth bore down into his flesh. With a jerk of her massive head, she sent him flying through the air. He landed in some brambles, and before he knew it, the bear was upon him again. This time she bit into his face. Blood streamed. It took him about forty minutes to crawl down the mountain to his house, and then his neighbor called for an ambulance…

Statistically insignificant as they may be, these two incidents do suggest one more point of practical etiquette when visiting the realm of the mountain monarchs. So by all means know your bear signs, refer to Kumamap, and let them know you’re coming.

And then, above all, walk – don’t run – through their territory.

Appendix: "There's no point in worrying at all"

Alan Booth on the predictability of Hokkaido’s bears

The man who told me about bears had lived on the shore of the lake for thirty years. He had been a prisoner of the Russians on Sakhalin, and the Russians had told him that he would never go home again. In the end they had released him after two years, and he had gone back to Sapporo where he had found no one he knew, he said, and no way of making a living. So he had settled here on the shore of Lake Shikotsu, a wiry brown-faced hermit, and an amiable one…

Bears, he said, are the most predictable of animals – far more predictable than human beings, whom he confessed he had not much interest in and whom he thought overrated as a species.

“There are dozens of bears in the hills around the lake. They come down almost daily to the road over there."

He pointed at the road I had just walked along, and I said "Oh really?" with a great deal of nonchalance.

"You want to whistle or sing when you walk," he said, "or have a bell and ring it from time to time, or bang a stick. They won't come near you unless they’re really hungry, and then it's only your food they'll want.”

I nodded pleasantly, having no food.

“If you turn a corner and you see a bear and it’s thirty metres away, you’ve no need to worry. The bear will run away. It’ll be far more frightened than you are.”

“Well, well!”, I said, and sipped my tea.

“If you turn a corner and you see a bear, say, twenty metres away, there’s still a good chance it won’t bother you. It’ll roar a bit just to let you know it’s there, but if you stand quite still, it’ll probably get bored and go back into the forest.”

“Mm”, I said, giving the forest a very uncursory glance.

“And then, of course, if you turn a corner and you see a bear and it’s five or ten metres away from you…”

“Then, presumably, I should start to worry,” I said, chuckling my most British chuckle.

“Not really,” he said. “You’ve no need to worry. Bears are the most predictable of animals. If it’s five metres away it’ll certainly kill you. There’s no point in worrying at all.”

References

From Alan Booth, The Roads to Sata: A 2,000-mile Walk through Japan, Penguin Travel Library, 1987. Image courtesy of ChatGPT.