Overview
- A black bear attacked workers at two factories and an elderly resident in the Sasakino district of Fukushima on Tuesday, injuring four people; security camera footage shows the animal chasing and throwing a worker to the ground.
- Police surrounded a second company compound where the bear was believed to be sheltering and the animal remained uncaptured into Tuesday afternoon while two nearby schools closed and one moved classes online.
- The incident follows a record year in 2025 when Japan recorded more than 230 bear attacks and 13 deaths, and the Environment Ministry now estimates the national bear population at roughly 57,800.
- In March the national government published a management roadmap that calls for systematic culling, tripling municipal bear‑control staff to 2,500 within five years and doubling the number of traps, and local authorities have increased trapping and issued alerts.
- Experts link the rise in encounters to aging and shrinking rural populations with fewer people trained to deter bears, a pattern that raises safety burdens for small communities and could drive wider use of lethal control and more frequent school and business disruptions.