Akita Governor to Ask for SDF to Cull Bears as Attacks Continue to Rise

The Yomiuri Shimbun

14:01 JST, October 27, 2025

Akita Gov. Kenta Suzuki indicated on Sunday he would ask the Defense Ministry to dispatch the Self-Defense Forces to cull bears locally, as bear attacks on residents, some of them fatal, have continued to stack up in Akita Prefecture.

The governor said he is arranging a visit to the ministry that could come as early as this week.

In a post on his Instagram account, he said that the bear attacks “are no longer in a range that can be handled by the prefectural and municipal governments. The level of fatigue among local officials is near a limit.”

Suzuki noted that there is no law outlining the dispatch of the SDF for culling bears. On his social media post, he added that the SDF dispatch would not be achieved as easily as for disaster rescues.

The prefecture has been unable to stanch the rise in bear attacks, putting pressure on resident’s daily lives.

On Sunday, an 85-year-old farmer who was washing daikon radishes on the grounds of her house in Kazuno was attacked from behind by a bear, which was about 1.2 meters long, and she suffered a head injury.

It marked the third consecutive day that someone was harmed in a bear attack in the prefecture.

According to the Akita prefectural police, 54 people had been killed or injured by bears this year as of Sunday, much higher than the total of 11 last year.

This year’s attacks have caused the deaths of a 73-year-old woman living in a home for disabled people in Kita-Akita and of a 38-year-old man in Higashi-Naruse.

According to the prefectural government, there were 8,044 bear sightings from January to Sunday this year, about six times more than the whole of last year.

September saw 857 sightings, but that exploded to 4,154 sightings in October.

In Akita City’s Senshu Park, about 600 meters from Akita Station, locals repeatedly spotted a roughly 1-meter-long bear on Saturday and Sunday, which caused the city government to block people from entering the park.

“It’s terrifying that a bear has shown up in the park right by the station,” said a 16-year-old who passed near the park on the way home from a school club activity.

In Nanto, Toyama Prefecture, on Sunday, a 75-year-old woman was bitten on her right arm and the right side of her head by a bear around 10:15 a.m. while she was harvesting persimmons at her relative’s house.

The local authorities said her wounds were not life-threatening.