“How to survive a brown bear attack.”The video’s subtitles offered this one small hope—but only after having convinced me that as a human, I really didn’t stand a chance.
At least the mandatory instructional video at Shiretoko National Park had subtitles. Without them, I would have only guessed at the ominous Japanese voiceover, listened to the heart-thumping drum music and watched the terrifying scenes of mammoth bears baring their teeth, devouring lifeless deer, chewing up giant salmon and tearing down campers’ tents like Godzilla.
Yes, my first Japanese horror movie was required watching in order to enter one of Japan’s wilder national parks. Viewed in league with about 50 Japanese tourists, I learned that when I did get attacked by a Japanese bear, I should take a defensive position: lying down on my stomach, hands behind my neck and legs spread apart.
. . . but then the clincher: “There is no 100% effective way to stop a bear attack.”
I was very disappointed by this information. After so much violent video instruction about Japan’s largest wildlife, it ended with the hopeless notion that there was no way out—resistance was futile.
The video soon picked up with a happy melody, ending the terror for one final piece of advice: “Avoid bear encounters.”
Avoid bear encounters? Huh? But that is precisely why I traveled to Shiretoko—why I had hopped trains and buses all the way across Hokkaido to one of the remotest corners of Japan—I wanted to encounter bears.
Shiretoko National Park, in Japan's northern island of Hokkaido (AE, NGS)
About 3,000 brown bears remain in Hokkaido, the southern tail of an arched spread of brown bear populations that extend from Japan all the way to Kodiak Island, in Alaska. Despite my previous attempts in many countries, I had never seen a brown bear in the wild before. Neither have most of the Japanese people I have met. Theirs is an urban society and the notion that their country is home to so many bears comes as a bit of a surprise.
This despite an abundance of bear iconography instilled throughout Japan. The ramen restaurant I visited in Sapporo was called Higuma (brown bear). Cartoon illustrations of smiling happy bears adorn billboards and shopping malls; keychain bear charms dangle from cell phones and bracelets and backpacks—and at the Ainu Musuem in Shiraoi, I learned that brown bears were the sacred totem for Hokkaido’s native people.
I wanted very badly to encounter Japan’s wild bears, but nobody else in my group seemed to share my enthusiasm (In Japan, you are always part of a group). Before we had even hit the trail, the tourists were following the video instruction to a T, clapping their hands in the air and squealing “Hai, Hai!”—scaring away all chances of my seeing a bear.
As we entered the tall forest of pine and birch trees I also heard Santa Claus and his reindeer. Brass bells tinkled in the air—the kind of bells that hang from shop doors and let the shopkeeper know somebody has entered. The bells jingled louder and louder and I soon realized why.
Everybody was wearing bells around their necks—bells to scare away the big scary bears out there. They sold the bear bells in the gift shop and it seemed that everyone in my group had purchased one before heading out into the wild. As souvenirs go, these were a kind of pre-emptive strike. I reasoned that you could buy the little bell and have a 100% chance of not seeing a bear, or else not buy the bell and have a tiny chance of actually seeing a bear, which was the point. But everybody in my group was going with the sure thing—my bear tour was nothing more than a walking, talking bell choir.
Having deleted bears from the morning’s plans, our guide was forced to focus on nature’s tamer delights. After ten minutes of walking and bell-ringing, he stopped with great alarm, held out his hand (“Stop!”) then crouched down to pick up a teeny-tiny rotted acorn.
“This is an acorn,” he announced—and the crowd went wild.
“Ooooooh!” They cooed. “Aaaaaah!” They gasped. “An acorn!” They echoed. Then, one by one, they approached the acorn for a closer look.
I looked long and hard at this very rare Japanese acorn but it looked exactly like the other few million acorns I’ve seen in my lifetime. I was unable to coo at it.
Instead I was remembering the beautiful Sitka deer I had seen this morning—three white-spotted does grazing on the misty roadside. Our car had flashed by them and I had begged the driver to stop for some photos, but no—we had to be at the park office on time so that we could watch the instructional video on how to avoid bear encounters.
I was obediently avoiding bear encounters as well as deer encounters and encounters in general. I had only encountered an acorn this morning and as it turned out, several different kinds of edible mushrooms. As we progressed deeper into the forest, our guide pointed out one edible mushroom after another, with great reaction from the bell choir. Bears be damned—this morning it was all about the mushrooms. I succumbed to this reality and took my turn in line to snap a photo of each new mushroom.
Our naturalist guide divided all of nature into two categories: things you could eat and things you couldn’t eat. Most items fell into the former category, including bears. I had noticed the tuna-fish-can-sized cans of bear meat for sale in the gift shop, complete with cutesy dancing teddy bears on the can. Disturbed, I inquired about this, and was informed that this bear meat was only from the mean bears—the ones that got too close to people.
Suddenly—for the bears’ sake—I wanted to avoid all bear encounters. I wanted to ring all the bells I could ring and let the bears know to stay high up in the mountains, far away from us and the “safety” of the national park.
Shiretoko National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage site—a remote peninsula of active volcanoes that sticks out of Hokkaido’s northeast corner. In the native Ainu language, Shiretoko means “Land’s End” and like so many lands’ ends around the world, it remains rather untouched and beautiful.
A crest of volcanoes jutting up from the sea, the Shiretoko peninsula is Japan untamed—where nature has remained natural due solely to difficult geography and the very long, snowy winters. There are few roads or hiking trails—only steep mountains and bears. In this severe natural state, Shiretoko is the opposite of Tokyo.