17| The Kasagake: The worst Bear Attack in Japanese History
Folklore. Generation after generation repeating stories their parents told them, who’s parents told them and who’s parents told them. Memories and history are passed down and sometimes those stories root fear into the minds of children and they never learn how to pull up the plant.
Tradition, beliefs, messages, and stories are passed within a community and when these tales become too weird, the community gets questioned for them. “How weird”, a part of the world will think, while those on the other side echo the sentiment back.
Sometimes these myths and legends hold details so impossible we all know them to be dramatized, but the tellers ring the message true.
And then sometimes, you have the Ussuri. The unexpected. Smart and cunning, and acting with a vengeance. And a century later, the curiosity hold strong, was this Ussuri the myth? Or the real one? And is this the worst animal attack to ever occur on Japanese soil!?
Welcome back to tragedy with a view.
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I’m prefacing this episode with a really big keep in mind that every source I found on this story had slight variations. I’m not going to be like “oh this is folklore” but I’m also not going to say it’s not.
The Ussuri is a species of brown bear that originated on Honshu, which is the Main island of the 4 of japan, but they would be found all over Japan, China, Russia and Korea. They were driven to extinction in Japan sometime in the range of 15,000 years ago. The ussuri can still be found in Russia however only about 1,000 animals make up the population. These bears rival the size of Kodiak grizzlies, tipping the scales at 1,200 to 1,500 lbs or 545 to 680 kg and are generally more aggressive than the brown bears found in North America. And in case you don’t know, brown bear is another name for grizzlies.
While Japan drove the species to localized extinction centuries ago, the population has come back and has been documented on the islands for hundred of years. The ussuri is a dark brown or black in color and in an effort to help the species, 4 of these bears are now being housed at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park in the United Kingdom after a Japanese Cultural Museum requested help due to their cages being outdated and Japanese’s zoos were unable to take the bears in. The cages the bears had been in were tiny and the bears had lived their for their entire 27 years.
USsuri bears can live to be 35, and bears are some of the slowest reproducing mammals, as sows tend to keep their cubs with them for 2-3 years, and she will not mate or have more cubs during that time.
Bears typically begin to enter hibernation in early November, and then leave their dens sometime in March, or if it’s a sow with cubs she’s normally in her den until April.
However, this year in particular, Russia is experiencing some really abnormally high temperatures so bears are walking around “half asleep”.
Bears hibernation pattern is based on location and it is due to the normal availability of their food.
Bears do not enter a true hibernation, as they are active in their dens and sometimes leave their dens in the winter, but their metabolic rate has slowed so much that they seem to be in a stupor. This is called torpor.
Additionally, bears have a 2-3 week period after leaving the den where they’re not in torpor but also not fully functioning yet. And this is called walking hibernation.
Historically, Japan and bears do not get along. In the early 1900’s - think like 400-500 year span, 141 people were killed from bear attacks and 300 more injuries from bears were reported. Since 1962, 86 attacks have been reported with 33 of those being fatal.
The town of Sankebetsu Rokusen Sawa sits 18 miles off the west cost of the Japanese island Hokkaido. This was a newly settled town so they frequently encountered wildlife and regularly had to adjust due to run ins with predatory animals.
On November 20, 1915 the Ikeda family was having problems with a large male bear getting too close for comfort. It was thought that he had woken too early from hibernation and had started to make a habit of eating their corn and the feed for their horses, so Mr Ikeda got sick of this, and hired two matagi, who are specialists in killing bears, to sit with himself and his son to wait for this bear to return and kill it.
10 days later, on November 30th, when the bear returned, the 4 men opened fire on it and wounded the bear before it took off. The 4 men followed the Blood splatter in the snow, but after a snow storm rolled in, they were forced to turn back without confirmation that they had killed the bear.
Their hopes were that the bear would now be scared, if it survived, and would not return.
On December 9th, Abe Mayu Ota was baby sitting Hasumi Mikio, an infant when the bear entered her home. The bear first attacked the baby, killing it, and then turned its sights on Mayu. Defending herself with anything possible, Mayu threw firewood and other objects, but the bear was too cunning. It overpowered her, and then drug her out of the home and into the woods. When her husband returned home from working on the farm, he found the house in shambles, blood all over the floor, their baby laying limply with its skull crushed, and Mayu was no where to be found.
The next morning, 30 men gathered to hunt this bear down and search for what they were certain would be mayu’s body. It didn’t take them long, as from the back of their farm, then men could see the bear at the edge of the woods. 5 shots at the bear later, the bear took off and the men converged on the area. There, they found the telltale sign that at least one of their bullets had hit the bear, by the blood splatter on the snow.
And, worse, was what was left of Mayu’s body. The bear had nearly completely consumed her, leaving only her legs and head behind.
One villager had heard of a man named Yamamoto Heikichi who was considered the king of bear hunting and tracking. Yamamoto, unfortunately was uninterested in helping because he was a suffering alcoholic and in order to pay for alcohol, he sold his gun and refused to help hunt down the bear.
This attack sparked fear in the village as they thought that once an animal had tasted human blood then they would start to crave it, so a nightly watch was set up at the Ota farm.
The following night, the bear returned, and with it, panic. The villagers who were armed at the ota farm saw its shadows moving in the brush. In the panic and confusion, only one man shot off his gun, and then armed guards at the home of Miyouke Yasutaro took off in that direction to help bring the bear down.
Inside of the Yasutaro home was Yayo Yasutaro, her three sons, Take Saito, 4 other children, and a single armed guard.
Quiet settled on the home and the sounds from the rush of the guards leaving the home got farther away. Then, through a window, yayo saw the bear, she didn’t have time to react before it smashed through the window and entered her home.
In the chaos, the only two lights, the flames lighting the cooking stove and an oil lamp were tipped over and put out. The home plummeted into darkness and Yayo, with one son on her back, and another clinging to her leg tried to run with them, but she tripped. The bear attacked them, biting Yayo and the son she had on her back, but the quickly turned his attention to the guard allowing Yayo and one son, both sons to escape to the streets.
As the bear angled toward the guard, Yayo’s third son was attacked and killed. The guard, who tried to hide behind furniture was mauled, and then the bear turned toward the pregnant woman. She begged him not to kill her baby, to not touch her belly as she was backed into a corner. Surprisingly, her belly was untouched, however the bear killed and consumed parts of her. Left inside the home were 2 other children.
Meanwhile, Yayo found the guards in the street and told them what was happening in her home, where they started to plot how to kill the bear before it killed them.
The first idea they had was to set the house on fire, but this would then kill anyone who was left alive inside. Then, they split up. 10 guards went around the the front of the home, and the rest went to the back. The group in the back then started banging on the home and shouting, to drive the bear out the front.
And to their joy, it worked. The bear came barreling out the front door, but the 10 guards, trying in vein to hunker down and hide to wait for the bear, were too close together when they stood and some blocked the sight of others. While a few got shots off, none hit the bear and it escaped to attack another day.
They then entered the home to see the true damage done, and found the pregnant woman was the wife of the one and only Yamamoto. Their baby, however, was alive, though for only a short time.
After a few days of relative peace, the neighboring town of Hoboro sent a team of 6 snipers to assist in the killing of this bear. Some had began to beleive it was what is known as the Kesagake, which was responsible for killing multiple others, and loosely translates to “the diagonal slash from the shoulder”. It is said that the spirit of this bear was evil and a demon.
In the group of snipers was none other than Yamamoto.
First, they tried waiting for the bear, but after several days of it refusing to come into the village again, they started acting on other plans.
Next, they used the body of a victim to try to lure the bear out of the woods. And again, after several days this plan also failed.
Finally, 60 men gathered on the night of December 13, armed with guns and guard dogs, and walked into the woods, and from a bridge, they saw the bear. Opening fire, the bear, again, was shot but escaped.
The next morning, Yamamoto and 2 others went back to the bridge and found blood splatter from the bullet that hit the bear the night before. The trio followed the blood, and found it resting beneath an oak tree.
Quietly, on his own, Yamamoto moved forward, 50 yards away, closed down to 40, then 30, and finally 20. He shouldered his gun and quickly shot off two rounds. One struck the bear in the heart and the other in the head.
The bear, was about 9 feet tall or 2.25 meters and only weight about 750 lbs or 340 kg.
Not long after this, everyone abandoned the town.
3 years after the attacks, the child who was Yayo’s back died due to the complications he suffered from his injuries left by the bear.
Today, there is a shrine at the home of the Ota’s which includes a reenactment of the bear attacking the home with a statue of Kesagake.
Japanese folklore is famous for bears being both guardians and demons of the forests, and some beliefs stated that bears were half human and were to be worshiped. The bear in this incident was believed to be so smart and cunning that he had the ability to mimic humans.
The information presented in multiple articles implied that the bear knew there were armed guards at the second home he attacked, so he purposefully lured them out of the home so he could attack it.
And to answer the question from the intro, this is the worst animal attack to have ever been recorded in Japan.
Sources:
https://historyofjapan.co.uk/wiki/honshu/
https://bear.org/5-stages-of-activity-and-hibernation/
https://darktales.blog/2019/09/09/the-sankebetsu-brown-bear-incident/
http://outsiderjapan.pbworks.com/w/page/25226868/Sankebetsu%20Brown%20Bear%20Incident
https://cryptidantiquarian.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/the-sankebetsu-bear-attack/
