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Japanese politician threatens to send bears to people, wants Loony Tunes-style anti-bear bombs

Casey Baseel Dec 19, 2024
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Governor doesn’t specify whether his desired bear-fighting drones would drop anvils or some other, less cartoony payload.

It’s common for politicians to make promises about what they’re going to provide their constituents with. Prosperity, Safety. Or, in the case of Norihisa Satake, governor of Japan’s northern Akita Prefecture, his offer/threat to provide people with bears.

Let’s back up a step. Early in the morning on November 30, a bear broke into a supermarket in Akita City, attacking an employee who suffered injuries to the head and face. After the store was evacuated and sealed off, live-capture cage traps were set up on December 1, and the following day the bear was caught, tranquilized, and culled by electric shock.

Since then, the Akita Prefectural government has received 56 phone calls about the incident, with 24 of them expressing disagreement with killing the animal. When the subject of the phone complaints came up during a prefectural assembly budget committee meeting on Tuesday, the governor was asked how he would reply to the complaints, to which the 77-year-old politician answered “If I received a phone call complaining about that, I would go into full intimidation mode, and say to the person ‘Tell me your address, because I’m going to ship a bear to you. If you’re worried about them, I’ll send one to your house.’ Do that, and I think they’ll hang up,” adding “There’s no need to talk with someone who won’t understand.”

▼ The Japanese language has many words for “you,” but Satake chose to go with omae, one of the ruder ones that’s used when talking to someone who’s beneath you.

Bear attacks have become an increasing concern in rural parts of Japan in recent years, with dwindling numbers of hunters coinciding with more frequent attacks. However, it’s also true that when bears aren’t attacking people, they tend to look really cute, and their occasionally playful sides often earn them even more sympathy, especially from residents of communities where wild animal attacks are unlikely (many of the complaint calls the Akita government received came from outside the prefecture, reportedly). The supermarket incident comes just a few months after an Akita public awareness poster about the danger of wild bear encounters drew reactions that the illustrated creature was too cute to properly convey the safety risks they represent.

The question of what to do with wild animals that enter human spaces, especially those that have attacked people, is a complex one, most likely with no single absolutely correct answer. For Satake’s preferred solution, though, he thinks it’d be great if someone developed some new bear-fighting weapons for him. Continuing the ursine discussion at the assembly meeting, Satake spoke on the difficulties of having hunters use rifles to cull bears in populated areas where stray bullets could injure people. “We could do things like have unmanned drones drop objects from above, or have the bears eat small explosive devices that we could detonate remotely once they’re inside the bears’ stomachs.”

It’s unclear whether Satake didn’t also suggest painting pictures of tunnels on brick walls for bears to run into because the committee had to get back to discussing budget matters, or if it’s just that the governor hasn’t watched those Looney Tunes episodes yet.

Source: Yomiuri Shimbun, Sankei Shimbun
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert images: Pakutaso
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