By TOSHIYUKI TAKEYA/ Staff Writer
May 11, 2018 at 10:30 JST
Editor's note: This is part of a series of videos offering an up-close perspective on the animal kingdom. A special 360-degree video camera system was set up in zoos and other facilities to show how the animals view their world as they interact.
Also visit our special 360-DEGREE LIVES page (http://t.asahi.com/360lives), where you can watch all the previous videos.
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“Stand up. Bow.”
The “instructor” greeted his obedient students at the beginning of a class.
It is a typical scene at schools across Japan. But this classroom in Nikko, Tochigi Prefecture, is quite different and unique: the students are monkeys.
Nikko Saru Gundan marked its third anniversary on April 29. The group performances of “monkeys’ school” and “monkeys’ police station” are popular acts at the theme park.
One day in April, six Japanese macaques were seen attending a class on a stage with small desks and chairs.
“What is the sum of two plus three?” the handler asked the monkeys during an arithmetic class, to which a few of them raised their hands.
When Chibijiro raised its hand when its name was called, the handler said: “Five. Good, it’s correct!”
There was also an ethics class during which the students must help their pupil playing a role of an old woman who has fallen to the ground. While a monkey took its hand to help it stand up, another ape was seen with a smartphone in its hand as if it were tweeting a message on Twitter.
While the monkeys did a great job in playing humans, their attitudes drastically changed when they saw their favorite food and became restless at the sight of a banana.
“I had been performing with a monkey on a one-on-one basis, but I had to do group performances here and it was really challenging,” said famed monkey handler Taro Murasaki, 57. “But now, it is fun to bring out the individuality of each monkey.”
He is enthusiastic about training the monkeys to perform acts inspired by various sports ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.
The theme park’s predecessor, which had been the home turf for the human/monkey comedy troupe Nikko Saru Gundan (monkey army), opened in 1992. The park had once been a huge hit here, but it was closed in late 2013 due to a lack of handlers, aging apes and effects of the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.
Concerned about the possibility of the traditional monkey performances dying out, Murasaki took over the operation and opened this new park in April 2015.
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