Photo/Illutration A bear on a tree near a human settlement in 2010 (Provided by the Ishikawa prefectural government)

AKITA—Multiple people were attacked by bears in Akita Prefecture on Oct. 9, including four who were mauled in a quiet neighborhood of the prefectural capital.

Between 9 and 9:30 that morning, police received calls about bear attacks around Akita’s Araya-Minamihamamachi and Araya-Kotobukimachi districts, near the mouth of the Omonogawa river.

The victims, a woman in her 70s and three men in their 60s, 70s and 80s, were taken to a hospital.

The severity of their injuries was not immediately known. While they all remain conscious, at least one person was bleeding from a head wound, according to police and firefighters.

The bear, which one eyewitness described as about 1 meter long, disappeared after the attacks and is still at large.

Several residents in the area reported encountering a bear of similar description earlier that morning.

Yukiko Sasaki, a homemaker out walking her dog around 6 a.m., found an approximately 1-meter-long bear by the road just 20 or so meters from her home.

“It was busy looking around,” she said. “I never expected to bump into a bear in a residential district like here.”

Shunsai Takayanagi, chief priest of Shoheiji temple, said this is the first time he’s seen a bear in the neighborhood, although he sometimes encounters Japanese serow.

“From now on, we need to take countermeasures against bears even in the center of the city,” he said.

Later that afternoon, a hunter was attacked by another bear in Taiheizan Resort Park in Akita’s Nibetsu district, about 17 kilometers from the area where the four residents were injured.

A bear had been sighted in the park, a forested area surrounded by mountains, before noon that day, prompting police and hunters to go looking for it.

A member of a local hunters’ association in his 70s found three bears, a parent and two cubs, up a tree and fired on the animals.

The adult bear then attacked him, causing non-fatal injuries to the man’s head and hands, before it was fatally shot, along with one of the cubs. The second cub escaped.

There were more bear sightings on Oct. 9 in other parts of the prefecture as well.

In Kazuno, Akita Prefecture, a bear collided with a car on the Tohoku Expressway.

And just over the border in Shizukuishi, Iwate Prefecture, another bear was hit by an Akita Shinkansen bullet train.

On Oct. 9, bears also attacked people in Kanazawa and Toyama along the Sea of Japan.

In Kanazawa, an 84-year-old man was clawed by a bear across his forehead and the right side of his chest while out walking in a park.

In Toyama, a 79-year-old woman was attacked by a bear while in the garden of her home, suffering injuries to her face.

The number of bear attacks nationwide totaled 54 during the four months through July, the largest number since record keeping started in fiscal 2007, according to the Environment Ministry.

Experts are warning that hungry bears could appear near human settlements more often this autumn, since a poor harvest of acorns, a staple of the bears’ diet, is forecast in the Tohoku region, including Akita Prefecture.

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