Afterword
This incident is in scale beyond compare in recorded history. It is thought that with a little more knowledge of bears among the farmers and caution on the part of the hunters, this tragedy could have been avoided. This is an endless outlet for regret. It may be unavoidable to bear in mind the circumstances of the day, but the pioneers did not have a sufficient fear of bears, nor did they take necessary precautions against them. No systems were in place, and due to the isolated nature of the frontier, avenues of escape and rescue were slow to come. Things snowballed out of control.* However, if the many lessons learned from this tragedy are ingrained in future generations, the souls of the dead can rest easy.
In my search for the truth, I have talked to as many people as possible, gathered as much documentation, and sought the immediate and long-ranging consequences of the incident. But being that it happened before I was born, and there being many victims, I have felt, more than anything, anxiety over what did or did not happen. Those vain concerns were all alleviated by a single letter. It was from one of the survivors, the one who had survived where nine others died, the one who had hid himself inside the rice. Miyoke Rikizō, who was thirteen at the time.
It was in reference to my first work, The Tomamae Bear Incident: The Greatest Tragedy in the History of Animal Attacks, published in 1965: “I was surprised how much more detailed this is than how I remembered it. My hands were sweating as I read about my mother…” There were other such words of thanks. Having been blessed with those brushstrokes, I felt such gratitude as I had not felt as a historian.
The echoes of this incident from the Hokkaidō interior continue to reverberate all over Japan, as I have said, in the form of novels, radio dramas, and plays. The Asahi Chronicle Weekly compiled a story called “Brown Bear Attack on the Frontier: The Largest-Scale Tragedy in the World” for the February 20th, 2000 edition. Akita Books ran a manga based on my book in the Champion Jack weekly, and a children’s publisher ran a simpler version of The Bear Storm.
People born in the year 1915 are now 85 years old. But this does not make the brown bear incident a fairy-tale.
In August of 1998, to choose a recent example, two Ezo brown bears were seen in Otaru, a city of 160,000 people. They walked about the city, shutting down three elementary and middle schools and plunging the people of Otaru into a panic. One of the bears was driven away, and the other was shot down. Thankfully, no loss of life or property occurred.
Black bears have also been known to make appearances. On June 18th, 2000, a black bear wandered into a suburban Yonezawa home. The meter-long black bear decided to join a mother and her child for dinner. It fled after scarring the mother’s face. Bears are not an uncommon appearance in this area, but nothing of this sort had happened for sixty years.
We must not forget that bears are much closer than we think, and we ought to find a way to coexist with them.
This is the end, but first I must thank my readers, who have brought this book to its incredible third printing. Gratitude is not enough to express what I feel. I want to express my thanks for all who collaborated with me to bring this book to publishing, and my gratitude for the editors.
Kimura Moritake
July 2003