Checked against Ministry of the Environment and municipal pages on 25 October 2026. Bear activity and local hotline numbers can change by season and by town, so if you’re hiking or staying in an onsen town in Tohoku or Hokkaido, the one thing worth checking before you go is that area’s current bear-sighting information (many towns now post it on an official LINE account or a map page).

Most trips to Japan’s mountains, forest trails, and onsen towns go exactly as planned: no bear in sight, nothing to worry about. That’s still true for the overwhelming majority of visitors. It’s worth knowing, though, that Japan logged a record number of bear sightings and injuries in fiscal 2025, concentrated in Tohoku and parts of Hokkaido, and that the law covering what towns can do about a bear in a residential area changed in September 2025. None of this should change your plans. A couple of habits, covered below, are what actually keep an encounter from becoming a problem — and knowing who to call matters more than the new law does.

The basics haven’t changed: 110 for immediate danger, the local office for a sighting

Across the municipal pages that publish bear guidance — Sendai and Hiroshima’s Saeki ward among them — the routing is consistent. If a bear is an immediate threat right now, call 110 (police) the same way you would for any emergency in Japan. If you’ve spotted a bear or its tracks but there’s no immediate danger, the municipal and prefectural wildlife or forestry desk is the right contact — Saeki ward’s forestry section, for instance, publishes a direct line separate from its police non-emergency number. Hiroshima’s own guidance is blunt about not overthinking the split: when in doubt and danger feels close, call 110 without hesitating.

If you don’t know the local wildlife desk’s number — and as a visitor, you almost certainly won’t — defaulting to 110 is the safe choice. Japanese police dispatch will route a wildlife-only report to the right local office themselves.

What changed in September 2025: towns can now authorize shooting inside residential areas

Japan’s revised Act on the Protection and Control of Wildlife and Hunting Management took effect on September 1, 2025, creating a new category called “emergency shooting” (緊急銃猟). Before this, hunters generally could not fire a gun in a residential area, and police had to personally order a shot if a bear posed immediate danger. Under the revision, a municipal mayor can now authorize a hunter to shoot a bear inside city limits when four conditions are all met: the bear has entered, or is clearly about to enter, a home, public square, or similar inhabited area; preventing harm is urgent; non-lethal capture isn’t realistic given the timeline; and there’s no real risk of a stray round hitting a resident. The Ministry of the Environment published a procedural guideline for municipalities on July 8, 2025, ahead of the law taking effect, and has encouraged every municipality to have its own manual ready.

In practice, adoption has been uneven. Some municipalities have been cautious about delegating the shoot authorization down to on-the-ground staff, and others have run joint drills with police and local hunting associations rather than using the new power right away. For a visitor, the practical upshot is simple: this is a tool for the authorities who respond to a report, not something that changes what you should do in the moment. The number you call is still the same.

What actually prevents a bad encounter

Municipal guidance converges on a short list, and none of it is complicated:

• Check before you go. Many towns in bear country now post sighting maps or run a LINE alert account — checking it before a hike, and rescheduling or rerouting if there’s been a recent sighting nearby, does more than anything else on this list.
• Avoid dawn, dusk, and dense brush near water. Most encounters cluster around those conditions.
• Make noise on purpose. A bell or a radio on the trail gives a bear time to move off before you’re close.
• Turn back at fresh tracks, droppings, or claw marks. Don’t investigate; just leave the area.
• Never leave food or scraps behind. A bear that associates a trail or campsite with human food becomes a repeat, bolder visitor — the single biggest driver of escalating incidents near towns.

If a bear is actually in front of you

Back away slowly without turning your back on it, and don’t run, shout, or throw things — all of that tends to provoke a charge rather than prevent one. Keep distance from any cub; its mother is almost certainly close by and is the real danger. If there’s a tree, car, or other solid object between you and the bear, use it. Municipal guidance is explicit on one widely repeated myth: playing dead has no scientific basis as a defense. If you truly can’t retreat, the fallback position is to drop face-down and clasp your hands behind your neck to protect it — a last resort, not a first move.

How Travel AI Rescue helps

Travel AI Rescue keeps Japan’s emergency numbers — 110 for police, 119 for an ambulance — one tap away with the country code already attached, so a bear encounter that turns into a real injury doesn’t start with searching for a number. It can display Japanese-language cards describing what happened in plain terms, useful if you need to explain a sighting or an injury to someone who doesn’t share your language. And above all, the AI drafts a clear summary of what you saw or what happened, which is useful both in the moment and afterward if you need to document an injury for a travel-insurance claim. Your passport and travel-insurance details stay stored and readable on the device even with zero signal, and there’s offline diagnosis for when the eSIM itself won’t connect. It works differently from a staffed help desk, and it’s with you around the clock — a bridge that gets you to the right number quickly, in the right words. (Deciding whether and how to respond to a bear itself is handled by Japan’s police and local authorities, not by Travel AI Rescue.)

Sources

• Ministry of the Environment, Government of Japan, “緊急銃猟ガイドライン” (Emergency Shooting Guideline), published July 8, 2025. https://www.env.go.jp/nature/choju/effort/effort15/doc/guideline.pdf (accessed 2026-10-25).
• Sendai City, “クマに注意してください（令和7年度）” (Watch Out for Bears, FY2025), municipal bear-safety and contact-number page. https://www.city.sendai.jp/kankyochose/kurashi/shizen/petto/yase/higai/r07kuma.html (accessed 2026-10-25).
• Hiroshima City, Saeki Ward Office, bear-sighting and contact-number page. https://www.city.hiroshima.lg.jp/site/saekiku/156333.html (accessed 2026-10-25).
• The Sakigake Shimpo, reporting on the September 1, 2025 effective date and the four statutory conditions for emergency shooting under the revised Act on the Protection and Control of Wildlife and Hunting Management. https://www.sakigake.jp/news/article/20250831CO0070/ (accessed 2026-10-25).