| 1 | The bear closes in |
Japan is not normally famous for bears, but 106 years ago, one of the most nightmarish brown bear incidents of all time took place on the northern island of Hokkaido. For 1 month in late 1915, a small Japanese settlement was locked in a bubble away from the outside world where nothing existed apart terrified villagers and a bloodthirsty brown bear somewhere in the woods.
The area had recently been settled, and wild animals were still abundant. So members of the Ikeda household weren’t unduly worried in mid-November when a bear turned up at their house 11 kilometres from the coast and spooked their horse. This was a member of the Ussuri brown bear subspecies, the only subspecies in Japan, and it left the homestead after stealing some recently harvested corn.
But on November 20th 1915, the bear came back for more, using its amazing memory for food sources. It was now what modern day rangers would call a “nuisance bear”. Fearing for his horse, the head of the Ikeda household recruited his second son Kametarō and a pair of winter hunters who the Japanese called Matagi. Sure enough, the bear was persistent and reappeared on the homestead 10 days later. The hunters aimed, and one of their shots was true, but the bullet wasn’t enough to kill the bear. It fled, and following its paw prints in the snow, they seemed to lead to Mount Onishika. Bloodstains proved that it was wounded, but a snowstorm forced the posse back.
| 2 | The nightmare begins |
These villagers weren’t fools. They were well aware that the bear would return to raid human settlements, and on December 9th 1915, at 10:30m, their nightmares manifested in reality. Abe Mayu was inside the Ota home, guarding a baby called Hasumi Mikio while her husband was working on the farm. Suddenly, she was face to face with a brown bear. The bear attacked baby Hasumi and killed him. Mayu fought back by throwing pieces of firewood while looking for an escape, but it wasn’t enough. The bear knocked her over, mauled her, and dragged her into the woods, whether alive or already dead – nobody knows.
Many details of the Sankebetsu bear incident have blurred over the years, but it’s said that the Ota house kitchen resembled a slaughterhouse, filled with pools of blood. A search party of 30 men was organised. Meanwhile, Miyoke Yasutarō, head of the Miyoke household, left the village on an errand. The search party entered the woods, and there was no long search – they found the bloodthirsty bear after 150 metres of travel. 5 men unloaded their rifles, and one managed an accurate shot, enraging the bear, but forcing it to flee. The bullet wound wasn’t to the skull, and it was clear that the bear would survive.
| 3 | The search for Ota’s body |
Mayu’s body was quickly discovered, following the trail from a bloodstained Sakhalin fir tree. All that remained was her head and legs. It was clear that the brown bear had stashed the corpse as a future meal, to hide it from rival scavengers.
With the bear now having a taste for human flesh, the village was in a state of near panic, and the settlers stepped up their defences. Legions of armed men stood guard at the Ota household, and another 50 gathered at the neighbouring Miyakae household 300 metres away, in case the bear’s superior sense of smell drew it there. As predicted, the ferocious bear appeared at 8pm at the Ota household. One man took a shot, but missed, and the bear seemed to sense the situation, as it fled into the woods.
Then the most costly mistake happened. Hearing about the recent action while they were having dinner, the 50 guards at the Miouke household stood up and departed for the Ota household with their guns raised, leaving just one guard in place. Women and children of the settlement had gathered inside by the hearth fire, and Miyouke’s wife Yayo was cooking dinner with her fourth son Umekichi strapped to her back. Then she noticed a rumbling sound outside.
| 4 | The Miyakae household massacre |
Without warning, the bear exploded through a window and into the heart of the house, having fled the Ota household and sniffed out another food supply. In the panic, the cookpot overturned and doused the fire, and somehow, the oil lamp went out too. The house was plunged into darkness.
Yayo tried to flee, but tripped up when her second son Yūjirō tried to hang onto her legs. The bear turned its attention to her fourth son Umekicki, who was quickly bitten by its massive jaw. The sole remaining guard was Odo, who unwittingly saved Yayo when he ran for the door, attracting the bear’s attention. He received a claw to the back after attempting to hide behind some furniture.
Meanwhile, Yayo scooped up her second and fourth sons and fled, but her third son Kinzō couldn’t escape. The bear mauled him to death, before killing Haruyoshi, third son of the Saito family, and biting the 3rd Saito son Iwao.
The pregnant wife of Saitō Ishigorō had failed to escape, and according to village eyewitnesses, she pled with the gigantic bear to attack her head and not her belly. The bear refused to listen.
| 5 | The bear slips away |
Outside, Yayo and her sons met the mob of guardsmen, who had returned to the Miyouke homestead after realising that the bear was nowhere near the river they were following. She told them about the brutal attack inside, seriously injured herself.
Believing everyone to be dead, one of the guards proposed setting the whole house alight and finishing the bear off for good, but Yayo forbade this. The sounds of the bear’s rampage could still be heard, but there was no proof that everyone inside was dead, including Yayo’s family.
Instead, one group of rangers sneaked round the house and made a loud racket to draw out the bear, while the other 10 waited with their rifles. Right on schedule, the bear poked its head out the front door, but the guards’ positioning was all wrong. The men at the back were bunched up, and one guard stood directly in front of them, blocking their line of fire.
In the melee of shouting and reorganisation, the bear managed to slip way into the blackness of the night. The men lit fires and finally entered the home, to a scene of chaos and death. Two children called Rikizō and Hisano were found injured but alive, and taken to the Tsuji family house by the river to recover, where they ultimately survived.
| 6 | Heikichi the bear hunter |
Not far away, Miyouke Yasutarō had no idea of the events that were unfolding in his house, but he knew that the bear was on the loose.
And so, Miyouke entered the house of legendary bear hunter Yamamoto Heikichi. This man’s exploits were famous throughout the settlements, and he told Miyouke that the bear was almost certainly Kesagake, meaning “the diagonal slash from the shoulder”, a monster which had mauled three women already. The villagers would have a deadly task on their hands.
But when Miyouke asked for his help in slaying the bloodthirsty bear, Heikichi shook his head and said that those days were gone. He had retired from bear hunting. Plus, he had pawned all his hunting equipment for money to buy alcohol! He refused the pleas of Miyouke to come out of retirement for one last hurrah.
The dejected Miyouke was forced to stay overnight in Onishika (modern day Obirachō). By December 11th, he and Saitō Ishigorō had returned to Sankebetsu. Upon reaching the village hall, they were told the horrific news about their sons and Ishigorō’s pregnant wife. Worse, their faint hopes that the bear had also died were dashed. The village was in a grimmer situation than when they’d left.
| 7 | The armed posse waits |
That night, Miyouke and Ishigorō joined a new squad of men. They waited at Miyouke’s household, but on the night of December 11th, the bear was not sighted. By December 12th, the Hokkaido government office had learned of the marauding bear, and requested a crack sniper squad to be organised. The police department of Habora (a town which still exists) duly summoned experienced gunmen, and the guns themselves, from surrounding towns. The sniper squad headed to Semtes, and when Miyouke saw them approach the village, he was surprised to find that Heichiki was among them. The legendary bear hunter had apparently wrestled with his conscious and gone back on his decision.
Controversially, the snipers believed that the bear would return to collect its kill, and proposed moving the corpses back into the Miyouke household as deliberate bait for the bear. The Miyouke, Saito and Oto families were outraged, but the plan did go ahead. As the snipers waited patiently in the blackness of night, they saw a dark black shape appear at the front door, as though inspecting the inside of the house. But the bear ran to the forest before the snipers could shoot, and it didn’t reappear on the night of December 12th.
| 8 | Into the frozen woods |
As December 13th dawned, the team had a realisation: they’d chosen the wrong house! The Oto house was found ransacked. The bear had clearly noticed the ample food supplies during its attack on December 10th, as the Oto family’s winter stockpile was destroyed. The bear had also ransacked 8 other houses without anyone noticing. Miraculously, nobody else was killed.
The hunting party had now swelled to 60 men, and they decided to take the fight to the bear in its mountain habitat. As they set out, Chief Inspector Suga of the Habora police was said to have cheered them on for motivation. Into the woods they went, and the bear’s territory seemed to be larger than ever now, stretching downstream to the frozen river. Legend states that Superintendent Suga decided to build an “ice bridge” as a last line of defence. He positioned snipers on his side of the river and waited.
That night, a dark shape appeared on the opposite side of the shore near the tree stumps. Cautiously, Suga called out to it, and when he received no response, he ordered his men to open fire. The shape vanished amid a volley of bullets, and the men were initially disappointed, but Suga swore that he had heard a yelp or grunt. He was right – the next morning, they crossed the ice bridge and found a paw print intermingled with blood stains.
| 9 | The final duel |
The bear had taken yet another bullet – could it have staggered off, laid down and died somewhere? Nobody found a corpse in the woods near the river, and the hunt was back on.
It was now December 14th. Nobody knew it, but the final confrontation with the bloodthirsty bear of Sankebetsu would take place later that day.
Because all signs suggested that snowstorms were about to sweep in, the 60 strong hunting squad decided to press ahead and kill the bear while they could. Alongside a guide called Ikeda Kamejirō, bear hunter Yamamoto Heichiki volunteered to set out alone. He was familiar with Kesgake’s behaviour, and sure enough, the duo found the bear resting by an old Japanese oak tree.
Heichiki approached to within 20 metres. Then, he did what he’d sworn to never do again. He raised his gun, and fired a single bullet through the bear’s heart. He fired a second shot into the bear’s head, and after at least 9 kills, Kesagake the bear was finally defeated. It slumped to the ground, and when measured, it weighed 749 pounds and stood 2.7 metres tall, which would be beyond the upper range of a male Yellowstone grizzly. During the necropsy, body parts of the victims were found in its stomach. It was the final confirmation that the nightmare was over.
| 10 | Aftermath |
Kesagake the bloodthirsty bear of Sankebetsu was gone, but his legacy lingered for decades to come. His fur and skull were kept, but were somehow lost over the decades, maybe to reappear one day.
Close by lies the Sankebetsu Brown Bear Incident Reconstruction Location, featuring a replica house with early 1900s architecture, and a plaque explaining the story. Most importantly, there is a dark brown, life sized reconstruction of Kesagake himself, looming over a wooden fence and just waiting to come to life if a bolt of lightning struck him. The teeth are brutally sharp, the eyes are yellow, and the sculpture does justice to his bloodthirsty nature – he’s definitely no Yogi bear.
3 years later, the second son of Yayo, Umekichi, died of injuries from the head bite. His mother managed to recover, as did Odo the guard, but 1 year later, he fell into a river and died, hinting at a curse. Meanwhile, 7 year old Ōkawa Haruyoshi, son of the village mayor, vowed to kill 10 bears for every 1 villager the bear had massacred. At the age of 62, he had killed 102 bears, and hung up his rifle like Heichiki before him.
The bear was gone, but it was too late for the village. People drifted away until it was left as a shell, a haunted ghost town. The nearby Hokkaidō Road 1049 became known as bear road, but the cute, smiling bear illustrations found all along it are only a sinister hint as to what really happened.
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