Bear stories keep coming out of Japan, and campgrounds around the country have posted temporary closures. If you've followed the news from abroad — the CBS report, or the U.S. Embassy's wildlife alert — it's easy to assume the mountains are off-limits. But a headline and a statistic are two different things. Read the numbers calmly, turn "where do I check before I book" into a routine, and you can still camp in Japan in 2026. What changes is the prep before you go, not whether you go. I can't field-test a bear encounter, and I won't pretend otherwise. So in this piece I do the two things I can do honestly: verify each public number one at a time, and digest the official protocols into something you can act on. This isn't an article meant to scare you. It's one meant to give you something to do before you leave.

The 2026 numbers — how to read "2.2x"

According to the Ministry of the Environment's preliminary figures, there were 1,759 bear sightings nationwide in April 2026 — about 2.2 times the 800 recorded in the same month a year earlier. Two caveats matter. "Nationwide" here does not include Hokkaido, which doesn't publish sighting counts. Kyushu and Okinawa have no bears and are outside the survey. And these are provisional numbers. So the honest way to read it is: 1,759 sightings nationwide, Hokkaido excluded.

Over the full fiscal year, FY2025 (April 2025 to March 2026) saw 50,801 sightings — a figure revised on June 2; May reports had it at 50,776. That's roughly 2.5 times the previous year. Media have described it as the most since record-keeping began in 2009, though that "record" framing comes from press coverage, not from the Ministry itself.

Human injuries are tracked as a separate statistic, and this one does include Hokkaido. In FY2025, 238 people were hurt and 13 died — surpassing FY2023 (219 injured, 6 deaths) to become the worst on record. October alone accounted for 89 injuries; by prefecture, Akita and Iwate were among the highest. The thing not to get backwards is the difference between the two datasets: the sightings count excludes Hokkaido, while the injury count includes it. The base populations differ, so you can't simply add the two figures together or line them up side by side.

A note for international readers, since this is the part you've likely already seen. If you read the CBS report of November 13, 2025 — "at least 13 deaths and more than 100 injuries since April" — "since April" means the fiscal year, not the calendar year. The same figures are behind the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo's wildlife alert of November 12, 2025. Be precise here: that was a wildlife alert, not a change to the State Department's travel advisory, which remains at Level 1. And JNTO's safety information doesn't cover bears at all — the public data lives with the Ministry of the Environment and with local governments, and Hokkaido Prefecture's site has some English pages.

Where the closures are — most reopen within days to weeks

One ground rule first. Everything below is current as of June 6, and the situation is fluid. From a distance — a news item, a posted notice — it can look like a place is permanently "closed." In practice, most of these closed for a short window and reopened once things settled. Before you say in the present tense that somewhere is "closed," separate out what happened, when, and when it's due to reopen. That's basic fieldcraft.

Suzuyama Forest Recreation Area Campground (Suzuyama Kyuyorin, in Eno, Fuji City, Shizuoka) is on a suspension of operations from June 1 to 30. The trigger was a single sighting early on May 30, when an animal believed to be a bear, roughly 70 cm in body length, was seen on a forest road. The official wording is "suspended," not "closed," and as of June 6 it's still suspended; the city will post about July and beyond on its website. One note on size: the sighted animal was about 70 cm, whereas the 120–145 cm figure on Fuji City's official page is a general range for the species, not the size of this individual. The species itself is unconfirmed — described only as "an animal believed to be a bear" — so don't conflate the two.

Pirika Campground (Kua Plaza Pirika, in Pirika, Imakane Town, Hokkaido) closed temporarily from June 1 to 7, after signs of a bear were found within 1 km early on June 1. Whether it reopened or extended past June 8 isn't clear as of June 6.

Shizen-no-Mori Campground ("Nature Forest," in Shimamatsu, Kitahiroshima City, Hokkaido) sighted a bear about 1 m long on May 20 and closed on the weekends of May 23–24 and May 30–31. By June 6, though, it had reopened — now with an electric fence and the entrances closed overnight (5 p.m. to 10 a.m.). It's an example of reopening with measures in place, not closing for good.

Aoba Park (in Chitose City, Hokkaido) is the short-repeated-closure type. A bear crossed the soccer field on the morning of May 31; the park closed at 11 a.m. and reopened at 2 p.m. It closed again on June 3 and reopened at 7 a.m. on June 4. It's now lifted, with caution continuing. The campground inside is only briefly unusable while the park itself is closed — not a long-term shutdown.

Komosawa Park Auto Campground (in Asari, Gotsu City, Shimane) saw repeated sightings nearby and put the campground off-limits from May 22 to a planned June 5, with a cage installed. It was the campground that was closed, not the whole park. The figures you may see in reports — "25 sightings as of May 22" and "more than double the pace of 2024, itself a recent high year" — refer to sightings across the whole city, not just around this park. Whether it reopened after the planned June 5 deadline isn't something I can confirm as of June 6.

What all five share is the pattern "a bear appeared, so we closed briefly and reopened once it settled" — not "closed for good." These places didn't become off-limits; they simply ask for one extra step — checking conditions — before you go. For the latest, check each facility's official channels and booking pages directly.

Three checks before you book — don't wait for a "national map"

Let me head off one common question. People ask whether Kumadas shows bear sightings for all of Japan — it doesn't. Kumadas (kumadas.net) is an Akita-Prefecture-only system: run by Akita Prefecture, launched July 2024, with latitude/longitude data, covering three animal species, and pushing notifications by email and via Akita's official LINE account. Useful, but Akita only. There is no "national Kumadas." And as far as I can confirm, there is no single, unified, real-time government bear-sighting map for the whole country as of June 2026. What the Ministry of the Environment puts out is a monthly PDF of provisional figures — not a map. So rather than waiting for a national map to appear, the realistic move is to work these three things yourself. One more thing for visitors: most of these resources are Japanese-only, so a translation app helps — though Hokkaido Prefecture does publish some pages in English.

For my own trips, once I've booked I sign up for that municipality's disaster-alert email list before heading out, so a local warning reaches me even when I'm on the road. Even after all three checks, conditions on the ground shift day to day, so the disclaimer "confirm the latest with each facility" isn't one you can drop. Checking once more the night before you leave is about the right cadence. It looks like extra work, but it's no different from a final gear check — fold it into your routine and the burden is small.

  • Check the sighting map — some prefectures have one, some don't. Akita = Kumadas; Nagano = "Kemono Oto 2"; Niigata = the "Niigata Bear Sighting Map." For anywhere else, search "(prefecture name) + bear sighting map" (kuma shutsubotsu map) to find the prefecture's official map. Privately run sites such as kumamap.com don't disclose who operates them, so don't put them on the same footing as official sources.
  • Check the official site of the city, town, or village where you're booking. Look for sighting information and whether they run a disaster-alert email list. The amount of information varies a lot between municipalities, so don't over-rely on one source — check several.
  • Check the facility's own site, the booking platform (Japanese services like Nap / なっぷ), and social media. Look directly for suspension or off-limits notices — and read the date of the notice and whether it mentions a planned reopening.

Food storage and encounter protocol — treat Honshu and Shiretoko separately

I'll resist generalizing here and digest the sources separately, because the advice differs by species: Honshu and most of the country means the Asiatic black bear (tsukinowaguma), while Shiretoko and Hokkaido mean the brown bear (higuma). A different species means a different size, different behavior, and different gear that actually works. The Ministry of the Environment's manual (March 2021, general guidance for bears) lists five prevention basics: carry a bell or radio (but don't over-rely on them), stay alert in bad weather and at dusk, carry bear spray, avoid going alone, and pack out your food scraps. How you move in an encounter depends on the distance to the animal — I've set the steps out below without mixing them, the Asiatic black bear of Honshu following the Ministry's manual and the brown bear of Shiretoko following the Shiretoko Foundation's.

Since bear spray just came up, let me lay out the gear by purpose and price — not as a catalog list, but as who carries what, and why. Bear spray is your last resort at close range, and on many products the range is short, about 5 m. The price runs roughly a few thousand to the low tens of thousands of yen. If you're going into the mountains, carry it — especially solo or on a traverse. At the start of each season I practice with an inert training canister, so my hands know how the safety comes off and which way the nozzle points — you can't read the instructions in the moment — without spending the live can's charge. Keep in mind that misfires, wind, and undergrowth all cut its effect, and check the expiry date at the same time. A hard-sided food container (a sealed, lidded box) is for locking in odors in portable storage, at a price from a few thousand yen up; it suits car campers and families who can carry the weight. A bear canister is a bear-resistant portable food vault for the backcountry, where hanging isn't an option, at a price from roughly the high ten-thousands up to around twenty thousand yen; it's for long-distance hikers staying at designated sites, like the Shiretoko traverse. It's required gear in the U.S. backcountry, but there are only limited situations for it in Japan.

It also helps to know the measures aimed at site managers, because they give you a baseline for how to pitch your own camp: store food indoors, use sealed lidded containers, keep tents, the cooking area, and storage at least 60 m apart (ideally 100 m), and add an electric fence where needed. Even on a drive-in site, I pace out roughly 60 m between my tent and anywhere cooking smells linger. Rather than memorizing the number, walk it off once in your own stride and you won't second-guess it in the field.

If you're heading into Shiretoko, rebuild your food management to brown-bear spec: don't cook or eat inside your tent, cook at least 100 m from it, never store food in the tent, and keep storage at least 100 m away too. The designated sites along the Shiretoko traverse have permanent food lockers, and for anything portable you use a bear-resistant food container (the bear canister above), not the few-thousand-yen odor box. The premises differ from the black bears of Honshu, so in Shiretoko you run this protocol throughout.

Two final points, both especially relevant if you're coming from abroad. First, the "just put it in the car" idea. Storing food in your vehicle is not an official government recommendation — it circulates at the level of news reports — so you can't treat "in the car" as safe. The core of official guidance is indoor storage, sealed containers, and keeping food 60–100 m from your tent. Second, locker availability — and this is where expectations from home can mislead you. Japanese campgrounds are not entirely without food lockers: the National Shiretoko Campground and the designated traverse sites have them, and Konashidaira in Kamikochi built a shared food store after a 2020 incident. But Japan has not adopted the U.S. model — the way Yosemite National Park has a food locker at every site with mandatory storage, and requires a bear canister in the backcountry. In the U.S. it's a requirement; in Japan it's a recommendation, and only at some sites. Plan around that gap, and own your food storage yourself. A spec sheet is not a promise — you only really learn what a piece of gear does once you've pitched it in the wind. The sighting numbers are the same: a single cross-section of a moving situation. Build a calm routine of checks, and you can still camp in Japan in 2026. What changes is the prep, nothing more.

  • [Honshu / black bear — Ministry of the Environment manual] When it's far off: leave quietly and calmly. No shouting, no sudden movements.
  • [Honshu / black bear — Ministry manual] When it's close and threatening or charging: back away slowly while keeping your eyes on it, without turning your back. Don't run.
  • [Honshu / black bear — Ministry manual] When it attacks at close range: cover your head and face with both arms and lie face-down. Black bears are said to often leave after a single strike.
  • [Shiretoko / brown bear — Shiretoko Foundation] At about 100 m: leave quietly and slowly.
  • [Shiretoko / brown bear — Shiretoko Foundation] At 20–50 m: raise both arms and wave slowly, moving so that standing trees stay between you and the bear.
  • [Shiretoko / brown bear — Shiretoko Foundation] Within 20 m: don't run. Raise both arms and talk calmly.
  • [Shiretoko / brown bear — Shiretoko Foundation] If it charges: if it's a bluff, retreat behind an obstacle; if it's serious, use spray or lie face-down to protect your head. A brown bear can run at 60 km/h, so running is exactly what you must not do.