In one region, the number of climbers has even decreased by an unbearable 34 percent since 2024.

As bears have been increasingly encroaching on human spaces around Japan in recent years, the government has ramped up safety and awareness efforts and some entities have been going to extreme lengths to keep them away. The constant buzz of bear encounters on the news is why 熊 (“bear”) was even chosen as Japan’s 2025 Kanji of the Year. It seems that people themselves are also wanting to be cautious by staying away from mountainous areas, as data collected by behavioral big data platform Beacon Bank may suggest.

Beacon Bank tracked and compared trends in human movement patterns on Japan’s 100 Famous Mountains, a widely cited list compiled by a Japanese mountaineer in 1964, during the timeframe between April through June of 2024, 2025, and 2026 on national, regional, and individual mountain levels. The spring season was selected for comparison because bears are highly active then after awakening from hibernation to eat the plentiful mountain plants. To draw its conclusions, Beacon Bank analyzed the number of climbers who went within a 500-meter (547-yard) radius of a mountain’s summit using smartphone GPS location data.

▼ Bear warning sign on Mt. Bandai in Fukushima Prefecture

First, on the national level, the percentage of mountain climbers has decreased by 18 percent since 2024 (finalized data from spring 2026 is still forthcoming but preliminary figures suggest no net change since the previous spring).

On a regional level, the percentage of climbers has decreased most drastically in the past two years by 34 percent in the northeastern Tohoku region, where bear sightings have sharply spiked since 2023 when Japan’s Ministry of the Environment noted 20,513 sightings. In 2025, a bad harvest of acorns and other nuts that bears eat in Tohoku caused them to venture into more urban areas in the fall, resulting in a staggering 50,801 sightings. This year’s preliminary data as of August 6 indicates 6,260 sightings this past June, the highest level for the month since 2022.

In fact, Tohoku has consistently had the highest number of sightings across Japan since 2022, with 70 percent of them concentrated in the region during the surge in numbers last year. While we can’t confirm that the drop in climbers can be attributed to the rise in sightings, one might infer that locals have been playing it safe rather than sorry by choosing to engage in other activities than climbing.

Finally, on an individual mountain level, Beacon Bank published its findings of human movement patterns on 23 mountains with the most reliable data. As can be seen, out of all of these, Mt. Hachimantai in Tohoku’s Iwate Prefecture experienced the biggest percentage drop in climbers by 46 percent in the past two years. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Mt. Kaimon in Kyushu’s Kagoshima Prefecture actually experienced an 18-percent uptick in climbers over the same period.

▼ Much of the Tohoku region conjures up images of mountains and rice fields, such as in this view of Mt. Iwaki in Aomori Prefecture.

We should stress once again that the above data does not definitively prove that increased bear sightings have resulted in a decrease of mountain climbers across Japan as there could be other factors at play, but Beacon Bank calls the data “geographically consistent.” In any case, make sure to take all necessary precautions if you do plan on going mountain climbing in Japan in the near future by packing your bear spray and bells and downloading the bear sightings app before you hit the slopes.

Source: PR Times
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Top image: PR Times
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