On Aug. 14, I was attacked by a black bear. It all happened suddenly and in a blur of fur, paws and gnashing teeth as the tsukiwaguma charged out of the trees 10 meters from me in a forested, hilly area in Gunma Prefecture in the Kamimoku district of Minakami.
I sustained light injuries, a few gashes to the head and upper arm, but it probably would have been a lot worse if my dogs, Goro (10) and Rhubarb (14), had not chased it off. They are mostly shibainu, a dog bred for bear hunting. It's a popular domestic house pet, but somewhere lurking in the DNA is an incredible ferocity and fearlessness when it comes to bears. Lucky me. Boars they are afraid of.
During the past two decades of hiking in Gunma I have encountered bears about a hundred times, but almost all have been unthreatening visual sightings. I'll be writing, take a break by going for a walk in the woods using an old ski pole as a walking stick, and get lost in my thoughts. It's good exercise, and the dogs and I enjoy the pleasant natural surroundings, passing abandoned charcoal kilns, irrigation ponds, scattered stone memorial tablets, bamboo groves, streams, a Shinto torii and on and up through abandoned rice fields to stretches of beech and oak forests that have the nuts bears like to eat.