Having won the battle to tackle Tokyo’s population of giant, ravenous crows, the city’s authorities are now embroiled in an even tougher campaign: to rein in another animal menace, the North American raccoon.
The number of raccoons caught in the capital every year has increased fivefold over the past decade, according to media reports, amid concern about the damage the animals are inflicting on the local ecosystem.
Municipalities in western Tokyo have responded by setting traps and launching hotlines for residents who spot crop damage or witness the animals entering their homes.
The omnivores are not native to Japan, where they are one of 156 species on an environment ministry list of invasive alien creatures that also includes black bass, fire ants and snapping turtles.
The raccoon population soared after those that were kept as pets were abandoned or escaped, and then flourished in the wild, the Mainichi Shimbun reported this week.
Their popularity as pets has been attributed to a 1970s TV anime, Rascal the Raccoon, which reportedly led to a surge in imports of the animals.
They are not to be confused with tanuki, or raccoon dogs, indigenous animals that feature in Japanese folklore and are believed to bring good fortune.
The raccoons are mostly found in hilly areas on the western fringes of metropolitan Tokyo, where they are causing widespread crop damage.
Local authorities are facing an uphill battle to keep raccoon numbers under control: the animals are not only prodigious breeders; they are also quick to adapt to unfamiliar environments.
A total of 1,282 raccoons were caught in Tokyo in the fiscal year ending in April 2023, according to the metropolitan government, compared with 259 a decade earlier.
The animal’s proliferation is being reflected in the havoc they cause in rural areas, where they caused damage worth ¥450m ($2.8m) in fiscal 2022, the farm ministry said, adding that fruit and vegetables, and livestock, were the most common targets.
The Mainichi also cited reports of raccoons feasting on the endangered Tokyo salamander, officially deemed at risk of extinction as a result of decades of destruction to their natural habitat.
The measures introduced so far appear to have have had little effect. “Our traps are sometimes broken as raccoons are also desperate to live. Only a fraction of them are actually caught, so we are unable to grasp their overall range,” an official told the Mainichi.
The problem is not confined to Tokyo, with complaints about raccoon damage to crops, infrastructure and private homes and gardens reported in almost all of Japan’s 47 prefectures.
In Niigata, on the Japan Sea coast, raccoon captures have risen sharply since 2018, while in the northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido, where the animals are thought to have established themselves as long ago as the late 1970s, they have been blamed for causing millions of yen’s worth of agricultural damage.
