The Lost Wolves of Japan by Walker Brett L.; Cronon William;

Author:Walker, Brett L.; Cronon, William;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Washington Press

JAPAN'S WOLFERS

Hokkaido's crow and wolf hunters left only traces of their activities in the form of bounty records buried deep in archives. Records from between February 1880 and June 1881, for example, tell of Hayashi Kuninosuke collecting ¥28 for killing four wolves, Murakami Yōsuke collecting ¥21 for killing three wolves, and Higuchi Jūkichi collecting ¥12 for one bear and one wolf.34 The use of firearms was one state-sanctioned method for their work. As early as January 1874, even before the organization of the formal bounty system, the Noboribetsu ranch, as if preparing for battle, made a request for several pounds of gunpowder and 200 percussion caps for the purpose of killing wolves and bears that ate livestock there.35 Four years later, Ōshima Kunitarō, a local official from Mitsuishi, made a lengthy request for firearms to shoot wolves. Also, three Ainu from near the Kerimai River (Iraman, Igurushugi, and Yakichi) hoped to get their hands on the guns and licenses required to kill wolves.36 Indeed, documents of this sort suggest that Ainu made up a substantial proportion of the wolfers on Hokkaido.

Killing crows, wolves, and bears in the name of the Meiji emperor could get confusing, however, as a report from August 1878 reveals. Early that year, Iida Ichigorō, of the postal service, and forty-two other hunters discovered a wolf den and killed the four pups inside. As per rules of the first bounty system, they received ¥5 for each of the pups killed. Kaitakushi officials expressed concern, however, because as of May, the wolf bounty had been raised to ¥7, and so it appeared that they had underpaid Iida and his hunters. Kaitakushi officials began questioning whether a wolf pup was worth as much as an adult wolf, eventually settling on a bounty of ¥3 per wolf pup.37

In dealing with such questions, the administration of the bounty system became even more bizarre by May 1880. When Ega Jūjirō, a Japanese wolfer from Oshamanbe, brought in four severed limbs from a wolf pup, local officials became suspicious, and so they asked Ega to bring in the entire carcass for inspection. When he did, officials discovered to their morbid amazement that the limbs Ega had cut came from a wolf fetus, which, officials explained, looked more like a mouse than a wolf.38 Consequently, this incident raised serious questions about whether the wolf bounty system extended to fetuses. Some wolfers were not troubled by such matters, however. State-sponsored hunters like Mikami Hidetsuna and his party were funded by the Kaitakushi to hunt wolves. He sought out wolf dens, hid nearby, shot the adult wolves as they provided food for their young, took the pups from the den, brought them to a Kaitakushi office, and collected his bounty. The Kaitakushi paid Mikami eighty sen per day; his assistants received forty-two sen. Denning could be profitable for such men.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.