The animated film Princess Mononoke (1997), which is said to be based on the legend of the Mitsumine Shrine, features a great white wolf goddess that raises a human child called San, played by Yuriko Ishida in Japan and Claire Danes in the English version, who becomes one of the film’s protagonists. Modern Japanese arts and literature also pay reference to the wolves. One such shrine, Mitsumine Shrine, is said to have been founded by a prince, who after becoming lost in the mists of the Okuchichibu mountain range while on a mission to subdue a warring tribe, was guided to safety by a great white wolf. The Japanese wolf is worshipped in Japan, and is particularly revered in Chichibu where many shrines pay tribute to the animals. Soon, other Japanese residents began coming forward with similar stories. The animal became known as the “Chichibu yaken” (or the Chichibu “wild dog”). While many academics remained sceptical about their existence, some experts concluded that the animals in Yagi’s photos closely resembled the Japanese wolf. The photographs he captured on that night as he crept to within an arm’s length of what could have been a living relic ignited the imaginations of local Chichibu residents after they were examined by a prominent Japanese zoologist who described the animal as ‘extremely wolf-like’, without conclusively saying the animal was an extinct wolf. “I knew that the Japanese wolf had been declared extinct since the Meji era, but I thought, ‘An animal that doesn’t exist can’t howl’.” And so began his 50-year search for the Japanese wolf. “It was then when I heard a howl,” says Yagi.
He was on night watch duty at a mountain lodge that was owned by a mountaineering group he was part of. Yagi’s pursuit of the Japanese wolf began about 20 years before his sighting in 1996. Why was Yagi so convinced that he had encountered a wolf? Because he, like many other people in rural Japan, it would transpire, had heard the telltale sign of wolves in the night many years earlier. The discoveries of bones, fur and scat, which all appear to date from before 1905, makes the likelihood that Yagi saw a living Japanese wolf that October night seem remote. The last known Japanese wolf remains were bought by a zoologist in 1905 who sent the pelt to the Natural History Museum, London. Wolves have been extinct in Japan for at least 100 years, according to scientific records.
The underground cathedral protecting Tokyo from floods.And just like a new-born baby, he had no knowledge or fear of danger.” I tried to see if he smelled like a wild animal, but he didn’t.
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I had brought the rice cracker right under his mouth. “He was right in front of me at this point. “I am right-handed, so I offered the cracker to him in my left, thinking that even if he bit my left arm, I would be alright." “I decided I would try and give him an osenbei (a rice cracker) and put out my hand and offered it to him,” says Yagi.
Yagi, a keen mountaineer, spends a lot of time in the mountains around Chichibu in central Japan, but this was the first time he had come face to face with an animal he had spent the best part of his life searching for. “This was 23 years ago, and I didn’t have much technical knowledge then,” says Yagi. Either it was comfortable being around humans, or felt unthreatened because of its status as the apex predator in this habitat. The creature was apparently unfazed by the presence of a human. It showed no fear as he edged towards it, firing off several photographs. Hiroshi Yagi was driving through the Chichibu Tama Kai National Park when the animal came up from the stream on his left, passed in front of him and stopped about two metres (6.5ft) away from his car.
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