Japanese authorities have confirmed the first fatal bear attack of 2026, with the victim — a 55-year-old woman — dying on April 21 in Iwate prefecture (a rural region in northern Honshu, Japan's main island). Police are also investigating two additional deaths potentially caused by bears, including a 69-year-old woman who went missing while foraging for wild plants in a mountain forest and was later found with claw injuries to her face and head. The incidents follow a record year of bear violence in 2025, when 13 people were killed and 216 were injured in the fiscal year ending March 2026 — a sharp rise attributed to a growing bear population, a declining human presence in rural areas, and poor acorn harvests that drive bears to seek food closer to inhabited areas.