Japan Bear Sightings (クマ出没情報) — Open Data Scraper

Bear sighting, trace and human-injury reports from Japan — ツキノワグマ (Asian black bear) and ヒグマ (brown bear) — collected from the open-data catalogues of prefectures and cities and delivered in one English schema: date and time, prefecture, municipality, district (大字 level), latitude/longitude rounded to about 100 m, report type, species, head count, cubs, sex, environment and body length.

Only datasets whose licence allows commercial reuse are read (CC BY 4.0 or PDL1.0). Every record carries the credit line its publisher asks for.

Good for: news and data journalism, municipal and outdoor-safety dashboards, tourism and trail operators, insurers, and wildlife researchers who need several prefectures in one table instead of six differently shaped CSV files.

What it does

• Reads six official open datasets (see the table below) — no maps, no screen scraping.
• Normalizes Japanese era dates (令和8年1月4日, R4.3.3), times (7時00分頃), head counts (成獣１頭), Shift_JIS files and the different column layouts into one schema.
• Classifies each report as sighting (目撃), trace (痕跡), injury (人身被害), capture (捕獲・駆除) or other — from the publisher's own category column where there is one (Akita, Ishikawa 2019-2024), otherwise from keywords (typeBasis tells you which).
• Cuts places to district level (大字 / 町丁目). House numbers, postal codes, building and shop names are removed, and coordinates are rounded to 3 decimal places (about 100 m).
• Filters by date window, prefecture, municipality and report type; newest first.

Sources and licences

sourceId	Publisher	Dataset	Coverage (as of October 2026)	Updates	Licence
akita	秋田県 Akita Prefecture	【秋田県】ツキノワグマ等情報マップシステム『クマダス』データ (KumaDAS)	April 2022 →	monthly, to the end of the previous month	CC BY 4.0
ishikawa	石川県 Ishikawa Prefecture	石川県クマ出没データ	2019 → June 2025	irregular	いしかわオープンデータカタログ terms (commercial use allowed, CC BY 4.0 compatible)
sapporo	札幌市 City of Sapporo (Hokkaido)	札幌市内のヒグマ出没情報	2017 → November 2025	one file per year, after the season	CC BY 4.0
kyoto	京都府 Kyoto Prefecture	【京都府】クマ目撃情報	fiscal years 2009-2018	closed archive	CC BY 4.0
kamisunagawa	上砂川町 Town of Kamisunagawa (Hokkaido)	ヒグマ出没マップ (one per fiscal year)	April 2024 →	during the season	CC BY 4.0
yamaguchi	山口県 Yamaguchi Prefecture	熊の目撃情報（山口県警察認知のもの） (one per year)	2023 →	during the year	PDL1.0 (CC BY 4.0 compatible)

Each record's license field holds the exact credit line required by that publisher's terms (for example 「出典：山口県オープンデータカタログサイト（URL）、PDL1.0（URL）。「熊の目撃情報２０２６（山口県警察認知のもの）」（山口県）（URL）を加工して作成」), the licence URL, a note that the data was edited by this tool, and the not-affiliated statement. When you publish the data, keep that credit line — it is a condition of the licences.

Prefectures not listed (Iwate, Miyagi, Yamagata, Fukushima, Niigata, Toyama, Nagano, ...) publish maps or PDFs without a commercial-use licence, or forbid reproduction; they are deliberately not included.

Quick start

Verified input — the last 30 days from all six sources, newest 200 reports (finishes in seconds; 7 catalogue requests):

{
    "daysBack": 30,
    "maxItems": 200
}

Running with {} does exactly the same. More examples:

• All of Akita's 2025 autumn season: {"sources": ["akita"], "dateFrom": "2025-09-01", "dateTo": "2025-11-30", "maxItems": 20000}
• Human-injury reports, all history, all sources: {"daysBack": 0, "types": ["injury"], "maxItems": 5000}
• One city: {"municipalities": ["秋田市"], "daysBack": 365, "maxItems": 5000}
• Hokkaido brown bears (Sapporo + Kamisunagawa): {"prefectures": ["Hokkaido"], "daysBack": 0, "maxItems": 5000}

Input

Field	Default	Meaning
daysBack	30	Reports dated on or after today (Japan time) minus this many days. 0 = all history. Ignored when dateFrom is set.
dateFrom, dateTo	empty	Date window, YYYY-MM-DD (also 2025/4/1, 20250401, 2025年4月1日, 令和7年4月1日, or 2025-04 for a whole month).
sources	all six	akita, ishikawa, sapporo, kyoto, kamisunagawa, yamaguchi (Japanese names such as 秋田 work too).
prefectures	all	Akita, Ishikawa, Hokkaido, Kyoto, Yamaguchi — English, Japanese (秋田県) or JIS code (05).
municipalities	all	Japanese names as the publishers write them: 秋田市, 鹿角市, 加賀市, 山口市, 札幌市 (all wards) or 札幌市南区. The 市/町/村 ending is optional.
types	all	sighting, trace, injury, capture, other (or 目撃, 痕跡, 人身被害, 捕獲, その他).
maxItems	200	Maximum records stored, newest first.
maxRequests	80	Hard limit on catalogue requests per run. A full-history run of all sources needs about 30.
proxyConfiguration	none	Optional proxy for the catalogues that answer Apify directly.
residentialProxyConfiguration	Apify RESIDENTIAL, JP	Used only for the Ishikawa catalogue, which refuses Apify's datacenter IPs (HTTP 403, checked 2026-10-13). Billed by Apify as proxy traffic (a catalogue page is about 50 KB; the full Ishikawa history about 1 MB). Without it, Ishikawa is reported as refused and the other sources still run.

Output

One record per report. Example (Akita, 28 September 2026 — a mother bear with cubs):

{
    "sightingId": "akita:28046",
    "sourceId": "akita",
    "publisher": "秋田県",
    "datasetTitle": "【秋田県】ツキノワグマ等情報マップシステム『クマダス』データ",
    "datasetUrl": "https://ckan.pref.akita.lg.jp/dataset/050008_shizenhogoka_003",
    "licenseId": "CC-BY-4.0",
    "sourceRecordId": "28046",
    "date": "2026-09-28",
    "yearMonth": "2026-09",
    "time": "11:30",
    "dateTime": "2026-09-28T11:30:00+09:00",
    "prefecture": "秋田県",
    "prefectureEn": "Akita",
    "prefectureCode": "05",
    "municipality": "北秋田市",
    "ward": null,
    "locality": "前山萩岱",
    "latitude": 40.221,
    "longitude": 140.323,
    "type": "sighting",
    "typeJa": "目撃",
    "typeBasis": "category",
    "typeLabelJa": "目撃",
    "species": "asian_black_bear",
    "speciesJa": "ツキノワグマ",
    "count": 3,
    "adults": null,
    "cubs": null,
    "ageClass": "mother_with_cubs",
    "sex": null,
    "environment": null,
    "bodyLengthCm": null,
    "source": "秋田県オープンデータカタログサイト — 【秋田県】ツキノワグマ等情報マップシステム『クマダス』データ",
    "sourceUrl": "https://ckan.pref.akita.lg.jp/dataset/050008_shizenhogoka_003",
    "license": "この「データベース」は以下の著作物を改変して利用しています。「【秋田県】ツキノワグマ等情報マップシステム『クマダス』データ」、秋田県、クリエイティブ・コモンズ・ライセンス 表示4.0（https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.ja） — Licence: CC BY 4.0 ... Unofficial — not affiliated with or endorsed by 秋田県 (Akita Prefecture) or the catalogue operator.",
    "retrievedAt": "2026-10-13T00:00:00.000Z"
}

Field reference

Field	Notes
date, time, dateTime	Japan time. time is null when not published. A few Yamaguchi reports give only a month (令和6年7月中旬): date is null and yearMonth is set.
municipality, ward, locality	ward only for designated cities (札幌市 南区, 京都市 左京区). locality is the 大字 / 町丁目 name, or null when the publisher's text had no clean place name.
latitude, longitude	WGS84, rounded to 3 decimal places (about 100 m). The published points are often precise to about 1 m; the rounded point shows the area of the report, not a single house or garden.
type, typeJa, typeBasis	typeBasis: category = the publisher's own category column; text = keywords in the publisher's remark (the remark itself is not output); dataset = the dataset's own label (e.g. Kyoto's 目撃情報).
typeLabelJa	The publisher's category label when it is a fixed value (e.g. 痕跡(食害)), else null.
count, adults, cubs	Head count as published; adults / cubs only where the publisher counts them separately (Kyoto).
ageClass	adult, cub, mother_with_cubs (親子) or null.
sex	The bear's sex, male / female, where published (Akita), else null. Always null on injury reports, so it cannot be mistaken for the injured person's sex.
environment	residential, road, farmland, forest, river, other (Kyoto's 環境区分 and Yamaguchi's location note), else null.
bodyLengthCm	Body length where stated (Yamaguchi's column; "70センチのクマ" style remarks), else null.

The key-value store record RUN_SUMMARY lists, per source, the files read, reports parsed and matched, duplicates removed, the newest report date available and any stop reason.

Empty results?

• Publishing delays. Akita publishes monthly (data up to the end of the previous month), Sapporo once a year after the season, Ishikawa irregularly (latest June 2025), Kyoto is a 2009-2018 archive. A short daysBack can therefore return nothing for some sources — RUN_SUMMARY.sources[].newestReport shows how far each one goes. Use daysBack: 0 or dateFrom for history.
• Municipality spelling. Use the Japanese name as published (鹿角市, not Kazuno).
• Prefecture without a source. Only Akita, Ishikawa, Hokkaido (Sapporo, Kamisunagawa), Kyoto and Yamaguchi are covered; others give a warning and no records.
• A run with no matching report ends successfully with 0 records and a warning.

Common input mistakes

You entered	Use instead
"prefectures": ["Sapporo"]	"prefectures": ["Hokkaido"] or "municipalities": ["札幌市"]
"municipalities": ["Akita"]	"municipalities": ["秋田市"]
"dateFrom": "01/09/2025"	"dateFrom": "2025-09-01"
"types": ["attack"]	"types": ["injury"]
"sources": ["kumadas.net"]	"sources": ["akita"]

Privacy

• No free-text remarks. The publishers' remark and status columns (目撃時の状況, 備考, 状況, 特記事項 ...) can describe reporters or injured people; they are read only to classify the report and are never output.
• No house numbers, no exact points. Places are cut to district level; postal codes, 番地, building, shop and facility names are removed (a shop name can be a sole trader's name). Coordinates are rounded to about 100 m.
• Nothing about people. No reporter, victim, police station or follow-up action fields. Injury reports keep only when and where (district and the rounded point) and facts about the bear; the bear's sex is left empty on them.

How it accesses the sources

• Official open-data catalogues only: dataset pages, the catalogue API where the site's robots.txt allows it, and the published CSV files. Every request is checked against the site's robots.txt first.
• One request at a time per catalogue, 10 seconds apart on the catalogues that ask for it (Akita, Ishikawa, Sapporo), 2 seconds elsewhere; a hard request limit per run; no redirects followed; no evasion. A source that refuses or changes its layout is reported in RUN_SUMMARY and the others still deliver.

Not for emergencies

This is not a real-time alert service. The publishers update with a delay of days to months, and absence of a report does not mean absence of bears. For safety decisions, follow the official alerts of the prefecture and municipality (クマ出没警報・注意報) and local news.

Disclaimer

Unofficial — this Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by 秋田県, 石川県, 札幌市, 京都府, 上砂川町, 山口県 or the catalogue operators (BODIK / 九州先端科学技術研究所 and others). It only reads public open data. The data is provided as published, without any guarantee of completeness or accuracy, and has been edited (renamed, normalized, coordinates rounded, filtered) by this tool. You are responsible for complying with each dataset's licence and terms — in particular for keeping the credit line in the license field when you redistribute the data — and with privacy laws that apply to you (GDPR, Japan's APPI). If you are a publisher and want a dataset removed, please contact us through Apify.