Japan’s military leaders on Wednesday deployed troops to the country’s northern regions to put an end to an increasingly violent insurgency by the country’s ethnic bear minority, Reuters reports. The operation is centered on the small mountain town of Kazuno on the country’s main island of Honshu, where the bear insurgents have been seen patrolling the hills at alarming frequency in recent weeks.
“Even if just temporary, the SDF’s help is a big relief,” said Yasuhiro Kitakata, who Reuters says “oversees the town’s bear department,” which is uh, well it seems like the town has a dedicated “bear department” of an unknown size and budget. “I used to think bears would always run away when they heard noise, but now they actually come toward you. They’re truly frightening animals.”
The densely-populated archipelago nation has seen more than 100 bear attacks, at least 12 of them fatal, since April. The wave has yet to spur any sort of scientifically illiterate speculation that the ursines are waging a separatist campaign to challenge human dominion over parts of the islands, perhaps to establish a semi-autonomous province or even their own fully sovereign breakaway state, but damned if these sons of bitches aren’t observably madder than they used to be.