Badass animals

SPECIAL EDITION: KESAGAKE, PART 2: BAD NEWS BEAR

When we left off, I had just told you about a giant bear tearing a half-formed child from a pregnant woman’s body, seemingly out of spite. Now that we’ve set the tone, let us continue our tale of mystery and intrigue in a faraway land. Also, bear murder. I’m going to level with you, it’s mostly about bear murder.

Unaware of the beartastrophe that had befallen his home and family, Miyoke Yasutarō was busy seeking out one Yamamoto Heikichi, a professional bear hunter, which is incidentally what I am working towards a degree in. He was so damn good that he knew the specific bear, and gave it a name; Kesagake, or “Diagonal slash from the shoulder”. He was able to add another three women to Kesagake’s death tally, then promptly refused Miyoke’s request to hunt the beast because he was far too busy drinking.

Meanwhile, another villager had reported the incident to authorities. When both men returned to the village, the rest of the villagers were quick to fill them in on the gory details. The men got ripshit mad and set a killsquad in wait for the bear, but it was in vain, as Kesagake apparently couldn’t be bothered to show up. Meanwhile, the now very alert authorities gathered guns, volunteers and testosterone, and sent a sniper team to the village with one mission: Search and destroy, with extreme prejudice.

The sniper team came up with a plan to lure the bear into murder range using the corpse of one of its victims, and I, nearly a century later, came up with an idea for a metal album based on the first half of this sentence. The plan wasn’t the most popular one ever conceived, especially with the living family of said bait, but everyone else seemed to think it would work. Yamamoto even agreed to help, presumably because he got so drunk that he just felt he needed to kill a bear. The plan was enacted, the corpse was left out, and the snipers sat in wait for Kesagake, who finally made an appearance. Then promptly left. He just fucking left. Great plan, everyone.

The next morning, the village discovered that while they sat on their asses in the dark, the bear had torn some houses to shit and eaten the village’s winter stockpile of food. Lets take a moment to just appreciate what a great, brilliant plan the villagers had enacted the night before. The reports are unclear as to whether or not Kesagake also drew dongs on the door of each house in the village, so we are forced to assume he did. He then stretched his territory further downstream, so as to avoid the 60 pissed off snipers searching for him in the mountains. He was, indeed, smarter than your average bear.

That night, a man thought he saw a guy chilling in some shadows. He called out a greeting and probably got ready for a high five. When there was no answer, the snipers were ordered to open fire as the shadowy figure disappeared into the forest, making it either Kesagake or Slenderman. The men checked the area when morning rolled around and found a bear’s footprint and blood, the same evidence submitted by the prosecution at OJ Simpson’s trial. Everyone decided that, with snowstorms incoming and the bear wounded, their finest hour had come, and it was their time to be heroes.

Meanwhile, Yamamoto Heikichi, being the only competent guy in the area, set out with a guide to do the deed himself. Yamamoto, an expert bear hunter as previously mentioned, was able to do in a single damn day what an entire village couldn’t do for a month, and tracked Kesagake right the hell down. Yamamoto crept up to the bear until he was only sixty feet away. He stood, shouldered his rifle, and fired. Kesagake was shot through the heart, and Yamamoto was to blame. The second shot took the bear in the head. After nearly a month of bear terrorism and horrific attacks, Kesagake, The Japanese Jaws, was dead as fuck.

The corpse was retreived and found to be a whopping 380 kilos, roughly 840 pounds, and nearly nine feet tall. Some of the villagers were able to have something of a family reunion when the stomach was cut open, so there was no doubt that this was the bear they wanted. The bear had killed six people, one of them pregnant, and one later died from his injuries. The remaining villagers wasted no time getting the hell out of the place, and the village quickly became a ghost town, adding the village itself to Kesagake’s death toll.

Since then, two novels have been written about the incident, a movie was filmed, a manga was written/drawn, and there was a radio play, which later grew into a stage performance. All of them have awesome names, except for the movie. There is now a shrine, shown in the picture, where the attacks took place, with a reproduction of one of the houses and a roughly life sized statue of Kesagake. To this day, the incident remains one of the worst (best?) slaughters carried out by a bear.

SPECIAL EDITION: KESAGAKE, PART 1: THE JAPANESE JAWS

When someone says “Japan”, many things come to mind. Sushi, technology, and some of the most ridiculous cartoons, comics and movies ever created. What you don’t think of are sleepy little farming communities or horrifically savage bear attacks. Fortunately (if you’re not a Japanese villager), that last sentence has much more to do with what I’m going to write about tonight. The tale I’m about to tell reads like a movie I would go see in theaters. Twice.

This story starts at dawn, in the middle of November in 1915. A humble family was minding their own business in the fairly new village of Sankebetsu Rokusen-sawa when a monstrous bear popped up at their house, scared the holy Hell out of the family horse, lifted some corn, and then ran like it stole something, which it had. While alarming, nobody was unduly worried. Being fairly new, the village had its share of occasional animal visitors.

When the bear showed up again on the 20th, the head of the Ikeda family, clearly a man who had his priorities in order, set his second son after it before it could get the family horse. The man tagged along with two hunters his father hired, and they managed to successfully track down and wound the bear. They made an attempt to follow it and finish it off, but a snowstorm blew in and they figured “It’s cold and one shot was good enough.” This would be the single biggest fucking mistake anyone ever made concerning a bear.

The bear, healed up and with revenge on its mind, showed up at approximately 10:30 AM on December 9th. It broke into the home of the Ōta family, where the farmer’s wife was taking care of a baby. Likely thinking about how much it had sucked to be shot, the bear took the perfectly logical course of action and bit the baby in the fucking head, killing it. The woman, Abe Mayu, attempted to fight back, hurling firewood at the bear before trying to run for it. This didn’t really pan out, and her brilliant plan ended with her being dragged screaming into the forest. The house is said to have resembled a slaughterhouse in the aftermath of the attack.

Not too long after, thirty guys took off into the forest after the bear, with the intent of capturing it and recovering whatever was left of Mayu. They hadn’t gone 500 feet before they saw a bear, probably just chillin’ against a tree or something. Five guys shot at the bear, but hilariously, only one hit it. The bear, having been shot for the second time in 11 days, was pretty pissed, but took off nonetheless. After the search party had poked around a bit, they found some blood at the base of a tree. They dug a bit and found what was left of Mayu, which was just her head and some leggy bits.

The villagers were sure that the bear, having tasted sweet, sweet human, was sure to come back. The guys most assured in this belief camped out at the Ōta family’s house with guns aplenty. Like they thought, the bear showed up around 8 that night. The men, who had been anticipating this all day, proceeded to fucking panic and fall all over themselves like a bunch of retards. Only one guy managed to even get a shot off.

After the first attack, the women and children had flocked to the Miyoke house and 50 guardsmen had been posted there. When the guardsmen heard of the sighting, they (probably) laughed at the hilarious incompetence of the men who had been there and, dropping their dinner, set off immediately to track down the bear, who had vanished into the woods. Not too long after, the woman of the household was making some food when she heard a rumbling outside. She got up to go see what it was, but the question was quickly answered when the bear crashed through the window like a damn SWAT team. In the panic that followed, the pot on the hearth was overturned and the oil lamp was knocked over. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what a bear does in a dark house full of women and children.

The woman made a run for it, but one of her kids grabbed onto her legs and tripped her up, giving the bear time to run up,  injure her, and bite the kid she was carrying on her back. At this point the only guard who had been left behind recalled his sworn oaths, then promptly said “Fuck this shit” and tried to take off. The bear opted to follow him, which gave the woman and her kid time to escape but sort of screwed over the guard. Realizing that his plan had done the opposite of what he wanted, he continued to stay true to his character, cowering behind some furniture while the bear tore his back into a bloody mess.

The bear went on to kill two more kids and bite another one, because why not. That’s when shit got really real. The bear supposedly strolled up to a pregnant woman, moving slowly enough that she had time to beg for her life and that of her child. Unfortunately, she was speaking Japanese and not Bear. A fatal mistake. She was attacked, killed, partially eaten, and the bear ripped the fucking fetus out of her, probably just because he wanted to make a point.

While this was happening, the guards had realized that they were nowhere near a fucking bear and had set off towards the house. They met up with the woman who had run for it, who proceeded to tell them that the bear had climbed in the windows and was in the process of snatching their people up. When they got there, the house was dark and there were noises of ripping cloth and crunching bone, and everybody was too fucking scared to go in.

Some of the guards went around to the back door and started making a crapload of noise to scare the bear to the front, where the rest of the guards were waiting to murder it. When the bear appeared, the guards realized that the asshole in front was blocking all of their shots, and the asshole in question tried to shoot but his rifle misfired. The bear was able to give the idiots the slip and vanish into the night like Batman once again.

After looking around the house and taking in the carnage, everyone decided to regroup at the school. Weighing their options, most of the guards decided their time would be better spent not being slaughtered by a bear who appeared to be half ghost. Only the veterans of the recent war against the Russians decided to stick around. In two days, the bear had killed six people, eaten a few of them, and invented abortion.

COMING SOON TO A TUMBLR NEAR YOU

KESAGAKE 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO