In December 2015, I took short trip to Japan with a friend. One stop in our travels was to a town to the northwest of Tokyo called Yamanouchi in the Nagano Prefecture. One portion of this town is called Shibu Onsen. Onsen is the Japanese word for hot springs, and Shibu Onsen is a spa town that developed in Yamanouchi for the visitors to the springs there. Similar spa towns are scattered throughout Japan; some of them, like Shibu Onsen, continue to appeal to visitors by retaining their traditional look and atmosphere. It’s main businesses, some of which have been open for hundreds of years, are traditional inns, called ryokens, and bath houses. However, there is one special reason that visitors continue to flock to this spa town rather than others. That is the lure of the neighboring Jigokudani Snow Monkey Park, a winter spa for a different primate.
The affectionately dubbed ‘snow monkeys,’ are Japanese macaques. Their nickname is appropriate considering the fact that they’re the only non-human primates to live in as cold an area as northern Japan. These monkeys draw in huge numbers of ecotourists coming to see the monkeys that warm themselves in the hot springs just like people do.
As animal enthusiasts, my friend and I weren’t going to miss out on this opportunity to see them for ourselves. Unfortunately, it can be very easy to make ecotourist trips without thinking of the consequences for the flora and fauna involved. As ecotourists, it’s important to remember that although tourism helps to sustain wildlife and their habitats by giving those living there the income to take care of it, that same tourism can often be extremely harmful to the living (and nonliving) things who make their homes there.
We began in Tokyo, taking a train to Nagano Station, the closest station connected to the intercity railway. Upon entering Nagano Station, it was obvious why most people travel there; signs for the Jigokudani Snow Monkey Park were everywhere. From this train station there is access to Yamanouchi via a local train or by a bus to take tourists directly to the entrance of the park. We bought a Monkey Park Day Pass, which covered either form of transportation there and back plus the park entrance fee.
We opted to take the next bus to the park entrance where there's a sign proudly proclaiming it to be the entrance to the park and just a short walk to the monkeys. There's also a conveniently placed information center complete with gift shop.
In order to get all the tourists to the Monkey Park, the train and bus systems have to be in place. Having public transportation produces lower emissions than if all the tourists had to rent cars and drive to Nagano Prefecture, or if they had to rent taxis to travel between Nagano Station and the park.
The hot springs are in a valley in the mountains so despite the mild winter, the path was rather icy. We occasionally passed a worker throwing down salt but there were some places with treacherous footing. There was one bridge so slippery that the build up of slowly crossing tourists developed into a line giving those following a hand over. Luckily, it didn’t take too long even if we had to go slowly.
Just downstream of the Monkey Center is a small snow-covered hot spring (for people). It was aesthetically perfect to bring me to the mindset of an ancient Japanese hot spring resort hidden away in the mountain and set a rather magical mood. From there it only took a few more minutes to arrive at the Monkey Center and access to where the monkey troop lives. From the Center there is a slope down directly to a river. When we arrived there were people crowded around a group of monkeys there, so we took the bridge over the river to be at the pool where significantly fewer camera-wielding watchers waited. In this section, there was a small platform above the pool and some steps to a fenced in platform down next to the pool.
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| By Britton Johnson |
Keeping tourists coming to these hot springs for the monkeys is probably very good for the people of Yamanouchi. The tourism industry creates jobs like the transportation workers and working at the park in the information centers or clearing the walking path.
When we arrived the only macaques near the pool were all on the ground foraging and ignoring the mass of humans with their phones and cameras at the ready in case they turned their heads. Like with any animal observation, with some patient waiting, monkeys came and went until they eventually got into the hot pool. Several individuals jumped in and out for some time satisfying all the visitors expectations to see soggy primates without having to push in a friend.
It was incredible to be able to watch a troop of macaques outside of a zoo, knowing that this group had formed much more organically. It was so interesting to see their dominance displays and interactions as they decided who would forage where and who got to swim in each area of their hot spring. For the most part, the macaques ignored the people gaping at them. They went about their business without caring too much about the spectators. A few were down by the visitors, however most of the troop was content to run about camouflaged on the side of the mountain. Often their only interaction with the crowd of people was to walk by as they changed locations. It was obvious that they were used to people coming to see them as a few of the bolder ones walked right over people’s shoes and in between legs to get to where they wanted to go.
Human interaction with wild animals can be negative for the animals, but in ecotourism it's usually rationalized by the financial gain that can be channeled to protecting that environment and those animals. Tourism keeps this wild area a park so it stays mostly undeveloped by people. Macaques live in very large troops and this park is a protected area that has enough space and resources for a troop of 150 individuals while we were there. In other areas of Japan, that is definitely not the case since habitat fragmentation by human development or climate change is a global issue.
Especially in agricultural areas, Japanese macaques are categorized as nuisance animals because their food source disappears when farmers clear forests to plant. The monkeys then raid the farmer’s fields causing conflict. The Jigokudani Monkey Park is at least one landscape that remains undeveloped for the monkeys to live in, safe from that clash between macaques and humans.
Not that the monkey viewing of visitors is completely peaceful. There are rules for visitors about crowding and being respectful to the monkeys, but no one is around to enforce these rules. It relies on the visitors’ restraint. The problem with this is that tourists from different backgrounds have differing amounts of familiarity with animals and their distress signals, as well as a different willingness to listen to those signals. Cultural differences also result in a difference in how much autonomy and respect is granted to the monkeys as individuals.
On the day we were there, most macaques did not appear distressed. They were obviously very used to people coming to see them. For the most part they ignored the people waiting there, however, there were a few times that a younger macaque got separated from the adults that it was with and was blocked from rejoining the group by the human observers. It was particularly upsetting to see a particularly young macaque get surrounded by photographers with big cameras looking for a good photo while it was stranded at the top of a handrail and not quite sure how to get down. Those viewers continued to stay extremely close to it the entire time it was there, standing on the stairs despite the sign saying not to block them, even though it was obviously very uncomfortable with anxious body language and frequent distress calls. Luckily, one of the adults answered the distress calls and came to the rescue, but that kind of situation should not have been able to occur. In addition to the signs about not crowding, there are also rules about feeding or touching the monkeys and rules against littering. If there are rules about it, it is very likely that people have done it before putting the safety of the monkeys into jeopardy and degrading their home.
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| By Britton Johnson |
It’s generally accepted that wild animals becoming acclimated to human presence in the way these macaques are is generally not a positive development. By losing their fear of humans, animals no longer avoid humans and usually end up being perceived as a threat. While poaching is not considered an issue for this species, these monkeys could migrate to other areas of Japan where being in close contact with people could make them nuisance animals in danger of being eliminated.
Probably the biggest problem with ecotourism and animal tourism is the psychological separation of the tourists from the nature they are there to interact with. Instead of becoming a part of the landscape, people are the observers removed from the view, because they want an experience of seeing to make a memory. This separation creates the false sense that these animals and this environment are here for human entertainment. Which in an unfortunate way is true, because if people did not partake in this tourist experience, the park are probably would have been developed for some other purpose and the macaques along with all the other animals that live there would have been displaced. I think that humans self-separation from nature makes it difficult for people to perceive their true place within the balance of nature resulting in poor decision making. If people saw a scared baby instead of a photo opportunity to post on Facebook, they wouldn’t have crowded a distressed child and blocked it from it's family. If people considered themselves to be visiting individuals in their home, maybe they wouldn’t throw their empty m&m packets on the ground.
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| By Britton Johnson |
Furthermore, even if the visitors do not interfere with the wildlife or their habitat, the park does. Something I was not aware of until later, is that these monkeys normally only spent their winters in this valley and migrated to a different area during the summer months. However, the park provides food for the monkeys to keep them in the area so that tourists can visit all year long. This has probably been going on for some time now, so the damage is most likely already done, but changing an animal population's behavior like this, especially an animal that lives in such large groups, is incredibly irresponsible. By enticing the monkeys to remain in the park all year long, they removed an entire species from their summer habitat. Although some food webs are more delicate than others and some are more resistant to collapse, it is difficult to predict what the outcome of removing a species from that food web will be. Without the monkeys there, the summer home range ecosystem was probably thrown off-balance.
When we had gotten enough monkey observation to satisfy us, but mostly a little too cold to remain outside any longer, we retired to the Monkey Center where there was a space heater, a snack, and some Japanese macaque facts posted, as well as another chance to purchase an official snow monkey souvenir. When we had warmed up sufficiently and read all of the monkey trivia, we were able to walk back to the town. We toured the streets of Shibu Onsen and the shrines hidden away up in the hills. It was a beautiful area that felt like a blend of traditional, modern, and mountain landscape. There was a quiet and peaceful atmosphere, but with energy. It felt lived in and alive.
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| By Britton Johnson |
This spa town is supported by the snow monkey tourists. The monkey park is another reason to choose this town for a traditional onsen inn and bath house experience, which helps to maintain that traditional practice and architecture. In other places, hot springs and bath houses may have to commercialize and use gimmicks to continue draw in visitors. I find that commercialization often leads to a very hollow experience because it’s obviously there specifically to cater to tourists, but this area is able to maintain the working landscape from hundreds of years ago and bring in into the present and has an authenticity to it even if tourism plays a large role.
At the end of the day we took the train back to Nagano Station and returned to Tokyo late in the evening. I think that our experience was a fairly typical tourist experience for a day trip to Jigokudani Monkey Park, and for better or for worse, it’s an experience that a large number of people crave. It’s difficult to know whether or not the positives of this ecotourism experience outweigh the negatives. Although I had a generally positive experience, the stress human proximity put the monkeys under left me feeling uneasy and wondering if there were a way to improve the monkeys' experiences in the monkey park.
