Issue:
April 2026 | Japan Media Watch
The plight of Punch the macaque raises questions over Japan’s enthusiasm for keeping animals in captivity
The relatively small Ichikawa City Zoo and Botanical Gardens in Chiba Prefecture, about 30 minutes east of Tokyo, has drawn worldwide attention due to a baby male monkey named Punch. The Japanese macaque was said to have been "rejected" by his mother shortly after being born, and the zookeepers gave Punch a stuffed toy in the form of an orangutan that he clung to as if it were his real mother or a companion. Video clips of Punch and his toy went viral, first in Japan and then globally. Soon, Punch's situation was being constantly monitored. Sometimes the clips showed Punch being chased by other monkeys in the zoo enclosure, which led to concern that he was being bullied, an implication the zoo rejected. Punch was simply being "disciplined," they said, by older monkeys, which is normal in Japanese macaque communities. Nevertheless, the macaque became an object of pity and then a symbol of hope and resilience as he came to find friends among his primate peers.
The novelty of Punch's viral fame drove attendance at the Ichikawa zoo. Admissions doubled almost immediately, with many foreign tourists among the visitors. It wasn't the zoo's first brush with notoriety. In the early 2000s, a lesser panda named Futa, on loan from a zoo in central Japan for breeding purposes, became a star attraction for the way he would stand up straight on two legs, a behavior that was not unique to Futa but one that was nevertheless promoted by the media as a kind of humorous meme. The difference is that all lesser pandas in captivity in Japan became attractions, while people are coming to Ichikawa expressly to see Punch, who will eventually grow out of his notoriety. Another reason Punch received special attention, at least in Japan, is that he may be making up for the loss of pandas. As of January, there are no pandas in Japan, for the first time since the 1970s.
The anthropomorphizing of Punch's circumstances pointed up the fact that Punch is in a zoo, something that needs to be taken into consideration when assessing his behavior. According to Wakako Takoh, writing for the March 4, 2026, online issue of Gendai Business, Punch was born on July 26 of last year and weighed 55 grams. He was his mother's first birth, which took place. Due to the temperature she was not strong enough to nurse him, so the zookeepers had to feed him by hand. To say that Punch's mother rejected or abandoned him is to impart a callous reason for her lack of maternal care, when, in fact, she was reacting more to her environment. One expert told Takoh that such behavior is not uncommon for primates in zoos, and the idea of giving the infant monkey a stuffed toy as a substitute is not a new one, which is why Ichikawa had a stuffed orangutan from Ikea – the zoo also has some orangutans that occasionally need surrogates, though blankets usually suffice. Eventually, however, the zookeepers would have to take away the toy in order to force Punch to join his community, and while Punch seems to be getting with the program now, the zookeepers have let him keep the stuffed orangutan because it's what visitors want to see.
Still, the expert, a media pundit who goes by the name of Punk Machida, points out that zoos invariably affect animal behavior in ways that can warp their basic nature. Summer heat is rising in Japan, as it is everywhere, and he feels that Japanese zoos can't cope because of their straitened finances. In the wild, animals can find cooler places on their own, but the spaces they occupy in zoos are limited. Often you will see on news reports how a zoo will give their animals "treats" of food encased in ice during hot spells, which in its own way is the only solution to allaying the deleterious effects of urban heat. It's not a solution.
Zoos are expensive to run. Food and medical care cannot be discounted, and Japanese zoos are famous for being a very affordable form of recreation, especially for families. Machida says that zoos need to charge more for admission in order to have enough funds on reserve to take care of environmental changes that adversely affect animals, but there seems to be an institutional resistance to raising admission fees. Ichikawa only charges ¥440 for an adult and ¥110 for a child under high school age. Like most zoos in Japan Ichikawa's is run by the local government, which receives almost no financial support from the central government. Moreover, the central government does not actively enforce regulations that protect animal welfare as governments in other countries do.
This lack of governmental oversight becomes a problem, even for the many private zoos in Japan that charge higher admission fees and solicit donations, and some may receive tourism-related subsidies from local governments. Last year, North Safari Sapporo, a so-called safari park in Hokkaido, closed after "illegal operations" were revealed. The park, which opened in 2005, was popular because it allowed visitors to come very close to the animals. In some cases, visitors could touch and pet the animals. There was even an attraction where visitors paid money to sleep overnight in the lion enclosure with only a plexiglass partition separating guest and animal. North Safari Sapporo promoted itself as "the most dangerous safari park" in Japan.
According to Hokkaido News, local authorities discovered that the park had carried out unlicensed construction on its grounds, and upon further investigation found that this kind of construction had been going on for years. Rather than remove the offending structures, the park decided to shut down operations at the demand of the police.
The main worry was the animals and where they would go. In December 2024 it had 640 animals. By September 2025, after the park had closed, there were still 319, though the zoo's directors did not reveal what had happened to the other animals, and when the local government demanded information, it received no answer. Meanwhile, reports by concerned citizens said the remaining animals were getting weaker. City authorities in the past had warned the park about the conditions under which the animals were kept, and animal welfare groups had for years kept photographic records of what they said were violations of animal welfare laws, but nothing was done until last year.
The situation at North Safari Sapporo was addressed during a two-part interview last summer on TBS Radio's talk show Session with zoo researcher Yoichi Sadotomo, who calls Japan "a major zoo country". (It is number one in the world in terms of zoos per capita.) One of the problems with Japanese zoos is their perceived mission. Worldwide, the purpose of zoos is binary: on the one had they are a source of recreation, while on the other they are research and education facilities that deal in the conservation of animal species. In Japan, recreation is by far the more pressing consideration, which is why admission fees are so low. Back when Japan was still developing its economy after the war, zoos were one of the few places where Japanese families could spend a day relaxing, and that rationale has persisted to this day, usually at the expense of animal welfare, says Sadotomo. "The consumer price index has gone up considerably over the years," he said, "but the price of a zoo ticket has remained the same." The kind of climate control functions that might have made Punch's mother more amenable to raising her offspring weren't available at the Ichikawa zoo.
Sadotomo also points out that once animals are in a zoo, whether they were captured and sent there or born there, they are probably there for life. Though there has been a movement to "renature" zoo animals, the cost and trouble of doing so is highly prohibitive. For that reason, he says, "poor conditions tend to be tolerated". In Europe and North America, animal welfare activists have successfully passed laws to protect animals in captivity through improved facilities, but such movements lag behind in Japan, and the main reason is money.
A good recent example of this is the situation for zoo elephants. In the past, elephant enclosures everywhere in the world were made of concrete, but in recent years it's been confirmed that concrete surfaces damage the soles of elephants' feet, leading to infections and worse. Now elephant enclosures in many countries have been renovated to include softer surfaces, sometimes by distributing sand on the ground. In Japan, the only zoos that have made a similar change are those that were already scheduled to undergo renovations. Most elephants in captivity still live in concrete enclosures.
Another problem is how zoos in Japan are financially structured. Most are public corporations, while in the U.S. they are usually operated as non-profit organizations (NPO) along the lines of charitable groups, so donations are tax deductible. In Europe they are also public corporations, but owning stock in such corporations (no dividends) is also tax deductible according to EU tax laws. In Japan, cultural entities are mostly on their own. Zoos are more like museums. People who donate to regular zoos can't deduct their donations on their tax returns. The solution is for local governments to create foundations for their public zoos, or to carry out crowdfunding campaigns for individual projects. During the COVID pandemic, Ueno Zoo in Tokyo couldn't pay its electricity bill because admissions had plummeted, so it held a crowdfunding campaign. Asahiyama Zoo in Hokkaido, one of the most famous public zoos in Japan, has a foundation worth ¥3 billion, mainly because its operators have become good at fundraising and publicity – their penguins are particularly famous.
In addition to delayed facilities improvements, Japanese zoos also have to contend with employee salaries, which are rising in general in Japan. Consequently, more zoos are hiring non-regular workers, which means they have fewer professional animal keepers on staff and thus limited knowhow in terms of animal welfare.
Climate change also means fewer animals are viable as zoo attractions. Polar bears and penguins have to be kept inside most of the year. Certain animals, like gorillas and orangutan, have difficulties reproducing in captivity, a situation that's exacerbated by climate change. Once the current population of such animals dies out, they can't be readily replaced.
Which brings up the inevitable idea that zoos themselves may be a relic of the past, because in today's world it is difficult to make them sustainable. Animal welfare groups work toward the eventual abolition of zoos, since even their more constructive missions—conservation and research/education—are becoming less defensible. Many countries have already banned marine parks because it has been proven that the whales and dolphins who perform there live under artificial conditions that cause them great stress.
That's why Japan's emphasis on zoos and aquariums as recreational facilities is becoming an object of greater scrutiny. The controversy over the dolphin drives in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, has been raging for decades, but the most poignant single dolphin story in Japan in recent years was that of Honey, a dolphin that was captured near Taiji and in 2005 sold to a marine park in Choshi, Chiba Prefecture that closed after the 2011 Great Northeast Japan Earthquake. Honey, along with several dozen penguins, was abandoned when the park went bankrupt, and it fell to private citizens to feed them with funds out of their own pockets. The authorities said they could do nothing because the marine park was a private enterprise. Honey died in 2020 of disease in the filthy pool she had lived in for almost ten years.
A more relevant tragedy is that of Hanako, a beloved elephant that died in Tokyo's Inokashira Park Zoo in 2016. Elephants only thrive in herds, and Hanako lived alone in a cramped enclosure for decades, but she "gave hopes and dreams to children", as then Tokyo Governor Yoichi Masuzoe characterized her value in his tribute to the animal, so she was kept there in mind-numbing misery, despite a petition that collected 300,000 signatures to have her sent to Thailand, where she could live out what remained of her days among her own species. The zookeepers, which had in the past addressed such concerns by saying budget restraints prevented them from improving Hanako's environment, said after the petition circulated that she was too old to be moved.
Punch seems to have it better, and Ichikawa Zoo is obviously benefiting financially from his popularity, but for every Punch that is given a toy to help him cope with his situation there are thousands of other Japanese zoo animals who can't cope physically and mentally with their decrepit environments, and for no other reason than to provide something for people to do on the weekend. The public's sincere affection for these animals won't make them more comfortable.
Philip Brasor is a Tokyo-based writer who covers entertainment, the Japanese media, and money issues. He writes the Japan Media Watch column for the Number 1 Shimbun.
Sources
