Japanese wolf
| Japanese wolf | |
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| Taxidermied specimen, at the National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo, Japan | |
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Extinct (1905)
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Carnivora |
| Family: | Canidae |
| Genus: | Canis |
| Species: | C. lupus |
| Trinomial name | |
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Canis lupus hodophilax (Temminck, 1839) |
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| Synonyms | |
The Japanese wolf (Japanese: ニホンオオカミ(日本狼 ー Hepburn: Nihon ōkami) (Canis lupus hodophilax) is an extinct subspecies of the gray wolf that was once endemic to the islands of Honshū, Shikoku, and Kyūshū in the Japanese archipelago. It is also known as the Honshū wolf. Its binomial name derives from the Greek Hodo (path) and phylax (guardian), in reference to Japanese folklore, which portrayed wolves as the protectors of travellers. It was one of two subspecies that were once found in the Japanese archipelago, the other being the Hokkaidō wolf.
The name ōkami (wolf) is derived from the Old Japanese opo-kami, meaning "great-spirit". In the Shinto religion, wild animals were associated with the mountain spirit Yama-no-kami.
Before Temminck classified it, it had been long recognized in Japan that Honshu was inhabited by two distinct canids; ōkami (wolf) and yamainu (mountain dog), both of which were described by the herbalist Ono Ranzan in his Honzō kōmoku keimō (“An instructional outline of natural studies”) in 1803. He described the ōkami as an edible, but rapacious, greyish-brown animal with a long, ash-colored, white-tipped tail with webbed toes and triangular eyes that would occasionally threaten people if rabid or hungry. In contrast, the yamainu was described as a similar animal, but with speckled yellowish fur, unwebbed toes, a foul odor, and inedible meat.
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