It’s the kind of story you read twice before believing it’s true: a Japanese vending machine that is stocking, along with the usual drinks and snacks, bear meat.

The idea is the ‘brainchild’ of Daishi Sato, who has the machine outside his ‘soba’ noodle shop near the railway station in Semboku in the Akita prefecture, a remote province some 350 miles north of Tokyo.

“Bear meat isn’t very common so we want tourists who come to visit the town to buy it,” said Sato, whose idea has proved to be a hit, requests coming in for mail order deliveries from as far away as Tokyo. “The bears can be dangerous when they come into town, so hunters will set up traps or shoot them.” Sato sells between seven and ten packs from the machine per week, charging 2,200 yen (around £13) per 250g serving.

The frequency of bears moving closer to human populations appears to stem from a lack of food available in the surrounding forests, forcing Asian black bears into inhabited areas to forage. Attacks have become an increasing problem with, according to local media, hunters allowed to kill a certain number of animals during hunting season. While Asian black bears are listed as vulnerable, it remains legal to eat their meat in Japan.

The news has been greeted with dismay by animal protection groups, labelling the trade as “animal exploitation gone mad”.

“This feels like another low blow for wildlife,” Nick Stewart, wildlife campaign director at World Animal Protection told the Guardian. “Bears are of great significance to the wider ecosystem in which they live. If we protect them, then their habitat and the animals and plants within it also benefit. This is animal exploitation gone mad.

“Bears are wild animals, not a convenience food. Leave them in the wild to live a wild life.”

In 2022, 75 people were injured in Japan in encounters with bears with two fatalities, one of which was in Akita.