millions of dollars in lost crops—mostly fruits
and vegetables. Growers use fencing, scare-
crows, and pyrotechnics to deter monkeys. In
some municipalities, farmers can file complaints
with agencies that manage programs to trap and
kill nuisance animals. As a result, more than
19,000 monkeys are killed in Japan annually,
according to the Ministry of the Environment.
A byproduct of those eradication programs can
be orphaned young monkeys, sometimes col-
lected by concerned citizens and passed along
to entertainment groups.
One afternoon near Yamaguchi, on a slopinghillside where a man was tending his koi pond,
I took a short walk on a country path with Shuji
Murasaki, 72. He stopped and motioned toward
a large empty metal cage about the size of four
school buses, in a field. It was a trap designed to
lure crop-raiding monkeys with food.
The village had captured about 10 monkeys
the previous week, Murasaki said. He didn’t
know what happened to them—they probably
were shot, though he wished they’d been sent to
a zoo. Two tiny rescued monkeys found a home
with his son, Kohei, who would train them to be
performers, he said.
Murasaki, a human rights activist and former
actor, was among a small group of people who
revived traditional sarumawashi when it had vir-
tually disappeared in the 1960s. Now he’s retired
and has passed his practice of staying true to
sarumawashi’s spiritual roots to Kohei. The per-
formances they offer embrace the original East-
ern ideas, Murasaki explained. “The animals are
mediators between the audience and God—it’s
not just a monkey show, it’s a ceremony.”CULTURE, OR ABUSE? 107