The Japanese variety is said to have lived in mountains on the main islands of Honshu, Kyushu and Shikoku. The last known Japanese wolf was caught in 1905 in Higashi-Yoshino, Nara Prefecture.

James Hatley’s work on ōkami, the extinct Honshu wolf, uses elegant prose to plead for the importance of protecting natural habitats as a key to preventing species extinctions. His essay evokes a ...