Bear attack in Japan car park captured on CCTV as cities record more wild encounters

A bear attacked four people in the Japanese city of Fukushima. (AP: Kyodo News)

The bear was far from the wilderness when it crossed paths with a man in a parking lot and leapt on him.

Japan's latest bear attack injured four people last week and unfolded partly within view of a CCTV camera at a Fukushima steelworks.

It was a reminder of last year's record official national toll: 13 people killed and more than 220 injured as people encountered bears, including in city streets.

The creator of a national database mapping bear activity in Japan says this year could be even worse, after it showed an increase in encounters.

Kumamap recorded nearly 5,000 bear encounters between April and June, or 36 per cent more than the same months last year.

While the database sometimes counts the same incident more than once, its creator Danyel Koca said it pointed to a trend, and was backed up by official data suggesting sightings had increased and even doubled in parts of Japan.

Japan's Ministry of the Environment said more than 1,000 bear sightings were reported nationwide in January and March this year, nearly double the number for the same period last year, according to local media.

The bear at the Fukushima steelworks attacked three more people before it was chased into an electronics factory, where it reportedly climbed out a window and is still at large.

Across the country, four people have been killed by bears since April 1, when Japan's fiscal year begins, according to Japan's Ministry of the Environment.

Among the victims was a 73-year-old woman found dead near her home in north-eastern Japan last week.

Japanese residents are being warned to steer clear of bears. (ABC News: Yumi Asada)

Authorities were also investigating whether a bear had killed a person last month west of Tokyo, when only the bottom half of a body was discovered in the mountains near a backpack and trekking poles, according to local media reports.

That incident, which has not been added to the national death toll, occurred days after a Russian hiker was seriously injured by a bear in the same area.

Japanese authorities say a 55-year-old woman found dead last month was killed by a bear.

Most encounters involve the Asian black bear on the islands of Honshu and Shikoku, and the Ussuri brown bear on the northern island of Hokkaido. Both are omnivorous species.

Experts say a shortage of nuts due to poor seasonal harvests has driven bears closer to cities in search of food, leading to the increase in sightings and attacks.

Yoshikazu Sato, a professor of wildlife ecology at Rakuno Gak