The pair approached each other with a bow. They crossed back
and forth, gliding up into the air and returning to earth with the effortless
grace of parachutes. In a dramatic flourish, they spread their pristine white
and jet-black wings wide and tilted their beaks to the arc of blue sky above. As this elegant courtship ritual unfolded, Kazuhiko
Yamazaki, a vegetable farmer, drove a large red tractor onto a snow-covered
field on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. From a green rotating funnel
he dispensed about 40 pounds of corn to more than 50 red-crowned cranes, a bird
revered in Japan as a symbol of loyalty and longevity. Just over a half-century ago, when Yamazaki’s grandfather
started sprinkling corn kernels from a metal bucket onto that same field, only
about three dozen red-crowned cranes were left in all of Japan. But thanks to a
decadeslong effort led by local conservators and subsidised by the Japanese
government, the number of red-crowned cranes in Yamazaki’s town, Kushiro, has
swelled to about 1,900. Last year, the bird — which appeared on the 1,000-yen note
for nearly a quarter-century, serves as the logo of Japan Airlines and
regularly features in artistic scrolls and New Year’s greeting cards — was
reclassified as “vulnerable” from “endangered” by a worldwide conservation
group. The new designation signals that the cranes are no longer at imminent
risk of extinction. Some ornithologists question whether the species can be
declared safe, given that its natural population in China is still deeply
imperilled and that the Japanese population relies almost entirely on human
feeding. Across Asia, climate change is degrading the wetlands where the cranes
find food, nest and raise their young. Scientists worry that a disease outbreak in Kushiro could
wipe out the heavy concentration of cranes in the area. A managed plan to
reduce artificial feedings has driven many of the birds onto local farms, in
some cases wreaking havoc on livestock food supplies and making other
communities leery of hosting large numbers of cranes. “We have been overly successful in some ways,” said Osamu
Harada, chief ranger at a crane sanctuary in Tsurui, a village in the Kushiro
area where a branch of the Wild Bird Society of Japan feeds hundreds of cranes
twice a day. “Our first stage of conservation was simply to increase the
number,” Harada added. “But the second stage is to think about how we can help
them to live on their own in nature.” Kushiro residents have a self-interested reason for
preserving the cranes: They are a considerable tourist draw. Before the
pandemic, hundreds of thousands of visitors travelled to Hokkaido from the rest
of Asia as well as Europe and the United States to ogle and photograph the
birds. Even with Japan’s borders closed to international tourists,
a feeding one recent day drew a lineup of domestic bird watchers to the Tsurui
sanctuary. Wielding cameras outfitted with enormous telephoto lenses, they
provided a soundtrack of rapid-fire shutter clicks as snow silently fell around
the dancing cranes. “If the cranes were to disappear from Tsurui village, it
would be a big problem,” said Masahiro Wada, 66, a third-generation inn owner
and photographic tour guide who recently opened a gallery where framed prints
of his own crane pictures line the walls, some with asking prices of close to
$1,200. Records show that red-crowned cranes — named for the discs
of red skin that gleam on the heads of adult birds — were plentiful throughout
Japan during the Edo period, from the 17th to the 19th century. In that era,
the cranes were kept as pets — as well as prepared as culinary delicacies — for
the shoguns who ruled the realm. During the latter half of the 19th century, commoners began
to hunt the red-crowned cranes aggressively, and in the 20th century,
construction and agriculture wiped out their wetland habitats. By the 1920s,
there were fears that the cranes had gone extinct, until a handful were
discovered in Kushiro, barely surviving in a large marsh. The Japanese government began passing laws that prohibited
the hunting of the red-crowned cranes and restricted construction in breeding
areas. The Ministry of Culture designated the birds a natural monument in 1935. Sadajiro Yamazaki, Kazuhiko Yamazaki’s grandfather, was the
first local resident to purposefully feed the red-crowned cranes after he
spotted a few nibbling on corn originally intended for his dairy cows. A
community effort to save the cranes gained momentum in 1952, when students at
an elementary school in Tsurui started to sprinkle corn next to a playground
every morning, a ritual that continues to this day. By the early 1980s, Japan’s Environment Ministry was funding
local groups that administered regular feedings, and the Hokkaido government
was offering subsidies to individual landowners. To Sayoko Takahashi, 75, the birds have become an indelible
part of daily life after 25 years of backyard feedings with her husband. Dozens
of cranes arrive each afternoon to wait for Takahashi as she drags a children’s
snow sled bearing two large buckets of corn. Sometimes, the cranes linger outside the house, peering into
the picture window in their living room — especially, she is convinced, when
she plays music by torchy Japanese ballad singers. “I joke that I can’t go
anywhere because of them,” she said. “But if they don’t show up, I get
concerned.” She worries that no one will look after them once she and
her husband, who had a stroke last year, are gone. None of their three adult
daughters have shown interest. Experts are working to ensure that the cranes survive any
threat, including an outbreak of avian flu. The zoo and sanctuaries in Kushiro
keep about 35 rescued cranes in captivity — some that spend their days pacing
back and forth in small cells — in case an artificial breeding program is
needed to replenish the population. Researchers freeze the corpses and organs
of dead cranes to study and preserve their DNA. The biggest focus, however, is a plan to nudge the cranes
away from organised feedings and disperse them toward more natural sources of
food in marshes and rivers across Hokkaido — a process that officials say could
take a decade. “That’s the No. 1 challenge,” said Kunikazu Momose, chair of
the Red-Crowned Crane Conservancy in Hokkaido. “We have to train these cranes
to become more wild.” In 2015, the Environment Ministry began curtailing the daily
feeding volumes. The cranes then invaded local farms, helping themselves to
corn feed intended for dairy cows or beef cattle. Last year, Arata Oikawa, a dairy farmer in Tsurui, dumped
300 tons of corn silage, at a replacement cost of 10 million yen, or about
$85,000, after dozens of red-crowned cranes pecked holes in the tarps covering
the feed and caused it to mould. “They are beautiful birds,” said Oikawa, 47, “but when I
think about them in relation to my work, I don’t like them so much.” Some local farmers have learned to live with their avian
neighbours, but other communities are wary about attracting too many cranes. In Naganuma, a town in western Hokkaido where cranes began
showing up a few years ago, officials and farmers say they want to avoid a
large influx of the birds. “Our hope is not for a lot of them to come to the
area,” said Yoshikazu Kato, director of a local society aiming to “bring back”
the red-crowned cranes. Tamizo Nakamoto, 75, who with his wife, Akiko, 75, moved to
the Kushiro area from Osaka almost three decades ago, said the “worst thing for
the crane environment are human beings.” The couple have developed a private crane sanctuary on their
25 acres, digging wells to create ponds and spending half their pension on corn
and frozen smelt to feed three crane couples that have returned daily year
after year and produced 60 chicks. On a recent afternoon, Nakamoto carried a metal pot filled
with smelt to one of the ponds in front of the couple’s modest house. Spotting
a crane couple, he began to wave his arms. One of the cranes, flapping its
wings, reciprocated. For a moment, it looked as if man and bird were dancing with
each other. 
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