(Dis)controlling monkeys for tourism in Japan: human control, monkey autonomy, and the changing ‘wild monkey park’

What are known as yaen kōen or ‘wild monkey parks’ are popular tourist attractions in Japan that display open-range troops of provisioned Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) to the paying public. Provisioning – the use of food handouts as an attractant – affords the monkey park considerable control over the movements of the monkey troop. But an element of uncertainty remains, and monkeys sometimes fail to appear in the park, which is consequently unable to do business. For park managers, this is the downside of the monkeys’ freedom to come and go. The paper examines how the parks deal with the twin demands of human control and monkey freedom. It shows how in practice park managers make great efforts to minimize the display uncertainty arising from open-range troop mobility.