In Japanese folktales, they are sometimes heroes and sometimes villains.

The Japanese Macaque is the only monkey living in the wild in Japan. They are familiar for Japanese people, so they often appear in Japanese folktales. The story of a Japanese Macaque who follows a man born from a peach and goes with a dog and a pheasant to defeat a demon and the story of a Japanese Macaque who kills a parent crab and is avenged by baby crabs are folk tales featuring Japanese Macaque that most Japanese people are familiar with.

In our actual lives, many of us have recently had problems with Japanese Macaque rampaging near our homes. We need to find ways to coexist with nature, even though climate change is reducing the amount of food in the mountains and wild animals are increasingly coming down to human settlements.