Nomenclature: "ōkami" and "yamainu" Before Dutch zoologist
Coenraad Jacob Temminck classified it, it had been long recognized in Japan that
Honshu was inhabited by two distinct canids,
ōkami (wolf) and
yamainu ("mountain dog", likely a type of
feral dog), both of which were described by herbalist
Ono Ranzan in his
Honzō kōmoku keimō ("An instructional outline of natural studies") in 1803. He described the
ōkami as an edible, but rapacious, greyish-brown animal with a long, ash-colored, white-tipped tail with webbed toes and triangular eyes that would occasionally threaten people if rabid or hungry. In contrast, the
yamainu was described as a similar animal, but with speckled yellowish fur, unwebbed toes, a foul odor and inedible meat. Ranzan's works were studied by German botanist
Philipp Franz von Siebold during his tenure in
Dejima. He purchased a female mountain dog and a wolf in 1826, describing both in his notes as distinct, and preparing two sketches illustrating their differences. The skin of the mountain dog was subsequently shipped to the
Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie in the
Netherlands and mounted. The specimen, along with Siebold's notes, were used by Temminck as references for his scientific classification of the animal in
Fauna Japonica (1839). Temminck, however, misinterpreted Siebold's notes distinguishing the wolf and the mountain dog and treated the two as synonyms. In 1842, he wrote a longer description, still confounding the two names, and producing a sketch of a "wolf" based on Siebold's mounted mountain dog specimen. is a subspecies of the gray wolf (
Canis lupus). Skeletal remains of the Japanese wolf have been found in archaeological sites, such as
Torihama shell mounds, dating from the
Jōmon period (10,000 to 250 B.C). The Japanese wolf inhabited Kyushu, Shikoku, and Honshu Islands :
See further: Evolution of the wolf – North America and Japan An examination of sequences from 113 ancient
Canis specimens from China and Russia did not match, which indicated that none of these specimens were the ancestors of the Japanese wolf. Analyses of the
mitochondrial DNA of 1576 dogs worldwide revealed that one
Kishu A more-refined study of Japanese wolf
mitochondrial DNA showed that they could be further divided into two separate groups, and that the sequences from one
Kishu, one
Siberian husky and one
Shiba Inu could also be divided into the two groups. with clade F haplogroup dogs originating from a rare admixture between male dogs and more than one female ancestor of Japanese wolves, which have contributed to the dog gene pool. A 2022 study which sequenced the genome of a 35,000 year old wolf from Japan found that Holocene Japanese wolf represented the hybrid of separate migrations of wolves into Japan, one of Siberian Pleistocene wolves around 57-35,000 years ago, and later waves of mixed Pleistocene Siberian wolf and modern wolf ancestry around 37-14,000 years ago. A 2024 study found that Japanese wolves were nested within the diversity of living wolves as more closely related to (but not nested within) Eurasian wolves than to North American wolves, and that they were more closely related to domestic dogs than to other wolves, though Japanese wolves are unlikely to be the direct ancestors of domestic dogs. Contrary to the results of the 2021 and 2022 studies, no evidence was found for a close relationship with Siberian Pleistocene wolves and Holocene Japanese wolves (with the study finding that the 35,000 year old Japanese wolf more closely related to Pleistocene Siberian wolves than to Holocene Japanese wolves, contrary to the results of the 2022 study) which the authors suggested was likely the result of differences in statistical analysis. Admixture with domestic and feral dogs had been common in Japan, and distinguishing the original wolf was already difficult as scientific approaches for classification and species identification only began in Meiji where authorities were troubled to distinguish damages by wolves and dogs. Intentional cross-breeding between wild wolves and female domestic dogs, being chained outside, to create strong breeds was common, and several "types" of "wolves" had been commonly recognized by publics including potential F1 hybrids. Genetic analysis of Siebold's
yamainu specimen using
matrilineal mtDNA has found it to genetically match the Japanese wolf; however, its skull displays significant differences from other Japanese wolves. Due to this, it has been theorized that the
yamainu may represent
wolfdog hybrids between Japanese wolves and feral dogs, and Siebold's specimen was likely the offspring of a wolf mother and dog father. ==Description==