Japanese wolf

The Japanese wolf (ニホンオオカミ(日本狼), Nihon ōkami, or 山犬, yamainu [see below]; Canis lupus hodophilax), also known as the Honshū wolf, is an extinct subspecies of the gray wolf that was once endemic to the islands of Honshū, Shikoku and Kyūshū in the Japanese archipelago. It was one of two subspecies that were once found in the Japanese archipelago, the other being the Hokkaido wolf. Phylogenetic evidence indicates that Japanese wolf was the last surviving wild member of the Pleistocene wolf lineage (in contrast to the Hokkaido wolf which belonged to the lineage of the modern day gray wolf), and may have been the closest wild relative of the domestic dog. Many dog breeds originating from Japan also have Japanese wolf DNA from past hybridization. Despite long being revered in Japan, the introduction of rabies and canine distemper to Japan led to the decimation of the population, and policies enacted during the Meiji Restoration led to the persecution and eventual total extermination of the subspecies by the early 20th century. Well-documented observations of similar canids have been made throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, and have been suggested to be surviving wolves. However, due to environmental and behavioral factors, doubts persist over their identity. C. hodopylax'''s binomial name derives from the Greek Hodos (path) and phylax (guardian), in reference to Okuri-inu from Japanese folklore, which portrayed wolves or weasels as the protectors of travelers. There had been numerous other aliases referring to Japanese wolf, and the name ōkami (wolf) is derived from the Old Japanese öpö-kamï, meaning either "great-spirit" where wild animals were associated with the mountain spirit Yama-no-kami in the Shinto religion, or "big dog", or "big bite" (ōkami or ōkame), and "big mouth"; Ōkuchi-no-Makami (Japanese) was an old and deified alias for Japanese wolf where it was both worshipped and feared, and it meant "a true god with big-mouth" based on several theories; either referring to wolf's mouth with associations with several legends and folklore such as the wolf guided Yamato Takeru and was titled so by the prince, or a region in Asuka called Ōkuchi-no-Makami-no-Hara where Asuka no Kinunui no Konoha (Japanese) lived and a number of people were said to be killed by an old wolf there.