Arashiyama Monkey Park Iwatayama

This guide to Arashiyama Monkey Park Iwatayama opens with its first rule, never lock eyes with a Japanese macaque, near the summit of a small mountain above the Oi River where more than a hundred wild monkeys roam free while visitors feed them from inside a caged hut. It traces the mountain's research history since 1948, the student researcher Naonosuke Hazama who began naming individual monkeys in 1954, and the businessman Sonosuke Iwata, who donated the land before the park opened in 1957. Keep your hands steady at the feeding hut, and don't stare.