The last Japanese wolf was captured on Honshu in 1905.
The animal was captured and killed on January 23, 1905, at Washikaguchi in Higashiyoshino village, Nara Prefecture. Honshu was the principal island range of the Japanese wolf, also called the Honshu wolf, an extinct subspecies of the gray wolf known scientifically as Canis lupus hodophilax.
The Japanese wolf had also lived on Shikoku and Kyushu, so the island question can cause confusion. It did not inhabit Hokkaido; that island was home to a different subspecies, the Hokkaido wolf. The final Honshu capture therefore represents the last confirmed Japanese wolf record, not merely the last animal found on the largest Japanese island.
Disease, especially rabies and canine distemper, reduced wolf numbers, while firearms, poison, bounties, habitat changes, and Meiji-era persecution intensified the decline. Later reports of wolf-like animals have generated occasional claims that the species survived, but none has been scientifically verified. The Japanese wolf remains classified as extinct.