Persimmon is called kaki in Japanese, and a most popular fruit in autumn. There are two kinds of persimmon, one is sweet while the other contains tannic acid so that tastes very bitter (sour) even after complete maturation. Mouth-puckering tannic acid can be evaporated so that dry persimon made under sunshine is the very good storage food. Alternatively, tannic acid may be removed by alcohol; sour-taste persimmon will become vary sweet after it is kept in a plastic bag that contains a small amount of ethyl alcohol.
But few Japanese are hungry these days, and so many kaki trees are left with so many fruits partly due to the tedious work to make dry persimmon (photo).
In this year, many bears have been seen in the country side villages. They are good-tempered animals, but may attack people when they are upset. Japanese cannot kill monkeys but aloow hunters to kill bears because of the frequent incidence of the encounter between village people and bears. According to the statistics, in the Honsyu island there are 8000-10000 bears. No bear in the Kyusyu island, while less than 100 in the Shkoku island. Bears are in the danger of termination in this country.
According to people who work for the preservation of bears in Japan, the remaining kaki fruits in the country side villages is the main cause for the collision between people and bears. These volunteer bear-preserving people, if asked, come to villages and take out all of the kaki fruits or wrap the trees by the metalic plates for bears not to be able to climb. Otherwise, hunters will come and kill bears (every year nearly 2000-3000 bears are shot by hunters). This is very sad.
Hungry bears in the late autumn or winter find these remaining bright orange color fruits from their living mountains.
Their visits may end with the sad outcome.
Kaki is also liked by birds and monkeys.