The Mammal Society of Japan (MSJ) was established in 1987 by uniting the two academic organizations, the Mammalogical Society of Japan and the Research Group of Mammalogists, which were founded in 1949 and 1955, respectively. There is, however, a trustworthy record of a number of Japanese mammalogists having organized the earliest research meeting in 1923. We, therefore, celebrated the 90th anniversary of the founding of MSJ on 25th January, 2013. The mission of the society is not only to promote the global advance of mammalogy, but also to encourage social interactions among our members. The society currently enrolls over 1,100 members involving students and amateurs.

The society convenes an annual meeting and publishes the two journals. “Mammal Study” is a flagship publication of the society and is published quarterly articles written in English covering all aspects of mammalogy. The society also publishes “Honyurui Kagaku [Mammalian Science]” twice a year, written in Japanese. It is composed of the research articles and its related reports on theological discussion, study techniques, species collection data, species distribution information, and others.

Annual meeting of the society consists of academic sessions (symposia, oral presentations, and poster papers), workshops, and a business meeting. The 2014 meeting was held in Kyoto University with more than 500 members. The society makes honorable recognition of a distinguished member by giving him/her “MSJ Award” and grants “Young Mammalogist Award” to a younger member showing high research activities. Memorial lectures by awardees are featured in the annual meeting.

Members of the society always give a deep concern for social problems with mammals. The society organizes an expert committee which deals with conservation and management of mammals and takes some measures to control invasive mammals. Current issue to be solved is the nuisance behavior due to an overabundance of the sika deer and wild boar populations. The committee is giving various advices on conservation and management at both national and local government levels. The society has also evaluated the information on the present status of the species and published periodically a red list of Japanese mammals. The international exchange committee sends representatives of MSJ to International Federation of Mammalogists (IFM) for exchanging information each other. And also, they make efforts to interchange with Asian mammalogists to construct Asian Network.

The Society hosted the 9th International Mammalogical Congress (IMC9) in Sapporo in July, 2005, which gathered 1,125 attendants from 52 countries and areas, and published a commemorative publication “The Wild Mammal of Japan” which is an encyclopedia of Japanese mammals, covering all mammal species in Japan including marine mammals (169 species in total). The annual meeting in 2009 was held in Taipei in cooperation with Taiwanese mammalogists.

MSJ transmits information about their activities on the official webpage: http://www.mammalogy.jp/