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If you are looking for an alarm system that incorporates the latest in AI-enabled bear facial recognition technology, Japan’s Daiwa Tsushin has the thing for you. And, depending on risk appetite, for your portfolio.
如果你正在寻找一套采用最新人工智能(AI)熊脸识别技术的报警系统，日本的大和通信(Daiwa Tsushin)正好有合适的产品。并且，根据你的风险偏好，它或许也适合纳入你的投资组合。
Trained on 50,000 photos and videos of bears native to Japan and empowered by a dedicated server, Face Bear will trigger anti-bear sirens and alert the property owner to the threat of clawed rampage via smartphone, but completely ignore gentler wildlife.
这款名为Face Bear的系统，以日本本土熊类的5万张照片和视频为训练数据，并配备专用服务器。它能够在识别出熊时触发防熊警报，并通过智能手机向房主发出警示，提醒可能发生的“爪击横行”；与此同时，它会完全忽略温顺的野生动物。
It is a product forged in unsettling and revelatory times. Japan’s bears, in their emboldened advance on cowering towns, are interrogating the nation on global warming, demographics and industrial policy.
这是一款诞生于不安与启示交织时代的产品。日本的熊群正胆大妄为地逼近人类瑟缩的城镇，迫使这个国家不得不思考全球变暖、人口结构以及产业政策。
Between April and the end of July this year, Japan had experienced a near record 55 bear attacks on humans, thousands more bear sightings than usual and intensive media coverage of the ursine scourge. There have been horrible maulings, three deaths and an unprecedented legal revision to accelerate the authorisation of lethal force as the bears encroach on everything from school sports days, golf tournaments and shopping streets to airport runways, motorways and bullet train tracks.
今年4月至7月底，日本发生了近乎创纪录的55起熊袭击人类事件，熊的目击次数比往常多出数千起，媒体也对这场“熊祸”进行了密集报道。期间出现了可怖的撕咬事件，造成3人死亡，并促成了一项前所未有的法律修订，以加快对致命武力的授权，熊群已侵扰了学校运动会、高尔夫锦标赛、商业街区、机场跑道、高速公路和新干线铁轨。
Unofficial polls of public opinion capture a nation divided. Earlier this summer, when a 52-year-old newspaper delivery man was fatally savaged by a bear in Hokkaido, local authorities fielded hundreds of calls from the public: many pleaded for the bears to be shown clemency, others insisted rangers “shoot the lot”.
非官方民调显示公众意见分裂。今年夏天早些时候，一名52岁的北海道送报工人惨遭熊袭致死，当地政府接到了上百个公众电话：许多人恳求对熊网开一面，另一些人则坚持要求护林员“把它们全打死”。
The clearest message is straightforwardly alarming. Expert explanations for the rise in Japan’s bear-related incidents over recent years cite the role of climate change — in particular Japan’s shortening rainy seasons, increased freak floods and accumulating tally of record heatwaves — for disrupting the bears’ natural food supply. Nut and other nourishing plant yields are smaller, fruit ripens too early in the feeding cycle, and the smell of urban cuisine drives hangry bears into town.
最清晰的信号其实令人震惊。专家解释称，日本近年来熊袭事件上升的原因，首先与气候变化有关——尤其是雨季缩短、极端洪灾频发以及不断刷新纪录的热浪，这些都破坏了熊的天然食物供给。坚果和其他高营养植物的产量减少，水果过早成熟，导致熊在进食周期中“错过窗口”，而城镇美食的气味又把饥饿的熊引向人类聚居地。
The second explanation is also dispiriting for ageing, shrinking Japan: the bears are expanding their habitats into what was once irrefutably human territory because they are less impeded. The human population of firearm-licensed rangers has dwindled and greyed. Rural villages increasingly lie near empty as younger Japanese move to cities and the older ones die.
第二种解释同样令老龄化、人口萎缩的日本感到沮丧：熊之所以将活动范围扩大到曾经无可争辩的人类领地，是因为它们受到的阻碍变少了。持枪护林员数量锐减且日趋老龄化。随着年轻人迁往城市、老年人相继去世，乡村村落愈发接近空置。
Estimates of Japan’s total bear population are rough, but domestic media cite figures of around 12,000 brown bears and 44,000 black bears. The former has risen steadily. The latter is thought to have tripled over the last 12 years. Japan’s human population, over that period, fell by 5mn. Depending on your taste for symbolism, it paints a demoralising picture of a country facing national dotage: the old and less vigorous incumbent versus the fecund and ravenous animal spirits on its borders.
日本熊群的总量估计仍不精确，但国内媒体引用的数据约为棕熊1.2万只、黑熊4.4万只。棕熊数量稳步上升，黑熊数量据称在过去12年间翻了两倍。与此同时，日本人口在同一时期减少了500万。若从象征意义解读，这无疑是一幅令人沮丧的画面：年迈体弱的守成者对阵边境上旺盛贪婪的动物精神。
But such a picture underplays what continues to make Japan so formidable as an industrial power, and the risks of giving that up. Earlier this year, as the first bear attack stories began to proliferate, investors began screening the 3,948 companies listed on Tokyo’s various stock exchanges to find which stocks would stand to benefit from the panic.
但这种图景淡化了日本作为工业强国依然强大的根本，以及放弃这一点所带来的风险。今年早些时候，随着第一批“熊袭击”报道开始激增，投资者开始筛查东京各类证券交易所上市的3948家公司，寻找哪些股票可能从“熊慌”中获利。。
Well over a dozen companies, on an initial trawl, had potentially lucrative exposure to the narrow theme of bear panic via what in many cases are obscure subsidiaries. The basket included four companies like Maeda Kosen, which specialise in sensor-equipped electric fences, and others like Sekisui Jushi, which makes equipment for protecting crops from larger animals. The exposure of Miroku, Japan’s largest manufacturer of hunting rifles was obvious; less so that of Odakyu Electric Railway, whose “Hunter Bank” subsidiary is an online matching service between trained bear hunters and forest workers with a bear problem.
初步筛选中有十余家公司可能在这一狭窄主题上获得可观收益，其中许多依赖鲜为人知的子公司。这一篮子里包括像前田工繊(Maeda Kosen)这样的企业，专门制造配备传感器的电力围栏；还有积水树脂(Sekisui Jushi)，生产防护农作物免遭大型动物破坏的设备。日本最大的猎枪制造商美陆(Miroku)的相关性显而易见；但小田急电铁(Odakyu Electric Railway)的关联则不太直观——其子公司“Hunter Bank”是一个在线平台，撮合受过训练的猎熊人和有熊患困扰的林业工人。
Even as it has retreated demographically, Japan (and by extension its enormous pool of listed companies) remains a full-spec industrial economy. For some years now, that diversity and the perceived surfeit of obscure, non-core (often unprofitable) subsidiaries has been under ideological attack both from investors and from a government keen to make the market more attractive. The streamlining process is already under way, but the country should be wary of giving up too much of its diversity.
即便在人口结构退缩的背景下，日本，以及其庞大的上市公司群体，仍是一个全功能的工业经济体。多年来，这种产业多样性以及被认为“过剩”的冷门、非核心——往往无利润——子公司，一直遭到投资者和力图提升市场吸引力的政府在理念上的抨击。精简的进程已经在推进，但日本应谨慎，不要过度削减多样性。
Japan’s “more is more” industrial instincts are what convinced Daiwa Tsushin, primarily a security camera business, to get into the AI bear face recognition game. Sadly, its stock has fallen 27 per cent since the start of the year. Mauled, repeatedly, by market bears.
正是这种“多多益善”的工业本能，让大和通信这家以安防摄像头为主的企业，进入了AI熊脸识别这一赛道。遗憾的是，该公司股价自年初以来已下跌27%。一次次被市场“熊”无情撕咬。