 In the Shinto religion, wild animals were associated with the mountain spirit Yama-no-kami.Before Dutch zoologist Coenraad Jacob Temminck classified it, it had been long recognized in Japan that Honshu was inhabited by two distinct canids; "ōkami" (wolf) and "yamainu" (mountain dog), both of which were described by the herbalist Ono Ranzan in his "Honzō kōmoku keimō" (“An instructional outline of natural studies”) in 1803.He described the "ōkami" as an edible, but rapacious, greyish-brown animal with a long, ash-colored, white-tipped tail with webbed toes and triangular eyes that would occasionally threaten people if rabid or hungry.