Description
Honshū Wolf (Canis lupus hodophilax) in National Science Museum of Japan.
Date 21 July 2007
Source Japanese Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ja:%E7%94%BB%E5%83%8F:%E3%83%8B%E3%83%9B%E3%83%B3%E3%82%AA%E3%82%AA%E3%82%AB%E3%83%9F%E3%83%BB%E5%9B%BD%E7%AB%8B%E7%A7%91%E5%AD%A6%E5%8D%9A%E7%89%A9%E9%A4%A8%E6%89%80%E8%94%B5.jpg
Author Katuuya
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Honshu-wolf.jpg

The Japanese wolf (Japanese: ニホンオオカミ(日本狼 ー Hepburn: Nihon ōkami?) (Canis lupus hodophilax) is an extinct subspecies of the gray wolf that was once endemic to the islands of Honshū, Shikoku, and Kyūshū in the Japanese archipelago. It is also known as the Honshū wolf. Its binomial name derives from the Greek Hodo (path) and phylax (guardian), in reference to Japanese folklore, which portrayed wolves as the protectors of travellers. It was one of two subspecies that were once found in the Japanese archipelago, the other being the Hokkaido wolf.
Order: Carnivora
Family: Canidae
Genus: Canis
Species: Canis lupus hodophilax (Temminck, 1839)
Synonyms
Canis hodopylax (Temminck, 1844)
Canis japonicus (Nehring, 1885)