Before the onset of the Meiji restoration period in 1868, wolves had a benign rather than noxious place in Japanese culture and folklore. Wolves were, however, occasionally hunted. Wolf bounties ("shōkin") first appeared in Morioka where horse predation by wolves was frequent. Domain lords would pay 700 mon for males, and 900 for females, though peasants received much less. Wolves in Japan became extinct during the Meiji restoration period, an extermination known as "ōkami no kujo". The wolf was deemed a threat to ranching which the Meiji government promoted at the time, and targeted via a bounty system and a direct chemical extermination campaign inspired by the similar contemporary American campaign. Starting August 1875, the Iwate Prefecture government offered bounties ("shōreikin") of 7¥ for male wolves and 8 for females. In 1878 in Sapporo, it was decided to set higher bounties for wolves than bears in order to further motivate the ethnic Ainu people into killing wolves, which were once considered sacred to them. Hokkaido experienced significant development during this period and the Hokkaido wolf also suffered from resulting environmental disruption. The last Japanese wolf was a male killed on 23 January 1905 near Washikaguchi (now called Higashi Yoshiro). The carcass was bought by a man working for the Duke of Bedford, and was subsequently put on display in the British Museum of Natural History.