[10] Japanese macaques live in matrilineal societies,[5] and females stay in their natal groups for life, while males move out before they are sexually mature.

[22] Mothers pass their grooming techniques to their offspring, most probably through social rather than genetic means,[23] as a cultural characteristic.

Yakei is a female who rose to leadership of her troop at Takasakiyama Natural Zoological Garden in 2021.

Her troop consists of 677 Japanese macaque monkeys who live in a sanctuary that was established in 1952 at the zoological garden.

[24] Yakei has retained her leadership position through her first breeding season that had been thought to be a time when she might have been challenged successfully.

[35] This behavior has led to proposals in literature that female Japanese macaques are generally bisexual, rather than preferentially homo- or heterosexual.

Threat calls are heard during aggressive encounters and are often uttered by supporters of those involved in antagonistic interactions.

Researchers studying this species at Koshima Island in Japan left sweet potatoes out on the beach for them to eat, then witnessed one female, named Imo (Japanese for yam or potato), washing the food off with river water rather than brushing it off as the others were doing, and later even dipping her clean food into salty seawater.

The macaque has other unusual behaviours, including bathing together in hot springs and rolling snowballs for fun.

[54] Also, in recent studies, the Japanese macaque has been found to develop different accents, similar to human cultures.

[55] Macaques in areas separated by only a few hundred miles may have very different pitches in their calls, their form of communication.

In the winter, macaques have two to four feeding bouts each day, with fewer daily activities.

The typical day for a macaque is 20.9% inactive, 22.8% traveling, 23.5% feeding, 27.9% social grooming, 1.2% self-grooming, and 3.7% other activities.

[60] Macaques at Jigokudani Monkey Park are notable for visiting the hot springs in the winter to warm up after being encouraged to concentrate there in the 1960s, part of a plan to reduce local crop damage from foraging.

[62] On Yakushima Island, fruit, mature leaves, and fallen seeds are primarily eaten.

[65] On the northern island of Kinkasan, macaques mostly eat fallen seeds, herbs, young leaves, and fruits.

[66] When preferred food items are not available, macaques dig up underground plant parts (roots or rhizomes) or eat soil and fish.

It is found on three of the four main Japanese islands, south of the Blakiston's Line: Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu.

[5] The southernmost population living on Yakushima Island is a subspecies of the mainland macaques, M. fuscata yakui.

[5] In 1972, a troop of approximately 150 Japanese macaques was relocated from Kyoto to a primate observatory in southwest Texas, United States.

The observatory is an enclosed ranch-style environment and the macaques have been allowed to roam with minimal human interference.

In 1996, hunters maimed or killed four escaped macaques; as a result, legal restrictions were publicly clarified and funds were raised to establish a new 186-acre (75 ha) sanctuary near Dilley, Texas.

[72] Traditional human behaviors that are threats to macaques have been slash-and-burn agriculture, use of forest woods for construction and fuel, and hunting.

Since World War II, these threats have declined due to social and economic changes in Japan,[73] including the prohibition of macaque hunting in 1947.

Because of this, and land-use changes increasing the proximity of agriculture to the macaques' range,[75] they have become a major agricultural pest; they can climb over regular fences and quickly realise that deterrents such as scarecrows do not pose an actual threat, so methods such as electric fences must be used.

In Shinto belief, mythical beasts known as raijū sometimes appeared as monkeys and kept Raijin, the god of lightning, company.

The creature was sometimes portrayed in paintings of the rich cultural epoch, the Edo period that flourished from 1603 to 1867, as a tangible metaphor for a particular year.

The early nineteenth-century artist and samurai, Watanabe Kazan (1793–1841), created a painting of a macaque.

Also during the Edo period, numerous clasps for kimono or tobacco pouches (collectively called netsuke) were carved in the shape of macaques.

[85] In modern Japanese culture, because monkeys are considered to indulge their libido openly and frequently (much the same way as rabbits are thought to in some Western cultures), a man who is preoccupied with sex might be compared to or metaphorically referred to as a monkey, as might a romantically involved couple who are exceptionally amorous.