This is either a chafer or a dung beetle, from the scarab beetle family. See this website for more photos of chafers and dung beetles. It’s tough to tell the exact species. There are chafers and dung beetles that look exactly like this one.
Scarabs in the subfamily Rutelinae are commonly known as “leaf chafers.” The group has approximately 4,100 known species and occurs throughout the world. Click here to learn more about the habits and appearance of leaf chafers.
Dung beetles refer to those beetles which feed partly or exclusively on poop. Most of these species belong to the subfamilies Scarabaeinae and Aphodiinae of the Scarabaediae family.The Scarabaeinae alone comprises more than 5,050 species .As most species of Scarabaeinae feed exclusively on faeces, that subfamily is often dubbed true dung beetles.
There are dung-feeding beetles which belong to other families, such as the Geotrupidae (the earth-boring dung beetle). I think the photo I took above belongs to this family.
Many dung beetles, known as rollers, are noted for rolling dung into spherical balls, which are used as a food source or brooding chambers. Other dung beetles, known as tunnellers, bury the dung wherever they find it. A third group, the dwellers, neither roll nor burrow: they simply live in manure.
Dung beetles, especially the rollers are really interesting, but I’ll save that for another post.
NATURE IN JAPAN 