Makiko Itoh answered the question "Do people in Japan actually eat tanuki in hot pot?". A side information of her shows "I write about Japanese food and cooking and am Japanese".
I quote her answer below:
A long, long time ago it may have been more widely eaten, but these days it rarely is. Even when it is eaten it's limited to certain regions, and to certain seasons. Tanuki are omnivores, and the meat of omnivores is supposed to be very unpleasant.
You do see a lot of dishes that are called tanuki, e.g. tanuki udon, but that usually means it has some tenkasu (tempura batter crumbs) in it. The 'tanuki' part of such dishes has nothing to do with the animal - it comes from 'tanenuki', or 'no main ingredient/filling' - i.e. tempura batter without the shrimp or vegetable or whatever.
Another article, which writes about interesting names of food, says:
Do Japanese people eat fox and raccoon dog?
“No way!”
Don’t worry! They are just a name of foods and any fox and raccoon dog are NOT cooked.
(Raccoon dog = Tanuki)
Another answer by bluemoonmemory for the question "Do people really eat tanuki?":
Because raccoon dog is not cultivated but just hunting game in limited official hunting season, the supply is scarcely limited. Most of Japanese never eat tanuki but rabit or sort of fake instead actually.
In addition, tanuki soba or tanuki udon is just name only. It doesn't contain any tanuki meat or tanuki extract. It is soba or udon with topping something non-animal products deep-fried that old people long time ago once had thought it as if tasted like tanuki or much better.
Raccoon dog meat has heavy animal smell urinal. This modern society of Japan people prefer beef, pork and/or chicken much more to wild animal meat. They don't need to eat tanuki anymore.
With these information, I would say that Japanese generally do not eat tanuki. Only the food is called like that, but it is actually made from other animal or even vegeratarian. But I would not deny that it is eaten in some regions, and especially a long time ago.
