Film:Snow Prince: Forbidden Love Melody [Sunō Purinsu: Kinjirareta koi no merodii スノープリンス 禁じられた恋のメロディ] Director: MATSUOKA Joji 松岡 錠司 Performers: MORIMOTO Shintaro 森本 慎太郎, KUWASHIMA Marino 桑島 真理乃, TADANOBU Asano 浅野 忠信, Chibi チビ (Patrasche the dog, now Chibi the Akita) Breed featured: Japanese Akita, Miniature Poodles (brief) Dog Trainer: MIYA Tadaomi 宮 忠臣 Assistant Dog Trainer: SUGAWARA Takashi(?) 菅原 孝 Production: Shochiku, 2009 (Japan)
This Japanese version of A Dog of Flanders riffs off a British “puppy love” film called Melody (1971) by shifting the emphasis onto two childhood friends, Sota and Sayo, basically crowding Chibi the Japanese Akita out of the story. SPOILER, Notably, this filmic version was bold enough to follow the original story to its tragic end. / spoiler. That’s about the most I can say in its favor, as the film did very little to convey the essential relationships — boy+grandfather, boy+dog, boy+girl, children+dog, etc. — in anything but the most superficial terms.
It’s always disappointing when a movie features a “rare” breed dog, and then fails to render it with full personality. It’s especially egregious when the dog is supposed to play a much more central role, even featuring in the title of the (original) story! Ironically, a couple dramatic incidents hinge on the boy totally ignoring his dog’s warnings, thus imperiling himself and his friends. Cheap thrills to amp up otherwise muted performances.
Not that the Akita was the most, uhm, engaged actor, either.
Chibi the Akita was directed by Miya Tadaomi, the same dog trainer who handled Mari, Ururu, and just about every other Japanese dog film to come out in recent years. The mismatched eyelines and expressionless canine faces are about par for the course here, but the editing and camera work was especially deficient. Sometimes you can guess from the camera work whether or not a cinematographer actually understands canine body language. An inexperienced photographer will focus on the dog’s face to convey feeling in human, speech-centric terms.
However, dogs communicate using their whole body, head to tail, and they do so most effectively when there is an actual target of communication. That is, mutual interaction with other people, other dogs, and any other creatures, does the most to render animal personality in legible terms. Yet, the actors in Snow Prince seemed resistant to actually touching the dog.
The effect is to diminish the vivacity of the dog, in my opinion. I guess it’s “realistic” in the sense that the boy and his dog are supposed to be half-frozen and starving, but still! What a waste of a gorgeous, fluffy Akita that everyone should be tempted to pet and manhandle.
Asano Tadanobu has a minor, but pivotal role as a circus clown. I appreciate the touch of absurdity he brings to otherwise rote performances, even if his talents are wasted here.
Major squickiness also comes from the concept of “puppy love” and the discomfort of knowing that I’m supposed to be rooting for the ill-fated romance between Sota the pauper and Sayo the rich schoolgirl, but there is no good reason to do so. I know we’re supposed to think they’re so innocent and pure and asexual and blah blah blah, but I’m too cynical. I have no belief in innocent love, just ignorant love. Besides, kids that age are already capable of being really mean to each other, as the other schoolkids demonstrate.
But I’m curious as to what happens when we think of “puppy love” not as an anthropomorphism, but a cynomorphism. What we mean by the term is a fleeting, but intense attachment to another. It’s like when [some] puppies will orient themselves entirely towards their One Person, chosen primarily on the basis of proximity: Oh hey, you’re RIGHT THERE and I LOVE YOU.
Puppies are biologically wired to be people-oriented because they’re helpless and they literally might not live without you. Sorry, that’s not love. That’s sheer survival instinct kicking in when a baby has been violently wrest from its den, and it’s silly to conflate the situations. Don’t forget after all that the children found Chibi, abandoned as a puppy, because his mother had been flogged and worked to death.
Yeah, things were never innocent to begin with.
Anyway, if you have the ability to disengage the part of your brain that processes reality, maybe you’ll enjoy this film. But you’re going to have to identify with something other than the dog… or any of the main characters, because there’s just not much there.
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Because we know the holidays aren’t just about feelgood times in the company of family you can’t stand during the rest of the year, here are ten dog movies that will depress the hell out of everyone and totally ruin your holidays. If things are getting too jolly around the living room, load up one of these films and watch the mood plummet faster than you can say, “Hand me the flask.”
Spoiler alert: A prominent canine character dies in at least six out of ten of these titles. The descriptions below may or may not indicate which ones.
To avoid redundancy, I didn’t list anything that had appeared on my previous list of Top Dog Movies, compiled two years ago. That was my arbitrary reason to omit Journey of Natty Gann (1985), Amores Perros (2000), and Inu no Eiga (2005) which could easily have fit here. I also tried to stay away from some of the typical titles that top these lists like Marley and Me (2008) or Where the Red Fern Grows (1974 & 2003); those were probably better off remaining as only literary properties, anyway.
I will, however, begin with at least one obvious choice, primarily because I haven’t blogged it yet.
10. Old Yeller. Dir. Robert Stevenson. Perf. Tommy Kirk, Kevin Corcoran, Spike the Dog. Walt Disney Pictures: 1957.
Having recently rewatched this children’s classic after not having seen it in probably 20 years, I was struck by a few revelations. The biggest was that older brother Travis Coates, whose self-sufficiency and stiff upper lip in the face of emotional trauma seemed so crushable to me as a child, just seems petulant and downright brutish to me now. He may know how to plow and hunt and keep the household in ham, but he’s kind of a jerk — one who just happens to love a dog that even the cruelest kid in the west should be able to love. Screw you Travis, and your annoying little brother too.
The film’s primary redeeming quality is that they knew to give ample footage to Yeller, the hulk of a Lab-Mastiff cur who comes across as a superdog capable of any task you set before him. For Travis to gain a modicum of maturity at the sacrifice of Yeller’s life seems particularly unjust when one witnesses how badly he regresses in the failed sequel Savage Sam (1963). Yeah, Disney sure sent that sequel to the hogs…
9. Hachi, a Dog’s Tale. Dir. Lasse Hallström. Perf. Richard Gere, Joan Allen, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Chico, Layla, Forrest. Inferno/Stage 6: 2009.
I’m kind of allergic to most romantic leading males (e.g. Richard Gere), so I was initially resistant to this Americanized retelling of the famous story of the loyal Japanese Akita, Hachiko. One masochistic night, I decided to stream this on Netflix, and found it refreshingly sufficient for what little it aspires to be. Transplanted from Tokyo to Rhode Island, this version is relieved of the burden of nationalist authentication, allowing it to “just” be about a dog loving professor and the Akita of his affections. Because their relationship is so untainted and simple, it becomes more like a lament over the poor animal’s inability to process abstractions like death rather than praise for his unflagging loyalty, a sentiment I’ve never been comfortable taking at face value.
Could this spot have been replaced with the 1987 Japanese version (screenshot pictured above)? Well, they used actual Akita instead of Shiba puppies in that one, but it’s kind of hard to topple the downysoft duo of any Nihon ken puppy plus Richard Gere. The American version succeeds by being less moralizing, even gentler, and even more vapid than the predecessor. You don’t have to go into this expecting to think too much, just cry, dammit! Cry! The power of Hachi compels you!
And speaking of sentimental remakes of Japanese originals…
8. Nankyoku monogatari [Antarctica]. Dir. Koreyoshi Kurahara. Perf. Ken Takakura, numerous dogs. 1983.
In 1958, a Japanese expedition to Antarctica had to abandon their team of sled dogs for reasons unexpected and uncontrollable. Fifteen Sakhalin huskies (Karafuto dogs) were left tightly chained to a line with only a week’s worth of food, as the team originally had expected they would return for them. Eight dogs were able to slip or break free of their chains, but then they had to learn to survive in the severe climate and treacherous landscape. Eleven months later, members of the expedition were finally able to return, discovering that two of the original dogs had survived all that time. This film dramatizes that adventure.
With a soundtrack by Vangelis and a pseudo-documentary approach relying on an omniscient narrator to relay the dogs’ thoughts, I suspect the Japanese version strikes a more somber tone than its Disneyfied remake, Eight Below (2006). The Japanese version also presents a more eclectic canine cast than the uniformly purebred Siberian huskies of its American interpretation. With a greater emphasis on the dogs, counting down with each tragic death, there was little attempt to cover up the truth. In fact, a significant side story to the dogs’ survival plot involves one of the expedition members embarking on a grand tour of apology, visiting the families who had contributed sled dogs and personally accounting for his role in the dogs’ noble sacrifice.
At any rate, the austerity of the landscape is thankfully counterbalanced by many scenes of happy, off-leash dogs running fast, loose, and free.
7. Quill. Dir Yoichi Sai. Perf. Kaoru Kobayashi, Kippei Shina, Rafie the dog. Quill Film Partners: 2004.
Quill was raised from puppyhood to be a seeing eye dog, and to spend his life helping others. Due to no fault of his own, he never really gets to stay in a permanent home. His life is his job, such that he barely gets a chance to be a dog. Or rather, as a dog with a job, he has changed the very perception of what it means to be a modern dog. Such selflessness! Such devotion! Such an honorable, purposeful existence! Pass me another tissue, please.
6. Plague Dogs. Dir. Martin Rosen. Perf. John Hurt, Christopher Benjamin, Nigel Hawthorne. Nepenthe: 1982.
As much as we praise the functional dog who works alongside his human partners, there is also a dark side to this relationship, as in the animal testing laboratories of modern industrial societies. Rowf and Snitter are two dogs who escape from such a nightmarish world. However, their presence creates something of a government scandal, as local farmers fear they may be carrying the plague or other diseases created as experiments in bioterrorism. So the hunt is on to capture the errant pair…
Not having read the Richard Adams book on which this animated feature was based, I was completely unprepared for the soul-crushing heaviness of this story. While this is the only animated feature on this list, it is pretty exceptional as far as non-Japanese animation goes, and definitely a memorable title that fully demonstrates how evocative hand-drawn cel art can be.
5. Vidas Secas [Life is Barren]. Dir. Nelson Pereira dos Santos. Perf. Átila Iório, Orlando Macedo, Baleia the dog. Luiz Carlos Barreto Produções Cinematográficas/Sino Filmes, 1963.
Poverty and pets don’t mix. Down with the exploitation of the agricultural peasantry!!
4. Umberto D. Dir. Vittoria De Sica. Perf. Carlo Battisti, Maria-Pia Casilio, Flike the dog. 1952.
Poverty and pets don’t mix. Down with the oppression of the urban underclass!!
3. I Am Legend. Dir. Francis Lawrence. Perf. Will Smith, Abby & Kona the dogs. Village Roadshow: 2007.
A cancer cure gone wrong has turned into a disastrous virus, wiping out 90% of humanity and turning the remaining 9% into photosensitive mutants who feed on the 1% of humans possessing natural immunity. Will Smith plays a military doctor who is part of that exclusive 1%, occupying a depopulated New York City with his faithful German Shepherd, Samantha. She is the only other living thing that responds to language — except, unfortunately, his stop or recall commands when it really, really matters.
After her passing, it seems intolerable for life (or the movie, for that matter) to go on, but it has to conclude somehow. The unwatchableness of the last, dog-less third does its part to ensure some potent ill will towards the filmmakers, if not all of humanity.
2. Pedigree Dogs Exposed. Dir. Jemima Harrison. BBC One: 2008.
While we might fabricate good reasons to distrust science in the name of Hollywood fantasy, there are actually compelling reasons to heed science in our day-to-day transactions, including the breeding of our beloved pets. This British documentary is certainly not the first to have raised concerns about the ethics of purebred dog breeding, but its sensational manner created an unprecedented splash when it was first broadcast — all the better to get the public talking.
The 50-minute long documentary is not without its faults, as the director has no time to spare in airing the happily-ever-after pet stories that we take for normal. She has been targeted by some rather vitriolic breeders and critics, as her blog frequently reveals. Perhaps what’s most depressing is not what this documentary reveals about the health of some breeds as a whole, but rather what it exposes about the mindset of some people at top echelons who have completely warped visions of what it means to be breed stewards.
If the YouTube movie embedded above does not work, just search for another version. It’s readily available online, last I checked. The sequel, Pedigree Dogs Exposed: Three Years On (2011) continues the investigation with some extra footage to be found on the DVDs, available for purchase here.
1. Good-bye, My Lady. Dir. William Wellman. Perf. Walter Brennan, Brandon deWilde, Sidney Poitier, My Lady of the Congo. Batjac: 1956.
So here’s another iteration of boy-gets-superdog, boy-loses-superdog-and-gains-maturation theme. Though I didn’t rank this list in any particular order, I would put this one far higher than the title that began this roundup because the dog is a Basenji, and the Basenji doesn’t die.
TAKE NOTE, future screenwriters and directors! Contrary to convention, the dog doesn’t have to die for the characters to arrive at enlightenment. Leave the dog alone. If somebody’s gotta go, try killing off the boy or mom and dad or a few hundred mutants or half the town’s population first. Audiences and critics will hate you less.
More dog films, including happier ones, can be found by checking out posts filed under FILMS, or accessing the index of dog movies reviewed and screencapped on this blog.
Bowdu met a 15-week-old American Akita. The pit bull puppy was a little less confident, but cute too.
While Bowdu was okay with that even-tempered Akita, he surely would have snarled at this super wriggly guy. Luckily, this pup chose to sidle up to his own red and white kind.
And then there was this little beetle, who could barely stay still for a second…
… let alone remain upright. Silly thing. It was like she was deliberately throwing herself around to compensate for how gentle the Dane was being. Bowpi seemed as amused as I was.
Skabelund, Aaron Herald. Empire of Dogs: Canines, Japan, and the Making of the Modern Imperial World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011.
Professor Skabelund’s first book-length publication is driven by the inherent appeal of its subject: the domestic dog. As an academic history of Japanese canines and the canine in Japan, the presentation is fresh, unconventional, meticulously documented, vividly illustrated, and intellectually rewarding.
The stakes are laid out masterfully in the opening gambit on “Canine Imperialism,” reiterating questions Skabelund asked earlier in his 2005 article, “Can the Subaltern Bark?”1 Skabelund answers his own riff off Gayatri Spivak’s famous query by commiting to uncover a history of that which has never had and will never have the opportunity to write itself. Without affectation, he muses on the methodological difficulties in conducting a dog-centric history, which has forced him to dispense with certain tricks of the trade (no oral history, for starters!) and read against the grain of widely dispersed archives. Because the ancient and organic human-canine partnership involves so many areas of cultural and historical activity, there is no shortage of materials when one begins to look. Skabelund narrows his focus to the deployment of dogs as both a physical and metaphorical weapon of power in imperial imaginations, nationalistic discourse, military battlefields, and practices of [mostly economic] consumption.
The chapters build intuitively upon each other. Skabelund advances quickly from the theoretical opening to concrete examples, beginning with the parallel trajectories of Western dogs, who had accompanied Europeans on the Japanese archipelago in the 19th century, and their uneasy cohabitation with the native Japanese populace, both human and canine. Skabelund takes a geographic detour to revisit the history of purebred dogs and related institutions in Victorian England, drawing on work spearheaded by Harriet Ritvo, amongst others. What he finds is that Europeans in colonial lands readily transferred their purebred tyranny onto the native population, imposing gross generalizations drawn from observations of their refined hounds compared to local mongrels.
The colonial dog and its native foil became reference points for demonstrating the supposed civility of the Western colonizer and the savagery of the colonized. Observers contended that Western breeds were calm, peaceful, and brave animals, whereas native dogs were easily agitated, aggressive, but cowardly. They regarded the colonial dog as a loyal and trusted companion when compared to the native dog, which was said to be devious and to dislike ‘civilized’ foreigners. In this way, colonial dogs were portrayed as culturally, if not intellectually, enlightened, and native dogs as backward and old-fashioned. (40)
Reaching far beyond the boundaries of Japan, the evidence presents a damningly pervasive superiority complex from colonialists all over the world from Japan, Korea, China, to India. That these attitudes of old are not surprising to us now is part of the point; the tropes of “colonial dog” versus the “native dog” became stable epistemes through which acts of violence and oppression were historically legitimized.
This rhetoric of violence towards externalized Others could also be internalized as a mode of national self-disciplining. These supposedly negative traits of recalcitrance, opposition to foreigners (i.e., “the civilized”), and ferocity would be reinvented as positive traits of native dogs in the 20th century, as Japan rose amongst its modern imperialist peers. With the creation of the Nihon ken, the Japanese breeds, such accusations were recast as innate advantages: independence, a bold “primitivism,” courage, bravery, fidelity. The most prominent canine symbol of this new discourse of (national) loyalty is, of course, Chūken Hachikō, whose story has been retoldnumeroustimes, attaining a mythical grandeur that sustains this decrepit old Akita as one of the most compelling expressions of the loyal dog archetype to this day.2
Despite the sentimental twinge of Hachiko’s story, its moral velocity easily propels one onto the battlefields, where such vaunted character traits as bravery and perseverance are often on display. In the climactic chapter “Dogs of War,” Skabelund depicts a vivid and memorable account of how children and their pets were mobilized for militaristic ends. Revived from the archives is the story of Kongo, Nachi, and Meri, three German Shepherds who were “martyred” and praised as war heroes who fought for the Japanese in Manchuria. Their story slightly preceded Hachiko’s in chronology, and was fed through the same ideological apparatuses of mass media, children’s ethics primers, and even commemorative statuary, and thus were just as well known at the time. Yet, their legacy faded into obscurity, while Hachiko’s endured. Skabelund addresses the different cases in replete detail.
This chapter is especially resonant given my recent viewing of The Day the Dogs Disappeared, a drama which aired this past year on Nippon TV. I don’t believe Skabelund had access to this film at the time of his writing and research. But for all I know, the producers were already drawing inspiration from Skabelund’s research, since Empire of Dogs was initially published in Japanese before the English-language version.3 What this chapter makes clear is that the confluence of children and animals, which pet lovers commonly regard as a natural affinity, can just as easily be manipulated for less innocent purposes.
screenshot from "The Day the Dogs Disappeared" - German Shepherd dogs being drafted into the Japanese army
The final chapter is a chronological leap into the postwar era. Though closest to contemporary concerns, it seemed less thorough and too broadly written in comparison to the preceding chapters. In barely 20 pages before the coda, Skabelund covers middle-class commodification of pets, the link between new forms of visual mass media and dogs, including figurations of dogs in film, television, and advertising, the rise of Japanese puppy mills and how this phenomenon was enabled by global commerce.
I gleaned a bit of fascinating trivia from this chapter. For example, in 1959, the Meiji Seika confectionary company ran a special lottery promoting their chocolate deluxe candy bar. If one was lucky enough to find a special dog sticker inside their wrapper, and then sent that sticker to the company, they would be entered into a lottery which would 500 winners with puppies (178-9). Willy Wonka, eat your heart out — talk about a brilliant marketing scheme that wouldn’t work today! One wonders if any sort of follow-up was conducted to track how that promotion played out once the excitement wore off… And in a haunting return of the colonial past, an international uproar over the plight of purebred dogs exported from British breeders to Japanese puppy mills became the focus of much diplomatic scrutiny in the 1960s. In light of contemporary journalistic frames vilifying Japan’s neighboring Asian countries for animal abuses, this historical example illuminates one way in which international pressure has motivated more ethical treatment of animals.
The fact that I have only retained scattered trivia from this chapter is reflective of its patchwork quality. From his selection and presentation of evidence, Skabelund may lean too much on prevailing conservative rhetoric that looks condescendingly at the current “canine frenzy” (189), fueled in large part by psychologically needy demographics of childless couples and single women who would rather pamper a tote-bag Chihuahua than invest in a human child — and, by extension, the future of society and the nation. Such scrutiny extracts a highly conspicuous iteration of the dog-human relationship, renders it quizzical, “excessive,” and counter-normative, at the risk of oversimplifying the true diversity of pet ownership within his examined population. For example, there is no attention given to modern-day hunters, the current activity of Japanese breed preservation members, or the efforts of animal welfare groups that often stand in moral opposition to the mass commercialization of animals and their objectification by government policy (recent efforts mobilized in the wake of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami come to mind). A scan of recent film productions also suggests that Japanese perceptions of dogs are expanding to accept them as service dogs, therapy dogs, and working dogs. However, the final chapter whittles down this range of possibilities to merely one focus — passive enslavement to kawaii (cute) culture — without fully interrogating just whom or what has accounted for this narrowed view.
Indeed, the small dogs that have come to be regarded [Ed.: notice the passive construction] as emblematic of postmodern, postindustrial Japan at the beginning of the twenty-first century are thoroughly unlike the wily native dogs that roamed the streets and fields in the nineteenth century. Nor do most of them resemble physically or figuratively ‘Japanese’ or military dogs, which represented the country and its people in the 1930s and 1940s. Instead, ironically, today’s tiny indoor dogs stand shoulder to shoulder with the chin, the pampered but fragile toy dog that was seen as the symbol of Japan a century and a half ago, where this book began. (191)
The book is forced to come full-circle, which leaves little room for Skabelund to draw many conclusions. In his coda, he gestures to meaningful connections with the rise of Korean national dogs, the Jindo, Poongsan, and Sapsaree, as well as the Israeli Canaan Dog. He mentions the looming specter of animal welfare issues that attend selective breeding for conformation over health to demonstrate that he is tapped into ongoing debates, though he does not explore in depth. As these fields of inquiry continue to unfold, perhaps they’re beyond the purview of a traditional historian.
For breed enthusiasts, I should mention that though all the Japanese breeds are mentioned at least once, with more sustained attention paid to the Japanese chin, Akita, the Ainu/Hokkaido Inu, and the Shiba Inu. Western breeds described in context include the German Shepherd and the mastiff type. These are not bounded breed histories. Instead, breeds intermingle and are mapped across dense contact zones, allowing more fruitful insights from the spatial commonality of their experiences.
Finally, it surprises me that Skabelund professes right at the outset to harbor “some ambiguity to [his] fondness for canines” (xi). I cannot help but to wonder if this is strategic distancing on the author’s part, as cynologists are infamously given short shrift within the academy for their focus on such (literally) “fluffy” subjects.4 There is a marked coldness to certain passages that I would ascribe to either the author’s purposeful detachment from the subject, if not professional code that does not permit such subjective intrusions. In this case, I kind of wish that Skabelund had personalized his conclusions and put more of himself into his writing, for the canine frequently rules the realm of emotion, as any “dog lover” would readily confess. For the most part, the connection between dogs and the affective history of humans is not explored, even when consulting fictional resources as dramatic and profound as Oe and Ozu. So this is by no means an exhaustive account. But it is a serious and highly enjoyable model that should provide great inspiration for future canine historians, military documentarians, as well as the general reader with an interest in questioning and exploring the nature of inter-species relationships.
1 Skabelund, “Can the Subaltern Bark? Imperialism, Civilization, and Canine Cultures in Nineteenth-Century Japan, JAPANimals: History and Culture in Japan’s Animal life, ed. Gregory Pflugfelder & Brett Walker (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, 2005) pp. 194-243. 2 Previously explored by Skabelund in “Fascism’s Furry Friends: Dogs, National Identity, and Purity of Blood in 1930s Japan” in The Culture of Japanese Fascism, ed. Alan Tansman (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009) pp. 155-182. I documented my reading with some thoughts here. 3 As アーロン·スキャブランド, Inu no teikoku : bakumatsu Nippon kara gendai made [犬の帝国 : 幕末ニッポンから現代まで], trans. Motohashi Tetsuya 本橋哲也 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten 岩波書店, 2009). 4 Social psychologist Karen Allen advised, “If you ever want to study this field, don’t do it if you don’t have tenure. Dooon’t even try it.” From her presentation, “Are Pets a Healthy Pleasure?” (at the UCLA Center for Society and Genetics 9th Annual Symposium: Dog + Human Co-Evolution, Made for Each Other?, 25 February 2011).
I got to thinking about ears and pricked ears after reading one of Aaron Skabelund’s fascinating articles, “Fascism’s Furry Friends: Dogs, National Identity, and Purity of Blood in 1930s Japan” in The Culture of Japanese Fascism, edited by Alan Tansman (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009, 155-182).
Saito Hirokichi, founder of the Nihon Ken Hozonkai (Society for the Preservation of the Japanese Dog, aka Nippo), had a lot at stake in laying the foundations for the future of the Japanese breeds. While he wasn’t fabricating the standard entirely from scratch, there were a few characteristics that he was adamant about inscribing into modern foundations. In a 1937 radio address aired by Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK), Saito laid out both physical and temperamental characteristics that his preservation society sought to fix in Japanese breeds. “The various traits of the Japanese nation — difficulty in getting used to anyone outside its master’s family, being intelligent but not adept in expressing emotions compared to Western dogs, diffidence and stubbornness, and extreme courage — have been ingrained into the personality of Japanese dogs” (Saito in Skabelund, 164), he broadcast to his listeners, unabashedly generalizing essential notions of his country to a temperament he preferred to see manifest in its dogs. Also, “All ‘Japanese’ canines […] had to have ‘small, triangular ears that stand erect’ and a ‘large and powerful curled tail'” (171). How else, for example, could you differentiate a native Japanese breed from the similar-looking Jindo or Pungsan dogs on the Korean peninsula?
Hachiko on the inside page of a 1934 storybook (photo from Wikipedia)
Where then does this place poor Hachiko, or rather, “Loyal Dog Hachiko” (Chūken Hachikō 忠犬ハチ公) as he is popularly known in Japan? The entire lore of his unflagging fidelity to his dead master has become a permanent fixture to his name, like the bark of a tree that grows around a nail driven into its trunk. As eager as Saito and others were to enfold Hachiko’s touching story into the standard of Nihon ken, they also had to defend his breed “purity” given that his physical characteristics fell short of what the preservation society aimed to standardize. They insisted that his physical imperfections — his drooping left ear and his slumped tail — were a result of long-term disease, and not from questionable bloodlines adulterated by foreign dogs.
Photo by madd0g11. Hachiko statue at Shibuya station.
I’m not interested in whether or not Saito was correct in his assessment of Hachiko’s genetic purity. What I think is more interesting is the fact that these cosmetic details have been insistently covered up, aestheticized, and “corrected,” time and time again. While the final rendition of Hachiko in bronze statuary, sculpted by Andō Shō, retains the detail of the drooping left ear (much to the chagrin of Saito and crew, who had no time to commission a more idealized model before the statue was cast), the taxidermied body of Hachiko now on display at the National Science Museum of Japan was stuffed with both ears erect, and tail elegantly curled.
Hachiko, taxidermied and displayed at the National Science Museum of Japan (photo from Wikipedia)
And this is to say nothing of Hachiko’s appearance in recent filmic adaptations, where his coat color isn’t even white anymore, but rather, the signature red of a Japanese Akita!
What is lost in these anatomical interpretations?
To me, the drooping ear is an emblem of the years of hardship that Hachiko suffered on the streets. He did not turn his back on any happy home to keep the flame alive for his dead master. The fact is that there was no other home for him to go to. All parties involved were more interested in maintaining the myth of the downtrodden wanderer who had nothing else other than the memory of his master; his impoverishment only heightened the tragic poignancy of the story, and that’s why it had to be maintained. The pedagogical value of Hachiko’s story did not have to be steered towards imperialistically-tinged notions of unerring devotion towards a singular, grand master. It could have been a lesson in humane charity, in animal welfare, in collective social responsibilities towards homeless pets, or really, any needy living creature. But the fact that any alternative interpretations were drowned out by the dominant ideology of loyalty and national unity in a time of heightened militarism is represented by that single, falsely pricked ear.
At the end of this all, I’m not denying that Hachiko’s story is truly moving, and taps into some universal desire to express and anthropomorphise the human-canine bond. But every time I read or see another version of the story, I can’t help but be reminded about how it is fiction, and just how particularly the “facts” have been plotted, amplified, muted, reconfigured, and calibrated to achieve very pointed emotional effects. And these fictions are never mere fiction; they are powerful, compelling, and enduring. Yet, even the inauthentic details that comprise these fictions can be given historical specificity. The story has been told a certain way for some reason(s), and that is just as interesting to me as the story itself.
Skabelund’s article goes into much greater detail on how “The nationalization of an everyday animal, purported to possess an ancient and intimate relationship with native place and people, served to bolster and to emotionalize allegiance to the nation-state” (157), and how it is not entirely spurious to link Japanese dog breed enthusiasts’ efforts at establishing a “pure, indigenous cultural [canine] aesthetic” (158) with roughly contemporaneous German efforts to do the same. Lest you be immediately turned off by Skabelund’s labeling of both practices as Fascist in spirit, let me assure you that he is fully aware of the difficulties in slotting any prescribed definitions of Fascist practice onto another country with its own historical developments. The angle of his analysis comes out of the demands of the anthology, which are explained in greater detail for anyone who wants to read it for themselves. And I highly recommend doing so.
ETA: Hachiko was in the news just recently, as University of Tokyo researchers announced the reason for his cause of death. “They say Hachiko died of cancer and worms, not because he swallowed a chicken skewer that ruptured his stomach – as legend had had it.” The chicken skewer theory was actually loudly contested at the time of its emergence, particularly by Saito who could not accept such an ignoble death and insisted that disease was what eventually felled the great Hachiko. So he was right all along, and though he’d only seen Hachiko once, he was able to spot his decrepit condition, yet did nothing to help prevent or alleviate the diseases festering within. So it was still an ignoble death, after all. Would Hachiko have been infested with worms if he had been in a clean, safe home? Who knows…
Edit 10 February 2012: Columnist Robb Fritz retold the Hachiko story rather succinctly for McSweeney’s in a column entitled, “Wait for Me.”
I hope that breeders and those with any interest in behavioral issues in Nihon Ken are following and taking notice of Dr. Yukari Takeuchi’s work (武内 ゆかり, DVM, PhD). Takeuchi is at the University of Tokyo’s Laboratory of Ethology, and has done extensive research on genetic linkages and manifestations of aggression by breeds, with special attention to native Japanese breeds like the Akita and Shiba Inu.
In a 2006 report surveying a broad range of breeds, “A Comparison of the Behavioral Profiles of Purebred Dogs in Japan to Profiles of those in the United States and the United Kingdom,” Shiba were found to be ranked higher than average in aggressive behavior towards other dogs, watchdog barking, territorial defense, and snapping at children. They were clustered in a group known to have “high aggression, high reactivity, and medium trainability” along with the likes of Pomeranians, American Cocker Spaniels, Yorkshire Terriers, Irish Setters, Maltese, Pugs, Mini Schnauzers, Mini Dachshund, and others. The tag “medium trainability” says to me that Shibas may potentially have these unfavorable behaviors trained out of them, bringing home the point that socialization is key.
In another article from 2009, “Association analysis between canine behavioural traits in the Shiba Inu and genetic polymorphisms,” (Takeuchi Y, Kaneko F, Hashizume C, Masuda K, Ogata N, Maki T, Inoue-Murayama M, Hart BL, Mori Y, Animal Genetics 40: 616-622), what I understood was that there are tentative causal links between certain genes and Shiba aggression. However, because there are many social factors that contribute to aggression, as well as many ways to define aggression, more research needs to be done.
It was also noted that the Shibas surveyed were all from Japan, where many are still kept as watchdogs, particularly in rural areas. In such cases, certain types of “aggression” as noted in the 2006 study are favorably linked to their function.
In the meantime:
The reasons and motivations for having dogs vary from owner to owner; some want a watchdog for security while others desire a companion for family members. If veterinarians working at clinics know the behavioral profiles of purebred dogs and the tendencies in gender differences shown in this [2006] study, they can more appropriately advise prospective owners. This can facilitate a better quality of human-animal bond and perhaps prevent behavioral problems due to a mismatch between dogs and owners. In addition, veterinarians should inform potential owners of the importance of understanding the pedigree line within a breed, the behavior of the dam, sire, and siblings from previous litters, and the early environment during the socialization period, as has been repeatedly emphasized in previous studies (p. 7 of the 2006 study).
Takeuchi seems to consider veterinarian expertise the first line of defense against uninformed dog owners acquiring a potentially volatile breed. This statement stems from his methodology, wherein he asked veterinarians to answer based on their familiarity with the breeds surveyed, instead of breeders and purebred dog owners. In practice, I doubt most owners consult with a veterinarian before bringing home their dog; you usually get the dog first, then bring him to the vet. But his very efforts to find a genetic basis for aggression is intriguing nevertheless. If such a clear, direct genetic factor could be located, this would put a lot more weight on the selective breeding of purebred dogs, as well as throw open a whole set of related cultural issues on why breeders select for the temperaments and the individual dogs that they do.
I also find it interesting that a number of breeds considered to be “highly aggressive” also rank relatively highly on the Michigan State University’s charts for breeds at risk for thyroid disorders. Specifically, I’m looking at Maltese (#9, 16.5% autoimmune thyroiditis), Beagles (#10, 16.5%), Dalmatians (#11, 16.3%), Cocker Spaniels (#13, 15.7%), Irish Setters (#25, 12.6%), all grouped in the same cluster as Shiba Inu. In another cluster of dogs with “high aggression, low reactivity, high trainability,” there are breeds like the Boxer (#6, 18%.0), Great Dane (#36, 10.1%), Akita (#46, 8.6%), and Doberman Pinscher (#50, 8.4%). A lot of the smaller breeds rank pretty far down the list, like Yorkies and Pomeranians, which matches what I understand about hypothyroidism usually affecting medium to large-sized dogs.
But the notable overlaps make me wonder if a statistical correlation between breeds documented to be “aggressive” and thyroid disorders could be made even clearer by someone else with more rigorous analytical methods. While there is a lot of online and anecdotal information about hypothyroidism as an underlying factor contributing to aggression and behavioral changes in dogs (I’m thinking in particular about the work of Dr. Jean Dodds who presented her findings at the 1996 International Symposium on Canine Hypothyroidism), American DVMs seem to downplay the link between hypothyroidism and aggression, and there hasn’t been much published information in peer-reviewed journals echoing Jean Dodd’s findings.
Considering that 1996 wasn’t that long ago, in my mind, and that was the first (and only!) large-scale conference on canine hypothyroidism to have appeared in my searches, I bet more work can still be done. I just hope the specialists are talking to each other, and not content to let endocrinologists do their own thing, while ethologists do their own thing, and dermatologists and neurologists and hematologists and so forth are not limiting themselves to the information immediately at hand.
On a whim, and because I was intrigued by the description in the Berkeley Art Museum events program, I went to check out NYMPH on Friday night:
Japan’s Edo Period had a strict law on the books: be nice to dogs and other animals, or else! Brooklyn-based psychedelic-shred/avant-garde ensemble NYMPH bares its teeth for an evening of new music with a decidedly tribal feel. Artist and intergalactic traveler Daniel Jay projects visuals celebrating our four-legged friends, and L.A.-based artist Sara Magenheimer contributes the second of four video loops created for this L@TE series. Dog Night with NYMPH is programmed in conjunction with the exhibition Flowers of the Four Seasons.
With nary an introduction, the four-piece took the stage and flooded the gallery with copious washes of sound. The blurb above is pretty apt; comparisons to other Japanese bands such as OOIOO, the Boredoms, Boris, and Acid Mothers Temple might also be appropriate, though I sense that the band is deliberately trying to avoid such obvious links. NYMPH’s sound reaches its expressive peaks between guitarist Matty McDermott’s hypnotic, heavily processed riffs, and singer-shaman Eri Shoji’s primal shrieks.
The set consisted of long, tranced out pieces culled from the group’s debut full-length, out now on CD at The Social Registry. A limited pressing double-disc vinyl set from their personal label the Dog of Juniper is also available directly from the band via their Myspace page. You can also sample their music at either of these linked sites.
It’s certainly not the most “accessible” music, but that’s exactly why I appreciated their set. Just as our experiences with our canine counterparts aren’t always easy and gentle (especially not with Shiba inu!), neither was this sonic tribute to the Inu in us.
However, I wished for a little more from the visual counterpart to the night’s performance; unfortunately, the images were rather static and synthetic, and thus a poor complement to the audio. Frankly, the projections fell far short of capturing the full range of either NYMPH’s sound or the essence of dogs. There was very little to tie this all together with either the program description or the Japanese art collection currently on display (which is fantastic, by the way, despite the lack of canine representation, though it includes some bold paintings and large, multi-panel screens that are rarely presented in such a cohesive collection outside of Japan).
Ultimately, that’s one of the difficulties of working with abstractions. Yet, abstraction is sometimes powerful in the way it exposes the limitations of its medium. At best, I find that abstract art is less about content or coherent themes, but how a work inspires its audience to imagine completely different perceptual planes altogether.
The House of Two Bows 雙寶之屋 