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.
My sister recently went to Japan and came back to this side of the Pacific bearing Shiba gifts.
First, there was a whole sheet of bobble-headed puppies from the Mind Wave stationary company. And in the twisted Japanese convention of foodifying cute creatures, there was a sheet of Shibas as cheeseburgers, hot cakes, apple pie, berry shakes, etc. branded as “McDogs Burger” from the folks at Beverly.
More three-dimensional trinkets included a Shiba key cover from Leaps and a little metal charm from Nayutty.
The most interesting surprise was this January 2013 (vol. 68) issue of Shi-Ba magazine. The title has come to my attention before, but I’ve never actually looked through an issue. This appeals to me as a window into how Japanese Shibas are kept, discussed, and displayed for public consumption. It’s evident from the gorgeous photos that they are very much treasured as household pets, but apparently even the Japanese need feature-length reminders of breed history, what constitutes the true Shiba spirit, how “ancient” and “natural” and “wolf-life” this native breed is, and how the Shiba adapts to modern domestic paradigms.
… at least, this is some of what I gleaned from skimming with my limited Japanese literacy. There’s plenty of gratuitous fluff, but even cute stories which seem deceptively simple can be taken seriously. Maybe someday, when I have, uh, days to work on this, I’ll go through and take a closer look. Articles of interest include four pages on the Kai ken, another six pages on Jomon Shibas and the veteran hunter-breeders who keep them, more whimsical features like six pages on Shiba scratching (how and why they scratch themselves, and what owners can do to alleviate itchiness), how to prepare your Shiba to stay overnight at a friend’s house if they also have a dog (particularly adorable because the other party in this instructional article has a Kai), to more personalized narratives about a bear hunting episode with the now-gone Kouyasu-ken, and a triumphant story of a three-legged Shiba mix.
From the standpoint of someone who is interested in these kinds of visual and textual archives about human and companion animal relationships, this magazine is a goldmine. And I’m totally jealous of all the material this makes available to future canine historians, at least those who work in this particular niche.
As much as piebalds and pintos are reviled in the various Nihon ken breed standards, this coat pattern has been around for quite some time as a visibly marked, figurated (not necessarily figurative) type of dog within Japanese society — that is, a dog of a fixed, expected form. Breed purity mattered naught at the time that the pictures below were sketched in the late 19th century, featuring life during Tokugawa Japan. Rather, the piebald dog appears to be an index of lower class society in Japanese popular imagination.
Click any of the pictures below to enlarge. Unfortunately, I suck at reading brush script, so I couldn’t make out the artists on most of these. If anyone has more information, feel free to drop a comment.
Artist unknown, Fuzoku Gaho no. 62 (10 December 1893), p. 10
This first spread is a pretty good example of how the piebald dog gets categorized alongside other denizens of the streets — including the street walker (夜鷹, upper right-hand corner), the racketeer (ごろつき), blind masseuse (按摩, enjoying a bowl of noodles top and center), and various snack and meal vendors catering to those who live on the go and eat at odd hours. The piebald dog here accompanies a hunch-backed oden seller (おでんや), weary and frail as if crushed by a lifetime spent beneath his yoke. I’d like to think his dog not only accompanies him, but protects him from the dangers that apparently lurk everywhere for a man who earns his living amongst miscreants.
Artist unknown, Fuzoku Gaho no. 2 (10 March 1889), p. 10
This second downcast dog with angular hips and a desperate countenance, on the other hand, appears bereft of human companionship. He lingers outside of a fox shrine during the Inari matsuri, looking forlorn and conspicuously isolated in the foreground against the bubble-headed children and festival hubbub.
Artist unknown, Fuzoku gaho no. 67 (25 February 1894), p. 10
That exact same dog, almost as if cut-and-pasted (or perhaps sketched by the same artist), shows up in several other street scenes of Tokugawa era life. I didn’t include every replication… Similarly scrawny dogs are often inserted into busy street tableaux and placed on the outskirts of temple scenes, as if to balance out the composition, providing another set of eyes to gaze and reflect upon the scene.
Artist unknown, Fuzoku Gaho no. 57 (10 August 1893), p. 24
Even with eyes closed, the dog can provide another perspective and additional “color” to a scene. I’m not entirely sure how to regard this archery hall staffed by some rather suspicious women in loose-fitting clothing, milling about this riverside rest stop. However, the mere presence of the sleepy mutt, curled up at the corner of the building, invites interpretation and signals that this is not what you might think of as an elite kyudo dojo.
UTAGAWA Kuniyoshi 歌川国芳, Fuzoku Gaku no. 69 (10 March 1894), p. 17
But indeed, not every piebald or spotted dog can or should be read the same way. Associated with people in the street, the piebald dog seems more frequently to indicate lower class, unstable, or itinerant figures, as in the case of this monk (or a female nun?) in this two-paneled spread on “The Vicissitudes of Middle-Aged Ladies in the Tokugawa Ooku,” the inner chambers of the Tokugawa shogunate where all the palace ladies and concubines resided. I don’t know if this panel is referring to some specific episode of intrigue. My interpretation of this scene is influenced by stories of corrupt Chinese monks who exploited their access to women’s quarters to curry favors with the ruling elite. Thus, religious monkhood should never be taken as merely a position of transcendent asceticism, but rather, a kind of political power with the potential for both sageliness and hypocrisy. Perhaps the dog also indicates that two-facedness in this context?
At any rate, I’m intrigued by the pairing of the monk’s mutt with the woman’s toy dog, on the right. Or is it a cat? Whether piebald Chin or feline (I’m thinking the latter), he clearly occupies a different symbolic status as he helps disrobe his mistress in this titillating boudoir scene.
What impresses me from this small sample is that the piebald street dog appears to have just as much claim to Japanese “tradition” as the elite pedigrees of Nihon ken “proper”. It’s a wrench to throw into the standard breed histories, anyway. No matter what the breed standards say or how THE six native Nihon ken would become enshrined as exclusive national treasures in the 20th century, there were always other types of Japanese dogs at the margins of society who manage to slip through the cracks by being difficult to classify.
Here’s an ethnographic sketch from Fūzoku gahō 風俗画報, a Tokyo-based illustrated magazine of Japanese life and customs. I don’t know why the preview pic looks so hideous. You have to click on it to see a clear view of Ainu domestic life, complete with dogs and puppies.
Artist unknown, Fuzoku Gaho no. 10 (November 10, 1889) p. 13.
I love how the adult dog on the left is absorbed into the background, incorporated as a semi-permanent fixture of the scene. The dogs are small figures, but not peripheral or extraneous. As alien and strange as mainstream Japanese journalists represented the Ainu to be, I do appreciate the close proximity they kept to their dogs. Ainu dogs may not have been allowed inside, but it seems inside/outside mattered far less than the distinction between homefront, hunting grounds, and other spaces of conquest…
This article from the June 19th, 1941 edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun (Japan) announces the birth of a litter of crossbred wolfdogs. Four pups were born in February 1941 from Tora, a 3-year-old Kai Ken male out of a kennel based in Yamanashi Prefecture, and Sekiroko (赤狼, “Red Wolf”), a gray wolf from Manchuria. The article claims that Nihon ken and wolves share “the same blood,” representing this union as a natural melding of not only two compatible biological orders, but geo-political ones as well. This is especially significant given that Manchuria was a Japanese-occupied puppet state at this time.
Unfortunately, one pup died, but two black pups and a red pup remain, housed in a specially built wolf house located at Koufu. The article finishes on a triumphant note, claiming that the father’s intelligence and the mother’s wild temperament (notice the juxtaposition of Japanese “culture” against Manchurian “primitivism”) will specially endow these puppies to become superior war dogs.
I can’t help but wonder how difficult these wolfdogs were to train. One needs more than a ferocious reputation and appearance to be suited for military purposes, after all…
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).
Film:The Day the Dogs Disappeared [Inu no kieta hi 犬の消えた日] Director: OTSUKA Kyoji 大塚恭司 Performers: ARAKAWA Chika 荒川ちか, NISHIJIMA Hidetoshi 西島秀俊, DAN Rei 壇れい, Biina ビーナ (German Shepherd), Ichigo イチゴ (Shiba), Koyuki コユキ (Shiba pup) Breeds featured: Shiba Inu, German Shepherd, West Highland White Terrier (briefly) Production Information: Nippon Television Network Corporation (NTV), 2011 (Japan)
Matsukura Shuhei (Nishijima Hidetoshi) comes from a line of craftsmen. While he supports his family and craftsmen as the head of the household, he wishes for Japan’s victory in the Pacific War. However, when he decides to comply with an order to citizens to present their domesticated dogs and cats for the supply of the animals’ fur for winter clothes that would relieve the cold in the battlefields, he meets with bitter opposition from his wife, Shizuko (Dan Rei) and their only daughter, Sayoko (Arakawa Chika). The dogs Alf and Toa are family, and the air at home is strained with a sense of disquiet. As Shuhei agonises over the extreme choice he is being forced to make, he reminds himself to face hard reality …
Within the frame of patriotism and wartime honor is the most aggressively Pacifist drama I’ve seen in a while, centered on the home. Using the figure of the dog as family member — at least on par with women and children — the story presents a different kind of front worth fighting for, one that requires not military, but emotional struggles and transformation to overcome. The moral conclusion is that dogs (like children) are too innocent to knowingly participate in the war, and in the name of that innocence, it is the rightful duty of the family patriarch to protect, not to sacrifice, his own.
Since the copy I watched was unsubbed, and I am not fluent in Japanese, I was missing a lot. Nevertheless, the story itself is formulaic enough that I could figure it out. You’ve got all the usual suspects — first, a young girl, Sayoko, and a German Shepherd, Alf, whom she loves very much.
When her father heeds the patriotic call of duty and enlists Alf into the war, it happens so suddenly that Sayoko barely has time to react. But it obviously sucks, so her parents get her a puppy to replace Alf.
The second dog, triumphantly named Toa 東亜 or “East Asia” to capture the nationalistic sentiments of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, soon grows into a beautiful, fluffy adult Shiba Inu. Aww… But duty calls once again, and Mr. Matsukura, unable to join the army himself, is hellbent on sending a proxy to the warfront. So he orders his daughter to march Toa to the local police station, and turn him in herself.
This is where shit gets real, as Sayoko learns the awful truth that her pet Shiba is not going to serve as another noble war dog, like Alf. Instead, the whole courtyard full of adorable little full-coated Nihon ken (and one random Airedale) is going to be slaughtered to make kawagoromo — FUR COATS for the Japanese soldiers.
Kawagoromo?! Nooooo!!!
It takes a pretty tough heart to sit through the next hour as Sayoko parts with her dog and the entire family learns the true brutality of war, even as they remain on the homefront. Mercifully, there is no real violence depicted to the animals, and the most physically painful events are reserved for human bodies. The emotional toll of war is depicted clearly through the eyes of the young girl and the sensitive, watchful Shiba.
TV production values being what they are, I wasn’t expecting too much from this movie. It was a pleasant surprise to see some rare archival footage to counterbalance the incongruous veneer of the digital video. There are several iconic images of loyal dog Hachiko that show up in every written account. However, I didn’t know that there were also moving images and newsreels! You get just two tantalizing seconds of Hachiko footage right at the beginning, as well as clips of the famous Karafuto sled dogs.
Hachiko moves!
Footage of other Japanese war dog draftees is interspersed throughout the narrative.
This shot was especially touching to me: a blurry half-second of a dog loving up his owner like any other day, not realizing that he’s actually saying farewell. A break in the austerity of this send-off ceremony. The gloved hand of the military officer pressing down on his hips contrasts sharply against the lady’s soft embrace.
If there’s one thing I appreciate about this movie, it’s the way it self-consciously embeds itself amongst historical artifacts; the warmth of the story speaks to this moment in time, even as it testifies to a bleak past. Along with these documentary clips, they also present material evidence of the times. Here is a circular announcing the campaign to collect household “donations” of dogs to the war.
I never thought before about how one of the kanji for donation/contribution, ken 献, is homophonous with ken for dogs and also incorporates the 犬 graph, as if dogs have always been encoded into the idea of sacrifice. Anyway, nowhere on the circular does it state that the “splendid” service these dogs could provide would come in the form of fur-lined coats.
So were dogs truly in danger of being exterminated by wartime rhetoric? The prefatory narration threatens that this might have been so, though the fictive evidence marshaled here vehemently decries that possibility. But what of the Japanese dog in particular? Well, that’s a crisis scenario that extends beyond the timeline of the war, and does not concern this story. Rather, Inu no kieta hi pleads for a more universal respect for life itself, making no distinction between animal and human, let alone inu and Nihon ken.
Perhaps the day that dogs disappear is the day their status is elevated from an inferior to a familiar position, such that the category of “dog” as a disposable creature ceases to be acceptable.
Megaprops to Michael W. who pointed me in the direction of this download link, and helped fill in some of my questions.
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The House of Two Bows keeps a running index of movies blurbed on the site, annotated by breed. If you’re interested in writing a guest blog for a dog film, contact for details.
Today’s post is brought to you by our first guest blogger, Michael W. Michael’s path and mine have frequently crossed over the years due to a number of common interests, including our incurable cinephilia for both personal and academic enrichment. He currently resides in Japan, where he has access to all sorts of cool stuff, which he is always generously inclined to share.
Film:Snow Trail [Ginrei no hate 銀嶺の果て] Director: TANIGUCHI Senkichi 谷口 千吉 Performers: MIFUNE Toshirô, SHIMURA Takashi, WAKAYAMA Setsuko, KŌNO Akitake, KOSUGI Yoshio Production Information: Toho, 1947 (Japan) Breed: Hokkaido ken?*
After committing a robbery in Nagano, three thieves, Nojiri (Shimura), Ejima (Mifune), and Takasugi (Kosugi), make their way deep into the Japanese Alps in order to avoid pursuit by the police. However, they leave a number of glaring clues about their whereabouts, allowing the police to stay hot on their trail. After losing Takasugi in an avalanche, and thereby throwing the police off of their trail, the two remaining men luckily find a ski lodge operated by an old man and his young granddaughter. An expert mountain climber named Honda is there as well. Although safe for the time being at the lodge, tensions begin to rise between the gentler Nojiri and the hot-headed Ejima which leads to the two thieves and Honda attempting to cross over the snowy and deadly mountains.
Although Senkichi Taniguchi was a prolific director in his own right, this early postwar film will probably mainly appeal to film buffs for three reasons. The screenplay was written by the renowned director Akira Kurosawa, the film’s score was composed by Akira Ifukube of Godzilla fame, and it also marks Toshirô Mifune’s acting debut.
The film is a good work for its cinematography, creative use of black and white imagery, and for the chemistry between Shimura and Mifune who would share appearances in quite a number of Kurosawa’s films. However, and this just might be my personal taste, the acting of Setsuko Wakayama, who plays the granddaughter, is quite annoying, because she puts on a saccharine sweet performance of a “cute” six-year-old girl trapped in an eighteen-year-old woman’s body. Yet, her bubbly performance might have been a breath of fresh air to viewers watching this film in their war-ravaged archipelago.
Our four-legged friend belongs to a tracker who is attempting to locate the three thieves. Although the dog’s screen time is quite limited, the dog does play a major part in progressing the film’s narrative because his/her barks are what make the three thieves flee a shed in which they were seeking shelter. Also, the dog “causes” the death of the thief Takasugi because when the frightened man shoots at the dog, who he seemingly either grazes or misses, the loud gunshot causes an avalanche which kills him, but blocks the police from pursuing Nojiri and Ejima who were further ahead.
More important than the actual presence of the dog in this film is the sound of his barking. Not only does it make the thieves continuously move from their hiding positions, but it adds a certain tension to the film because it lets the thieves, as well as the viewer, know that the authorities are in close pursuit.
While not a masterpiece by any means, Snow Trail is a fun film that will particularly pique the interest of Mifune fans.
~ Michael W.
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* Despite the absence of pricked ears that are now written into the standard, we decided that a Hokkaido ken is the best approximate “breed” for this indigenous Japanese dog based on the coloration, size, function, and the geographic site of filming (Mount Hakuba in Hokkaido prefecture). It is not known who supplied the dog for the movie, but regardless, for the sake of this blog, it is interesting to regard this segment as an archived glimpse of post-war Nihon ken at work.
Film: Walking with the Dog [Inu to arukeba 犬とあるけば] Director: SHINOZAKI Makoto 篠崎誠 Performers: TANAKA Naoki 田中直樹, RYO りょう, FUJITA Yoko 藤田よこ, AOKI Tomio 青木富夫, Peace (shiba mix), Chirori (therapy mutt) Production Information: 2004 (Japan) Breeds featured: Shiba mix, Siberian Husky, mutts
Yasuyuki is an earnest but naive young man who gets dumped by his girlfriend the same day he picks up an abandoned Shiba mix, whom he names Tamura. He is immediately drawn to the smart little mutt, perhaps because they share a similar plight of being left behind by someone they loved. Though Yasuyuki is unemployed and barely able to fend for himself, he is inspired to help the dog. He jumps on an opportunity to enroll Tamura as a therapy dog with an organization that he heard about on the news. The training director is touched by Yasuyuki’s selflessness and gives them a place to stay and work, allowing both human and dog (and audience) the opportunity to learn about animal therapy work.
Meanwhile, Yasuyuki’s ex-girlfriend, Miwa, has returned home to take care of her granny and depressed younger sister while her mother is in hospice care. She has enough stress in her life without Yasuyuki’s attempts to get back together with her, so when he offers her Tamura’s assistance, she is skeptical at first. However, the good-natured little dog shows that he knows how to work the miracles she once expected of her boyfriend. Miwa and her family eventually come to understand the value of canine companionship, particularly the way that dogs can help enrich human relationships.
Hot on the heels of the Japanese blockbuster Quill, the story of a seeing eye Labrador (yes, it’s on my to-do list, when I finally feel emotionally steeled for it), this quiet little film barely raised any notice. While Walking with the Dog does unfortunately suffer from some problems with pacing and poor character development, I think it’s deserving of a closer look. If nothing else, it’s a tantalizing and honest contribution from Japanese animal advocates who are attempting to manifest a vision of humanitarian care akin to what they imagine is available in developed countries like the United States.
getting a feel for leash pops
Indeed, one of the sharpest angles about this film is the way that the American animal welfare system is unabashedly praised as a model for emulation. One scene where Yasuyuki’s friends are debating what to do about Tamura unfolds as follows:
Woman: I heard that when America had this problem of abandoned dogs… they set up a system specially for training these kinds of dogs.
Yasuyuki: Japan doesn’t have this kind of system?
Woman: Well, I don’t really know anything about that.
Yasuyuki: Where have I heard about this before…?
And that’s when he looks up at the television to see a news story on therapy dog star Chirori, wearing an American flag bandanna, and her trainer.
Toru Oki and Chirori, therapy dog star
This actually parallels the musical career of “Mr. Yellow Blues” man Toru OKI 大木トオル, who not only acts the role of the training director, but who is also a real-life spokesperson for the International Therapy Dog Association in Japan. Reflecting his performance practices (he was known for making a convincing show of Chicago blues sung entirely in English), Oki-sensei tells his therapy dog assistants to give commands in English, as the consonants of the Japanese language are too soft and muddled for proper instruction.
from the streets to the lap of luxury
therapy dog classes becoming more and more popular
The welcome mat at Oki’s training center is similarly bedecked in stars and stripes, and later in the film, when therapy dog work appears to be gaining popularity, new trainees are initiated under a banner that reads “Proud to Be An American.” So these overt gestures of American favoritism are hard to miss, but the appeals have less to do with toadying to the West than embracing an ideal of universal humanitarianism.
Chirori, therapy dog superstar
mobbed by a million elementary school kids
Ultimately, what is most touching and most captivating about this film are the unrehearsed encounters, the moments when these real life therapy dogs are working their magic at nursing homes and elementary schools. I admit that my eyes were more often on the dogs than the humans in such scenes, and there were times when I cringed when witnessing the mobs that these poor dogs must suffer in the name of teaching about empathy and compassion. But it’s all the more to their credit and their training that they never act out even in times of visible confusion and stress. The stub-legged mutt in particular, Chirori, is placid through it all, a true exemplar of what the calming presence of a dog can do.
The nursing home scenes are also notable for featuring veteran actor AOKI Tomio (below), whose film career spanned 1929 (!) to 2004, this being his final film. For fans of Japanese pop culture, two other prominent names make cameo appearances. KATAGARI Jin 片桐仁 of the comedy duo Rahmens ラーメンズ and YOSHIMURA Yumi of JPop duo Puffy Amiyumi appear as Yasuyuki’s quirky husband-in-law and pregnant sister.
cameo appearances by Katagiri Jin of Rahmens and Yumi of Puffy
Finally, Ryo, the actress who plays Yasuyuki’s girlfriend, is supposedly a pretty big deal from J-drama. However, I found her appearances to be tedious and unevocative, as befits her character, the emotionally frigid “strong woman” who is far too stoic for her own good. I have to admit that I sped through most of her scenes at double pace (thanks to the wonders of home DVD technology), including her climatic meltdown about three-quarters through the film which otherwise would have taken 8 whole minutes. That’s like a decade in filmic time. But apparently even that wasn’t compelling enough for me to get any screenshots of her, so you’ll just have to do without.
therapy dogs in training
Indeed, the stars of the show, as acknowledged in the film’s full title (Inu to arukeba: Chirori & Tamura) are the dogs, or more specifically, the mutts. And this is why it’s such a huge pity that Walking with the Dog was not a bigger hit in the same Asian regions that embraced Quill (Hong Kong, Taiwan, and of course Japan). Perhaps the abandonment scene that opens the film hit too close to home. I can’t speak of other countries, but I know that releasing unwanted dogs in open areas, instead of trying to properly rehome them, was and still remains common practice in Taiwan [cf. Hsu, et. al, “Dog Keeping in Taiwan: Its Contribution to the Problem of Free-Roaming Dogs,” Journal of Applied Animal Welfare 6.1 (2003): 1-23]. Perhaps audiences were revolted by the scene inside a Japanese animal shelter, which seemed relatively brief and sanitized to me, but may have presented too intrusive a dose of “reality” for audiences expecting more escapist fare.
Searching the shelters for his lost dog
Or perhaps the idea of a rescue mutt stripped of breed history or any back story with accompanying footage of puppy cuteness is just that radical, and has yet to catch on with mainstream audiences. To be fair, there are several moments that stretch the limits of credibility — for example, Yasuyuki’s complete willingness to claim responsibility for Tamura, even in the face of legal repercussions, and Oki-sensei’s quick decision to take them under his wing despite knowing so little about either of them. So it’s not like the audiences that “rejected” this film are discounting the gravity of the situation, since the story only has a tenuous basis in reality. But the most real characters here are the registered therapy dogs, all of them rescued. For me, the second chance given to every single one of those dogs on screen overshadows the general faults of this film, allowing me to be gentle on its shortcomings, and appraise it instead for its potential to inspire something greater.
Whatever the reasons for the commercial failure of this title, I am grateful to the filmmakers for bringing this story to screen, and would hate to see it fade into obscurity. At the time of this writing, maybe only the expensive Japanese version has English subtitles (it’s not clear to me according to the listing on Yesasia.com, but older titles on that site often suddenly go AWOL once you try to buy them). I watched a Taiwanese edition entitled 男人與流浪狗 (literally A Man and a Stray Dog) with original Japanese dialogue and Chinese subtitles.
Once you feed a stray, he'll never leave you alone
If you have any interest in Japanese society, therapy animals, or the way that dogs’ lives are narrated alongside everyday human drama, I’d say this is worth keeping an eye out for.
The House of Two Bows 雙寶之屋 