Our good old dog Corncake died a year and a half ago. Corncake had been, to put it politely, of a mixed variety. That was fine with us. We loved her and mourned her passing. After a while, we began to hanker for a dog again. One day I got a call at work from my mother. There was a man with a box of puppies in front of Weaver Street Market; my 11-year-old daughter had fallen in love; should they bring a puppy home? I said yes and it’s a good thing I did, for later Charlotte confided the following: “When I saw another kid pick up the puppy I wanted, I felt faint.â€
The pup, whom we named Pumblechook after the unctuous uncle in Great Expectations, was, it seemed, less mixed than was Corncake. Still mixed, only less so. Who knew what she was? Who cared?
Then we took Pumble to Grandma’s for Christmas. There we saw many relatives, including my brother in law, Naoto Kobayashi. He took one look at Pumble and said, “Ah, Akita†(he pronounced it “ahhh-kee-taaahhhâ€). The Akita is the grand old dog of Japan, a breed thousands of years old: dignified, loyal, proud and almost wiped off the face of the earth at the end of WWII: Its meat was used for food and its fur, thick and lush, was used to line the jackets of Japanese fighter pilots. According to Martha Sherrill in Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain, the dog, once Japan’s beloved, had dwindled to fewer than a dozen by the time Morie Sawataishi decided to move himself and his city-bred wife, Kitako, to Japan’s snow country and singlehandedly save the breed from extinction. You don’t have to be an Akita-lover to become immersed in Dog Man. It’s a picture of a remarkable life in a remarkable place. Sherrill’s writing is fine: The snow country is palpably rough and gorgeous, Sawataishi’s quirky personality is complicated, the character of each dog – Three Good Lucks, Goromaru, Victory Princess – is described the way The New Yorker describes a novelist or a politician. I found Dog Man to be one of those books which you have no reason to read (unless you own a part Akita, and even then) but which transports you and that you think about for days.
Shortly after having finished Dog Man, I took Charlotte to the McDougle Elementary School book fair. We browsed. One book jumped out at me: Hachiko Waits by Leslea Newman. This is the true story of Japan’s favorite dog-friend (a faithful Akita), who waited for his master, Professor Ueno, at the train every day. One day the professor did not get off the train, but Hachi waited still – for nine years. There’s a statue at the Shibuya train station of a waiting Akita — ears erect, eyes alert, tail curled. It’s a favorite meeting spot as well as a good spot to propose marriage – under a statue that means faithfulness.
At the book fair, longtime McDougle School librarian Nancy Margolin showed me a book called Faithful Elephants: A True Story of Animals, People and War by Yukio Tsuchiya. This is the story of the elephants at the Ueno (the same name as Hachiko’s master) Zoo in Tokyo during WWII. During bombings, big zoo animals can present a danger to people and must often be put down. The Ueno Zoo elephants, too smart to eat the poison that was fed to the lions and tigers, could only be starved, though it broke their keepers’ hearts. This book is a manifesto for peace if there ever was one; a clear view of the collateral damage that these days we are so easily able to forget. Elephants, they say, remember for a long time.
Our dog Pumble is what they call a “shepherd mix.†Which makes me think. German Shepherd and Japanese Akita – the axis of evil not so long ago, and now our great allies, embodied in my frisky pup. Why not just skip the war part next time and act with dignity and intelligence and loyalty – to all the living beings of the world?
Delighted to hear about the historical Japanese connection of the Akita. Funny how small the world is.