Japan has more pets (6.8 million dogs and 9 million cats) than it has children under 15 (14 million.) No wonder, in these busy and distracted times. Pets are easier to raise, less expensive, less troublesome all around than children. A world in turmoil such as ours is not child-friendly. Pets, unlike children, have no future, therefore no future to lose. They give much and demand little. They are play, not work. (Really? Maybe not, as we’ll see.) They are unconditionally loving and cringingly grateful for the smallest kindness, as children may not be.
Put all Japan’s pet dogs and cats together in one place and they’d form Japan’s second largest city. Their numbers pale, it is true, next to the U.S.’s 97 million dogs and 60 million cats. But American pet culture has far deeper historical roots than Japan’s.
Like all hasty enthusiasms, Japan’s pet infatuations are immature and unstable. You see, perhaps, a celebrity cuddling a cute little Dachshund or Chihuahua on TV or social media, and think, “I must have one!” Off you go to the pet shop, and home you return, master or mistress to an adorable living toy. The weeks and months ahead unfold the hidden responsibilities you’ve taken on. Maybe you fulfill them with joy undiminished or even heightened. Or maybe not, as witness the 14,500 abandoned dogs and cats put to sleep in animal shelters across Japan in 2021 – sharply down from 46,000 in 2014, but the decline may reflect not a diminishing evil but a growing one, suggests Spa (June 4).
If Spa’s charge is true, animal shelters are hardly the first noble enterprise to be tainted by the profit motive. Their raison d’être is the rescue of stray pets – getting them off the streets and finding new homes for them. A court case earlier this year exposed cracks in the façade. The breeder on trial had performed Caesarian sections on dogs without anesthesia, crammed dogs into tiny cages regardless of the most elementary needs of living creatures, and displayed, Spa alleges, an attitude rife throughout the industry: the treatment of pets as merchandise – inert commodities.
Guilty as charged, ruled the court, but the light sentence it handed down – a year’s imprisonment suspended for three years – shows society’s failure to be outraged. As individuals we love our pets, often to the point of considering them “members of the family” – but as a society we extend little protection to these helpless and dependent creatures. A supposed toughening of the animal welfare law in 2021 seems to have had little impact.
Spa goes undercover. Posing as a prospective customer, its reporter visits an animal shelter for a look around. First impression: 10 or more dogs to a cage. Among them is a female Shiba named Mona. She’d been brought in five days before by a dog breeder who’d retired her from the mass production of pups for the very good reason that she’d begun kicking her offspring. Why, one wonders. Was it rebellion? Protest?
Be that as it may, there she was, and the reporter showed an interest. “Can you raise her at home?” “Yes.” “Age? Income?” Hasty questions hastily answered, proof neither requested nor shown; within minutes the transaction was done; cost: 155,000 yen. “I’ll discuss it with my family and come back,” said the reporter, taking leave presumably never to be heard from again.
Extending the investigation, the reporter encounters an angry customer of the same shelter, a woman in her 40s who’d purchased a dog which the ownership transfer documents declared perfectly healthy, but which soon after began passing blood in its urine. The vet she took it too diagnosed an infected bladder. Two months later it died. “I’m still suffering from pet loss,” she tells Spa.
Spa’s article is an invitation in effect to ponder our relationships with other species. We consume them as food, work them as slaves, buy and sell them as commodities and love them as pets – nowadays overwhelmingly the latter. Machines long ago rendered work animals redundant. We still eat them, but as supermarket shoppers are hardly conscious of doing so.
“A few years ago,” wrote Isaiah Ben Dassan in “The Japanese and the Jews” in 1970, “British newspapers carried a series of sensational articles on purported Japanese cruelty to dogs.” Ben Dassan comments: “Most Japanese were sincerely puzzled to find themselves attacked as abusers of animals, and I think they had every right to this reaction.”
The average Japanese, he said, is neither an animal lover nor hater but indifferent to animals, an attitude he traces to the culture’s very beginnings: “The Japanese are extremely unusual in that they… have never had a society based primarily on livestock breeding.”
The closest early Japan came to the pastoralism much of the rest of the world knew is silkworm breeding – which is not close at all. Did Japan as a nation pass through an evolution suitable to pet-rearing? One might well wonder.
© Japan Today
22 Comments
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Japantime
Funniest thing I ever saw in a Japanese pet shop was them selling meerkats. I wouldn’t know how to keep one in my house.
commanteer
Or perhaps proper rescue groups are lacking in my area (not Kanto or Kansai). Our vet is great. Been to many over the years, and he is not only better but cheaper than many others. He loves animals, which is not something evident at some of the vets we have been to.
If we wanted to save money, we could have just gone to a pet shop. We wanted a shelter dog for different reasons.
garypen
It depends on locality, as each state and even some local municipalities have their own laws.
But, puppy mills are still a huge problem in many places in the US. Pennsylvania is one state with a terrible puppy mill problem where the government refuses to tackle the issue, as the Amish with huge political influence in the state are the biggest puppy mill operators.
Bad-faith breeders and bogus rescue groups, advertising on Craigslist and such, are also quite abundant in the US.
dbsaiya
A society is judged by how it treats its weakest who have no voice.
TaiwanIsNotChina
I have not seen a shop selling pets in quite sometime in the US. I think they have been run out of town, thankfully.
Gene Hennigh
The dark side of the pet boom in Japan is also the dark side of pets in the US and most other countries. All my pets have been rescue pet (cats). But I'd rescue one of these, too.
garypen
PSA: If anyone is seeking a new pet, instead of buying from a pet shop, please consider rescue/adoption. The only thing you should be buying from those pet shops are supplies for your rescued pet. :-)
In addition to the prefectural and city shelters, there is a great organization with locations in both Kansai and Kanto called ARK:
https://arkbark.net/
There are also websites that post adoption listings from many of the smaller rescue groups:
https://www.pet-home.jp/
https://satooya.wancat.info/
garypen
Our regular vet would cost less than that for just shots and spay. The Y37,000 is what we paid the rescue group, which included the shots and spay, plus grooming and bringing the dog to our place.
It seems like you didn't look around enough for a proper rescue group. You may also need to find a new vet.
Ricky Kaminski13
Luckily we have a wonderful NPO group here in Fukui which shelters and rescues stray and abused cats. They have a network of volunteer safe houses that will foster the cats until they find them homes. We adopted two beautiful kittens taken from a field last year and it has been an absolute game changer. Cost us under a man and then had to guarantee we’d get them neutered and vaxed, which we did.
Don't buy pets from pet shops people, seek out the many good people that are real animal lovers and support their efforts. This article focused on the dark underbelly but it’s not all bad. We even have the lady that looked after our kittens over to visit sometimes, as she shared an important part of their life too. Great way to bond, it’s beautiful thing when you are ready.
commanteer
I was speaking from personal experience. The nearest government run shelter was difficult to visit and you needed to be there to see a specific dog chosen from a picture. You couldn't just look at all the dogs and find one that bonded. I am surprised you were able to get vax and spay for less than 3 man, as well. They cost more here, and were from regular vets.
garypen
What shelters are the author and some commenters referring to that charge 20 or 30 man to adopt? The government-run shelters certainly don't. The small rescue groups we contacted don't. The one we eventually rescued our Golden from only charged 2 or 3 man, which mostly went towards vet services - vax, spay, etc.
The real problem here is the sale of dogs and cats at pet shops, and the puppy mills that supply them. On a positive note, I've been meeting more people with rescued cats and dogs than in the past, when they used to be almost 100% purchased. It's a start.
Laguna
My dog was my partner. He had free reign, and took liberal use of it. He lived 14 happy years. I miss him.
DanteKH
How about the millions of dogs and cats that were and are killed if they don't sell after a couple of months in those Pet Shops?? Why nobody talks about this?
This is animal mass murder at the grosses scale, and yet nobody bats an eye.
Abe234
gotta feed the Kawaiiiiiiii culture.
pretty gross when I see cafes with birds of prey, cats, dogs, other animals that have no business being pushed into it with absolutely no educational value at all. But my daughter loves doggies, but my son loves cats, and the owner of the cafe doesn’t give a Flying &¥89 so long as he gets his money.
Redemption
Very sad. I see the puppy store near my station and feel bad that the underside of this industry is completely ignored by the media.
MarkX
I was quite shocked to see the cost of getting a "rescue" pet from one of our local shelters. When all was said and done it was close to Y100,000. And as stated above, you really don't know what you are getting in terms of health, both physical and mental.
commanteer
Many of the "shelters" here are simply scams. They will actually cost more than buying a puppy from a shop, and often supply sickly or traumatized dogs for that high price. I have seen older dogs on their last legs at shelters that need a home. But after fees, shots, donations, etc., the cost can run as high as 300,000 yen. It's a shameful situation.
Other countries make it easier to take in abandoned dogs, usually paying for all the shots needed and often with only nominal fees involved.
grund
From abandoned pets to cramped, prison-like zoos, I always felt that Japanese society in general has a very sad attitute towards animals. But to excuse this by saying that Japanese society traditionally wasn't based around livestock keeping just show their ignorance about the rest of the world. Just like the rest of the world Japanese society was based around small farms, keeping chickens and pigs and so on. But, of course, the uniquely uniqe Japanese being so unbelievably unique is the reason for everything.
FizzBit
Are you a journalist or an activist?
Sure would like to the breakdown of ...
400 dogs
300 cats
13,800 feral cats and kittens
probably
Moonraker
And yet, they have had 1500 years of Buddhism, in which compassion for sentient beings is a given. Proving further that ideological excuses can be made for anything by careful selection of history and "traditions".
dagon
Pet shops using breeding farms and the associated businesses need to be stopped. Full stop.
There are too many lovely cats and dogs which need homes.
Dentsu if they have any any social responsibility need to get behind this.
Aly Rustom
Like all hasty enthusiasms, Japan’s pet infatuations are immature and unstable.
THIS!