By KEVIN WOOD, NEWS STAFF
Arts & Entertainment
Jan 12, 2011, Stoney Creek News
It is not a place anyone would choose for a pleasure trip, but Stoney Creek resident Jay Perry says his recent visit to Haiti was the best experience of his life.
The unhappy history of Haiti begins in 1492 with its discovery by Christopher Columbus and the rapid near extermination of its original inhabitants by conquering Spaniards and goes downhill from there. The island has remained mired in poverty since a slave rebellion drove the French from the island in 1804, with violent political instability interrupted only by a harsh and exploitive 17- year U.S. occupation in the early part of the 20th century and the brutal reign of terror and corruption under the Duvaliers from 1957 to 1986.
The country is by far the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. United Nations troops, including Canadian soldiers, have been trying to keep order in the country since 2004 as it struggles to establish an effective and democratic government. In January 2010, the capital of Port-au-Prince was leveled by a massive earthquake that caused heavy damage and killed tens of thousands of people throughout the country. A subsequent ongoing cholera epidemic has killed thousands more.
Given all that, one can understand Perry’s surprise at the joy he found manifested in the people he met when he traveled to Haiti in November with a relief organization.
“We take so much for granted here that they don’t take for granted – people there are happy just to be alive, just to have their families…I saw more happy people in Haiti than I have in Canada.”
A photographer by trade, Perry, 28, had signed up with a Hamilton-based Christian missionary relief organization, The Joy and Hope of Haiti, to go to the impoverished nation and help build schools. Initially, he had no intention of even bringing his cameras with him, wanting to devote his time to helping out, but when trip organizers found out how he made his living, they convinced him to take some pictures on their behalf.
Joy and Hope of Haiti works with Starfish Kids, an evangelical Christian charity group that is part of the One Mission Society. Perry spent much of his time in Haiti visiting most of the 40 schools in which the group has a role, taking photos of the students and helping out. Starfish Kids is involved with about 40 religious schools in Haiti, paying a portion of sponsored students’ tuition and providing them with shoes, school books, and breakfast.
Perry believes a lack of education is chief among the root causes of poverty in Haiti. He said he and his fellow Canadian aid workers were met with a mixed reaction at first. While some greeted them with smiles and waves, other shouted obscenities at them, believing that because they were Caucasian, they were with the United Nations, which many Haitians hold responsible for the cholera outbreak that began last year.
Despite such suspicion, Perry said as soon as his camera came out he was instantly the most popular person around. At all of the schools he visited, he was mobbed by children wanting to be photographed.
“The most rewarding part was seeing the expression on the kids’ faces when I showed them their photo in the viewfinder. They absolutely loved it…After numerous school visits and showing the kids their photos, I finally asked someone why the kids got so excited to see their photo. They told me that it was probably the first time they had ever seen themselves. That they don’t own a mirror and the only image they have ever caught of them selves was a faint reflection in a dirty window. Can you imagine? Not knowing what you look like until you’re five or six?”
In some of the schools the floor was gravel and the roof was a tarp with chalkboards to separate the classes. Perry said the way the Haitians lived happily without material possessions was inspirational to him.
“We visited this place called Happiness Alley – it’s one of the poorest places in the country and I got some of my best pictures there. The houses were just sort of put together with whatever people could find, bamboo, tarps. There was garbage everywhere. Kids were running barefoot through the garbage and there were wild goats, pigs and dogs eating the garbage, awful smell and yet the one thing that will stick in my head forever are the smiles on the kids faces. They had nothing. They were playing in garbage. They were dressed in the only dirty clothes they had and somehow managed not to care. They knew no different and were just happy to be alive. It was one of the most moving experiences for me.”
Visits to the schools became impossible a few days after Perry arrived due to rioting and roving gangs angry about the cholera outbreak and blaming the UN. Perry said they couldn’t leave their lodgings in Cap-Haiten after dark, but that he didn’t find it any scarier than downtown Hamilton. The only time he was scared was when he and his colleagues were confronted by a group carrying machetes that screamed obscenities at them believing that they were with the UN. Thankfully, their Haitian guide and a local pastor were able to talk them out of their trouble.
As the Nov. 28 election drew closer, the riots got worse and even leaving the country became difficult. As travel arrangements changed constantly, Perry and the rest of his contingent worked at painting a technical school with local workers until they could get a plane out of Cap-Haiten to Port-au- Prince and then to the United States. Perry said they rode in the back of a covered truck to the airport and did their best to stay out of sight as they passed cars burning on the roadside.
While he has plenty of photos that show the desperate situation in Haiti, Perry said that there is more than enough negative stories in the press about the country and he wanted to capture the smiles and kids having fun.
“The problems there are so severe compared to the life we have, but they don’t know our life, so these severe problems are just everyday life for them and somehow they find joy in it, “ said Perry.
An exhibit of some of the 1,500 photos Perry shot in Haiti will be on display for the month of February at 220, a clothing store at King and Caroline streets. and the store will also be selling limited edition Tshirts with one of his photographs on them to help raise money for Starfish Kids. In March, Perry will be posting many of his photos on his website at www.jayperry.ca.
“It was by far the greatest experience I’ve ever had and I’d go back in a second,” said Perry, who hopes to return to Haiti someday soon with prints of his photos to distribute to the subjects.
Showing posts with label features. Show all posts
Showing posts with label features. Show all posts
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Monday, March 8, 2010
Record of a community destroyed
Book review and author interview from The Daily Yomiuri, October 23, 2005
Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer
Dec. 7, 1941, is a day that will live in infamy for more than just the attack on Pearl Harbor. The events of that day, coupled with racist sentiments long existing in U.S. society, led to a dark chapter in that nation's history: The internment of an entire community of U.S. citizens for no other reason than their ancestry.
David Neiwert's Strawberry Days (Palgrave Macmillan, 280 pp, 29.95 dollars) is an examination of the internment of Japanese and Americans of Japanese descent on the U.S. West Coast. In the book, Neiwert combines extensive historical research--hundreds of primary and secondary source documents and broad-ranging interviews with numerous internees--to trace the history of the Japanese-American community in the town of Bellevue, Wash., a former farming community that is now a suburb of Seattle.
In an e-mail exchange with The Daily Yomiuri, Neiwert explained that Strawberry Days grew out a series of articles he wrote as news editor of the Bellevue Journal-American on the long-term effects of the internment on the local Japanese community.
Strawberry Days is really three books in one: A detailed historical chronicle of the whos, whats, wheres, whens and hows of the internment and the events leading up to it; a series of personal anecdotes and emotional reminiscences from internees and those who knew them; and an insightful, well-reasoned analysis of why the internment happened and what its ramifications are.
Neiwert tracks the history of Japanese immigration to the United States beginning in 1884, just two years after Chinese immigrants had been barred. The first came mostly to work in the Hawaiian sugar industry, later moving to work on rail gangs and in sawmills and canneries in places like Washington. The number of Japanese living in the United States swelled rapidly from about 2,000 in 1890 to more than 24,000 in 1910, according to census figures quoted in the book.
Most of the Japanese immigrants came from rural prefectures, and by the turn of the century many were working in local farm fields. In some areas, including Bellevue, issei and nisei leased or even bought land that they cleared and started truck farms on.
Just as with the Chinese decades earlier, the Japanese immigrants became the target of racist campaigns up and down the coast, led in the Seattle area by Miller Freeman, a publisher and businessman who later became a key figure in Bellevue. Neiwert catalogues various anti-Japanese campaigns including a 1906 move by the San Francisco school board which, under pressure from the Asiatic Exclusion League, ordered all Japanese students to attend the city's Chinese-only school, a slight that led to U.S.-Japanese saber-rattling that resulted in a de facto ban on immigration from Japan.
Miller's role in whipping up anti-Japanese sentiment dated back to as early as 1904 as a proponent of the "Yellow Peril" conspiracy theory, which held that Japanese immigrants had been sent to the United States as secret shock troops and spies for a coming invasion, a theory that was given much credence by those calling for internment years later. Miller continued to lead his Anti-Japanese League, wielding significant political clout in Seattle and pressing successfully for anti-Japanese legislation.
"These groups were really as mainstream as could be. White supremacism was part of the cultural air that Americans breathed back then. The campaigns emanated from the core of power politics, i.e., both the moneyed and the working classes. And there was a clear connection between those campaigns and the internment; many of the same figures emerged to promote internment--Miller Freeman being a classic case--and nearly identical arguments were heard throughout, especially those that painted a portrait of Japanese-Americans as likely traitors," Neiwert told The Daily Yomiuri.
Despite all this, Bellevue's Japanese community thrived. Specializing in strawberries, they were so successful that by the 1930s Bellevue's annual June strawberry festival was attracting 15,000 visitors to the town of fewer than 2,000 residents. The Japanese truck farmers there formed a very successful farming cooperative and community association and their berries were shipped all over the country from their own rail siding. Times were good.
With the coming of war, all this changed. Japanese-Americans were hounded from jobs and constantly suspected of espionage in the wave of hysteria following Pearl Harbor. Worse followed in the actions and attitude of Lt. Gen. John DeWitt, commander of the West Coast defenses who called for Japanese, citizens and immigrants alike, to be removed from the region. In May 1942, Bellevue's entire Japanese population--about 60 families comprising more than 300 people--were evacuated and interned along with about 120,000 other nisei, more than two-thirds of them U.S. citizens by birth. Most lost any personal possessions they couldn't carry.
Strawberry Days most harrowing chapters deal with internees' personal experiences of the evacuation and early period of internment. The most heartbreaking deal with their return after the war to find the farms they had been forced to abandon overgrown or sold for development. In Bellevue, one of the major developers was Freeman.
In one wrenching anecdote, Neiwert relates the story of Kiyo Yabuki, a Bellevue native who volunteered for the U.S. Army while interned and was badly wounded in France serving with the highly decorated 442nd Regimental Combat Team during the nisei unit's famous rescue of the so-called Lost Battalion. After spending most of a year in Vancouver, Wash., hospital, Yabuki took his army uniform to a Bellevue laundry for dry-cleaning. The shop refused to serve him because he was Japanese.
To Neiwert, the historical issue is still a timely one for a number of reasons: "First is the overarching lesson of the internment: That Americans, in times of great national stress, were willing to completely discard the rights of our fellow citizens--so long as it wasn't us. We also were willing to assume that race or ethnicity itself was cause to suspect others of treason. I don't think these propensities have gone away; in fact, they've been resurfacing a lot since 9/11...[the internment] gave the military the precedent it sought to enable it to arrest and detain civilians in a non-battlefield situation without any recourse to the courts. That precedent has come back to us in the form of military tribunals and 'enemy combatant status' instituted by the Bush administration since 9/11."
When the U.S. Supreme Court gave the constitutional seal of approval to the internment in its notorious Korematsu vs United States decision (in which U.S. citizen Fred Korematsu unsuccessfully appealed his conviction for the "crime" of refusing to leave his home), Justice Robert Jackson wrote in dissent that the precedent was "a loaded gun" that could be turned on the rest of the populace at any time.
"That warning, " says Neiwert, "has now come home to roost."
Steely Dan do it again for opening
Feature from The Daily Yomiuri, Aug. 11, 2007
To mark the opening of the their chain of clubs, the bookers for Billboard have scored something of a coup: a series of club dates by Steely Dan. The original hypercool jazzy rockers have already sold out their opening week at the Tokyo venue and tickets for their multinight stands in Osaka and Fukuoka are going fast as Daniacs rush to take advantage of the chance to revel in the smooth, sharp sounds of Steely Dan in such an intimate setting.
Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer
To mark the opening of the their chain of clubs, the bookers for Billboard have scored something of a coup: a series of club dates by Steely Dan. The original hypercool jazzy rockers have already sold out their opening week at the Tokyo venue and tickets for their multinight stands in Osaka and Fukuoka are going fast as Daniacs rush to take advantage of the chance to revel in the smooth, sharp sounds of Steely Dan in such an intimate setting.
The 2007 Heavy Rollers tour--the band's most extensive ever--features Steely Dan's original creative locus of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen backed by a 10-piece band, including a full horn section. Set lists on the tour thus far have reportedly leaned on material from their best-known album, 1977's Aja, and its 1980 follow-up, Gaucho, with a smattering of earlier hits and songs from their most recent two albums.
Reports from the road have it that Fagen is in excellent voice and is performing early hits, such as "Chain Lighting" and "Bad Sneakers," with polish and verve. Becker has shouldered the bulk of the guitar duties, with the aid of the formidable Everything Must Go and Two Against Nature contributor Jon Hernington. Uncharacteristically, Becker also has been seen singing often on the tour.
In their original heyday in the 1970s, Steely Dan rarely played live. The technology available at the time simply could not do the band justice in a live setting and Becker and Fagen were more interested in practicing their studio wizardry than performing in front of an audience. Nor was Steely Dan a band in the traditional sense. The lineup of performers varied widely after the first few years, not only from album to album, but from song to song.
Keyboard player and later singer Fagen and bassist/guitarist Becker, the creative bright lights around which the original band clustered, had originally met in 1967 at Bard College in New York. United by their love of black humor and soul music, the two played in various pickup bands in New York before joining established mainstream pop band Jay and the Americans in 1970. Their brief tenure with the band, which had scored a few hits in the early '60s but were clearly on their way out, resulted in a job as contract songwriters for ABC records.
Becker and Fagen saved their best songs for themselves, rehearsing the original band in their office after working hours. Naming themselves after a sexual prosthesis from William Burroughs' controversial novel Naked Lunch, their 1972 debut Can't Buy A Thrill established the band's reputation for top-notch musicianship, subversive sardonic humor and intelligent jazz-tinged rock.
Breaking up the original group after 1974, Becker and Fagen parked themselves in the studio for the rest of the decade, earning a reputation for being incredibly choosy about sound and performances. They were notorious for trying out as many as 20 guitar players from among the cream of the crop of Los Angeles' studio jazz and rock aces for a single guitar solo and recording over 50 snare drum sounds before settling on one for a single track. They also pioneered the use of digital technology in recording.
Their discerning perseverance paid off with seven platinum albums between 1972 and 1980. After a 10-year hiatus in the '80s, sound technology had caught up, and Becker and Fagan assembled a touring company that circled the globe repeatedly in the '90s. Inspired and creatively reinvigorated by the the live experience, they returned to the studio late in the decade, eventually emerging with 2000's Two Against Nature, that year's Grammy winner for album of the year. Their 2003 follow up Everything Must Go also earned critical praise.
Long live the Queen
Feature interview from The Daily Yomiuri Jul. 14, 2007
Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer
Her Majesty refuses to act her age.
Now nearly 80, an age when most people slow down if they haven't stopped altogether, Koko Taylor, the undisputed Queen of the Blues, still performs more than 100 shows a year.
She has just released a new record, aptly titled Old School, that some critics are calling her best work ever. Chatting over the phone from her home in Chicago, her regal poise notwithstanding, she sounds as energetic, playful and almost flirtatious as a woman a third her age.
This week, fresh from tour stops in Quebec and Albany, N.Y., she will be playing shows in Nagoya, Osaka and Tokyo with fellow Chicagoan Lurrie Bell, the guitarist son of blues harp great Carey Bell. Their Japan tour culminates in the Japan Blues and Soul Carnival at Hibiya Yagai Ongakudo in Tokyo's Hibiya Park. Then she's off to Spain to play another music festival at the end of the month.
"Well, I don't play Japan every day, but I've been there a couple of times and I always enjoy every moment of it," Taylor says . "The only difference is I can't speak their language, but the people there seem to understand me fine when I'm singing."
It's all a long way from the little town outside of Memphis where she was born and grew up.
Taylor is one of the last of the old school of blues musicians, people such as Muddy Waters, Magic Slim, Howlin' Wolf and Buddy Guy, who grew up poor in the rural South before the civil rights movement and came to Chicago to find a new life and eventually a new career in music.
Taylor talks fondly about the trip north with her late husband, guitarist Robert "Pops" Taylor in 1951, famously arriving in the Windy City "with 35 cents in our pockets and a box of Ritz crackers" according to her official bio.
Her husband drove a truck and Koko found work as domestic servant for 5 dollars a day. It wasn't easy, but it was better than sharecropping with her family back on the farm. Recalls Taylor: "It was tough down there when I was young...we used to cut cotton...work on the farm...we didn't have nothing."
On Saturday nights, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor would make the rounds of the blues clubs on the South and West side of town. In the liner notes from Old School Taylor recalls: "We didn't go to no clubs playing that fancy music. Everywhere we went was a blues club. Nothing fancy, nothing beautiful. It was just a hole in the wall where a bunch of us was in there listening to the blues, dancing, drinking, talking loud, doing everything else. It wasn't a place you had to sit up and look pretty, be cute and use a certain language and say something a certain way."
It wasn't long before both Pops and Koko were sitting in with the bands and eventually Koko caught the attention of the legendary bluesman Willie Dixon, who helped her land a recording contract at Chess Records. She had her biggest hit in 1966 with Dixon's song "Wang Dang Doodle"--still her signature tune.
"We used to practice in [Willie Dixon's] basement...we'd play for hours, sometimes all night... with his wife bringing us down food," she remembers.
Taylor says the constant travel is a bit wearing after 40 years, but she wouldn't have it any other way.
"My favorite place in the world is where the people is there and enjoying what I do. It don't matter where you go, people is people and I love people."
She's performed almost everywhere, been on television and in movies, won Grammys and has more Blues Music Awards (25) than any other performer has ever won. Asked if she had any professional ambitions still left unfulfilled, she laughs.
"Nothing but to keep on singing the blues. I've gone too far to turn around now. I'm 79 years old--Why would I try to turn around now and try to do something new?"
Old School, released last month in Japan by P-Vine Records, shows the Queen in peak form. Even after all these years, her voice still has enough raw power to knock down a wall. While she admits it is a chore, she is still writing songs too, having penned five of the dozen tracks. Old School is hardcore blues that sounds like it could have been recorded back in her days at Chess. There are no jazz arrangements or pop orchestration to smooth the rough edges and sharp corners, just power, warmth and foot-stomping shake-your-moneymaker beats. Taylor's authoritative voice reaches out and grabs you and doesn't let go. Her passion and genuine joy in what she is doing shine through in every note.
"God has been good to me. I'm doing what I love to do most of all," she says, before summing up hercareer: "I just do what I do and hope people like it."
Long may she reign.
Koko Taylor will play the Japan Blues and Soul Carnival along with Lurrie Bell, Mitsuyoshi Azuma and the Swinging Boppers, Jun Nagami and others on July 22, 3:45 p.m. at Hibiya Yagai Ongakudo in Tokyo, (03) 5453-8899. Taylor will also play with Bell on July 18, 7 p.m. at Namba Hatch in Osaka, (06) 6362-7301; July 19, 7 p.m. at Bottom Line in Nagoya. (052) 741-1620; and without Bell on July 20, 7 p.m. at Duo Music Exchange in Shibuya, Tokyo. (03) 5453-8899; Bell will play on July 21, 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. at Blues Alley in Meguro, Tokyo, (03) 5740-6041.
(The Daily Yomiuri Jul. 14, 2007)
(The Daily Yomiuri Jul. 14, 2007)
'Meet me at Hachiko'
Full page feature, The DailyYomiuri, Saturday, June 18 2005
Legend of loyal dog grows with 2 English books
Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer
Let's meet at Hachiko"--is there a Tokyoite who hasn't heard or uttered that phrase at least once? The life-size statue of the world's most famous Akita dog is also the capital's most famous meeting place.
On my first day in Tokyo, I met my landlord there, and years later arranged to meet my wife there on our first date.
The location of the statue in front of one of the busiest train stations in the world may have something to do with the popularity of the spot as a rendezvous, but the touching story of canine loyalty that inspired the bronze figure has achieved iconic status both at home and abroad.
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Foreign friends
The tale of Hachiko has spawned countless books in Japan and even inspired the hit 1987 film Hachiko Monogatari scripted by Kaneto Shindo and directed by Seijiro Koyama. The publication of two children's books last year in the United States has spread the legend of the faithful canine overseas.
Hachiko, The True Story of a Loyal Dog (Houghton Mifflin), a picture book aimed at young children, was written by Pamela S. Turner and lavishly illustrated by Yan Nascimbene. The award-winning book is told from the point of view of an old man relating his boyhood memories of Hachiko to his grandchildren.
"It's a really touching story and it would be really easy to go over the top and make it really schmaltzy, so using an older narrator made the restraint logical," the author told The Daily Yomiuri between presentations to students at the American School in Japan during a visit to Tokyo this spring.
Turner, who lived in Tokyo from 1990 to 1996, was looking for a writing project after her return to the United States and was surprised and delighted to find that at the time no one else had tackled the story in English. Authenticity was important to Turner and many of Nascimbene's watercolor illustrations are based on photos taken from an old book about Hachiko given to Turner by an official at Shibuya Station.
A Japanese translation of the book was released in the spring.
Coincidentally, another Hachiko book was released last autumn. Hachiko Waits (Henry Holt and Co.) written by Leslea Newman and illustrated by Tokyo native Machiyo Kodaira, is aimed at slightly older readers, but uses the same literary device of a young boy who befriends Hachiko.
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Immortalized in bronze
The current 91-centimeter bronze statue and its 127-centimeter stone plinth is the second monument to mark the spot the faithful canine maintained his daily vigil. The first, a much larger 162-centimeter statue on a 180-centimeter stone base, was created by celebrated sculptor Teru Ando.
According to the artist's eldest son, Takeshi Ando, 82, his father became interested in sculpting a typical Japanese dog sometime around 1930. An acquaintance suggested Hachiko, by then well known in the neighborhood (see sidebar). The dog was repeatedly brought to Ando's Yoyogi studio to model. When the dog's story hit the newspapers, Ando's efforts to sculpt him were mentioned, making him an obvious choice when the movement to honor Hachiko with a statue gained momentum. Ando also presented a replica of the work to Emperor Showa.
The statue was sacrificed to a wartime scrap metal drive in 1944 and Ando was killed in a massive U.S. bombing raid on May 25, 1945.
After the war, Shibuya was a bustling commercial area and a chaotic hub of wheeling and dealing black marketeers. Takeshi Ando told The Daily Yomiuri in a recent telephone interview that local merchants and Shibuya residents wanted something beautiful and moral to provide them with inspiration in the difficult years immediately after the war. A committee was formed in 1947 and Ando's eldest son was commissioned to re-create his father's work.
"I could have made the same sculpture with my eyes closed," he said. While his father had striven to create a statue of an ordinary Akita, Takeshi said he wanted the dog's faithfulness andloyalty to be evident in its eyes and bearing.
"I wanted to create something beautiful to help the country rise from the ashes," the war veteran-turned-artist said.
His creation was unveiled on Aug. 15, 1948. The statue is now nominally owned by the Shibuya Ward government, which took over ownership from Hachiko Dozo Iji-kai (Hachiko Statue Preservation Association) in 2002. The association, made up of local business owners and companies with offices in the neighborhood, is funded by donations from its members and contributes to the maintainence of the symbolic statue.
One of the current corporate members of the association, Tokyu Department Store Co., went into business the same year the current statue was erected. It has operated a small Hachiko-themed souvenir shop near Shibuya Station since 1992.
According to shop employee Hiromi Sugimoto, the store serves between 100 and 200 customers a day, with stuffed plush toy replicas of Hachiko and paw print-patterned hand towels being the biggest sellers. She says that visitors from out of town looking for a souvenir of Shibuya, especially children on school trips, are the main buyers of Hachiko goods.
By far the most common Hachiko souvenir is a photograph taken next to the statue. Spend any time at all around the statue and you can't help but notice the steady stream of people posing for snapshots in front of Shibuya's most famous denizen.
A similar statue erected in front of JR Odate Station in Akita Prefecture in 1935 was also sacrificed for the war effort, but was replaced by two statues. One is of a group of Akita pups called 'Young Hachiko and His Friends" erected in 1965, and the other is one similar to the Shibuya statue that was installed in 1987.
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History of the breed
Genetic research performed at Tokyo University indicates that the Akita dog, along with the chow chow and Hokkaido breeds, came to Japan from the Asian continent before the archipelago was separated from the mainland by the Sea of Japan. Other common Japanese breeds such as the Shiba were brought later by settlers from China and Korea to the Hiroshima area.
Akitas were used as hunting dogs, especially in northern Japan, with mated pairs used to track large game such as deer and wild boar. The dogs were trained to hold the quarry at bay until hunters arrived. Later in the Edo period (1603-1868), the dogs were often pitted against each other in organized fights.
The lord of Odate Castle in what is now northern Akita Prefecture is known to have been a devotee of dog fighting and the demand for larger and more powerful dogs increased in the 1890s, leading to crossbreeding of Akitas with the bigger Tosa breed.
Concerned that the purity of the Akita breed was being lost, Odate Mayor Shigeie Izumi formed the Akita-Inu Preservation Society in 1927 and the Akita was officially recognized as a national monument in 1931.
Rabies epidemics in 1899 and 1924 nearly resulted in the extinction of the breed as many dogs were destroyed.
During World War II, the government confiscated most dogs to use their fur for military garments. Massive food shortages led to many dogs being killed for food or left to starve as anyone seen feeding a dog was considered a traitor. Barely a dozen Akitas survived the war and they were often crossbred with German shepherds in the late 1940s, when they became a popular pet for U.S. soldiers to take home.
The first Akitas to be introduced in North America belonged to blind and deaf American lecturer and activist Helen Keller, who requested and was given an Akita named Kamikaze-go after learning of Hachiko's story when she visited Japan in 1937.
The dog succumbed to distemper less than a year later and was replaced by Kenzan-go, one of Kamikaze-go's older brothers bred in Odate that became Keller's constant companion. She praised the breed for its contribution to peace when she visited Japan again in 1947.
Traditional canine values
Moving stories of loyal dogs abound, from the true story of Edinburgh's Greyfriars Bobby, the famous Skye terrier who stood by his master's grave for 14 years, to fictional canine heroes such as Old Yeller from Fred Gipson's novel of the same name, immortalized in the 1957 Disney film, and Buck from Jack London's The Call of the Wild.
While cynics may speculate that it was the regular handouts from yakitori vendors that kept Hachiko coming back--a number of wooden skewers were found in the dog's stomach after he died--it is the element of unyielding loyalty that has earned Hachiko his place in the nation's cultural pantheon.
"The story of Hachiko is particularly appealing to the Japanese because of the high value Japanese culture traditionally places on fealty to the group, boss or master--even if the master is absent in death," said Jesse Glass, a professor in the Foreign Language Department at Meikai University in Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture.
History bears out Glass' analysis. In 1936, the story was included in moral education textbooks for primary schools as an illustration of loyalty to one's master, intended to encourage patriotic fealty to Emperor Showa.
Turner agrees. "I think the story of Hachiko strikes a chord with Japanese because of the value Japanese culture puts on the faithful retainer. The most famous story in Japan is the story of the 47 ronin, who are celebrated not for winning a battle or for their bravery, but for being faithful to their master, even after his death and even when it meant their lives...Hachiko embodies these great traditional Japanese values of loyalty and faithfulness," she said.
Ando denies the statues were ever conceived as symbols of loyalty to the Emperor or embodiments of fealty, but says they were meant as iconic representations of the universally appealing values of unconditional love and devotion.
Yasuo Maruyama, deputy stationmaster at JR Shibuya Station, explains Hachiko's appeal this way: "The story tells of a sense of duty and for people today, that kind of morality is being lost. That's why the story inspires people."
He said the busier people become and the more they miss this sort of loyalty and sense of duty in their daily lives, the more the story of Hachiko means to them.
A dog's life
The male Akita later named Hachiko was born in Odate in northern Akita Prefecture in November 1923 and given to Hidesaburo Ueno, a professor at the School of Agriculture at Tokyo Imperial University (now Tokyo University) by a former student who knew of the professor's affection for the big, strong dogs traditionally bred in the town.
Hachi, so named because he was the eighth dog Ueno had owned, would accompany his master from home to nearby Shibuya Station each morning and then come back each afternoon to await his master's return on the 3 p.m. train. On May 21, 1925, Ueno suffered a fatal stroke at work. Despite a few initial efforts to send the dog to be adopted by new owners, Hachiko continued to go to the station every day to wait for Ueno and would spend his nights sleeping on the porch of the late professor's house in Shibuya.
Cared for by Ueno's gardener Nenokichi Takahashi and the stationmaster, the big cream-colored dog became a fixture at the station, often begging food from the numerous street vendors in the neighborhood.
Despite becoming nearly lame from arthritis in his last years, Hachiko continued to show up at the station like clockwork just before 3 p.m. each day, waiting until dark to return home.
His fame spread beyond the district in 1932, when he was the focus of a series of newspaper articles. Contributions poured in from across the country and even from overseas, and a statue was unveiled at the faithful dog's regular waiting spot on April 21, 1934, bearing the words "Chuken Hachiko" (Loyal Dog Hachiko), using an affectionate diminutive form of the name Hachi.
On the evening of March 7 the following year, the dog was found collapsed at his post in front of the station and died early the next morning.
The story headlined newspapers across the country and a day of mourning was declared.
Hachiko was stuffed and mounted and can still be seen at the National Science Museum near Ueno Station in Tokyo, but his bones are interred with those of his master in Aoyama cemetery.
Copyright 2005 The Yomiuri Shimbun
Legend of loyal dog grows with 2 English books
Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer
Let's meet at Hachiko"--is there a Tokyoite who hasn't heard or uttered that phrase at least once? The life-size statue of the world's most famous Akita dog is also the capital's most famous meeting place.
On my first day in Tokyo, I met my landlord there, and years later arranged to meet my wife there on our first date.
The location of the statue in front of one of the busiest train stations in the world may have something to do with the popularity of the spot as a rendezvous, but the touching story of canine loyalty that inspired the bronze figure has achieved iconic status both at home and abroad.
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Foreign friends
The tale of Hachiko has spawned countless books in Japan and even inspired the hit 1987 film Hachiko Monogatari scripted by Kaneto Shindo and directed by Seijiro Koyama. The publication of two children's books last year in the United States has spread the legend of the faithful canine overseas.
Hachiko, The True Story of a Loyal Dog (Houghton Mifflin), a picture book aimed at young children, was written by Pamela S. Turner and lavishly illustrated by Yan Nascimbene. The award-winning book is told from the point of view of an old man relating his boyhood memories of Hachiko to his grandchildren.
"It's a really touching story and it would be really easy to go over the top and make it really schmaltzy, so using an older narrator made the restraint logical," the author told The Daily Yomiuri between presentations to students at the American School in Japan during a visit to Tokyo this spring.
Turner, who lived in Tokyo from 1990 to 1996, was looking for a writing project after her return to the United States and was surprised and delighted to find that at the time no one else had tackled the story in English. Authenticity was important to Turner and many of Nascimbene's watercolor illustrations are based on photos taken from an old book about Hachiko given to Turner by an official at Shibuya Station.
A Japanese translation of the book was released in the spring.
Coincidentally, another Hachiko book was released last autumn. Hachiko Waits (Henry Holt and Co.) written by Leslea Newman and illustrated by Tokyo native Machiyo Kodaira, is aimed at slightly older readers, but uses the same literary device of a young boy who befriends Hachiko.
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Immortalized in bronze
The current 91-centimeter bronze statue and its 127-centimeter stone plinth is the second monument to mark the spot the faithful canine maintained his daily vigil. The first, a much larger 162-centimeter statue on a 180-centimeter stone base, was created by celebrated sculptor Teru Ando.
According to the artist's eldest son, Takeshi Ando, 82, his father became interested in sculpting a typical Japanese dog sometime around 1930. An acquaintance suggested Hachiko, by then well known in the neighborhood (see sidebar). The dog was repeatedly brought to Ando's Yoyogi studio to model. When the dog's story hit the newspapers, Ando's efforts to sculpt him were mentioned, making him an obvious choice when the movement to honor Hachiko with a statue gained momentum. Ando also presented a replica of the work to Emperor Showa.
The statue was sacrificed to a wartime scrap metal drive in 1944 and Ando was killed in a massive U.S. bombing raid on May 25, 1945.
After the war, Shibuya was a bustling commercial area and a chaotic hub of wheeling and dealing black marketeers. Takeshi Ando told The Daily Yomiuri in a recent telephone interview that local merchants and Shibuya residents wanted something beautiful and moral to provide them with inspiration in the difficult years immediately after the war. A committee was formed in 1947 and Ando's eldest son was commissioned to re-create his father's work.
"I could have made the same sculpture with my eyes closed," he said. While his father had striven to create a statue of an ordinary Akita, Takeshi said he wanted the dog's faithfulness andloyalty to be evident in its eyes and bearing.
"I wanted to create something beautiful to help the country rise from the ashes," the war veteran-turned-artist said.
His creation was unveiled on Aug. 15, 1948. The statue is now nominally owned by the Shibuya Ward government, which took over ownership from Hachiko Dozo Iji-kai (Hachiko Statue Preservation Association) in 2002. The association, made up of local business owners and companies with offices in the neighborhood, is funded by donations from its members and contributes to the maintainence of the symbolic statue.
One of the current corporate members of the association, Tokyu Department Store Co., went into business the same year the current statue was erected. It has operated a small Hachiko-themed souvenir shop near Shibuya Station since 1992.
According to shop employee Hiromi Sugimoto, the store serves between 100 and 200 customers a day, with stuffed plush toy replicas of Hachiko and paw print-patterned hand towels being the biggest sellers. She says that visitors from out of town looking for a souvenir of Shibuya, especially children on school trips, are the main buyers of Hachiko goods.
By far the most common Hachiko souvenir is a photograph taken next to the statue. Spend any time at all around the statue and you can't help but notice the steady stream of people posing for snapshots in front of Shibuya's most famous denizen.
A similar statue erected in front of JR Odate Station in Akita Prefecture in 1935 was also sacrificed for the war effort, but was replaced by two statues. One is of a group of Akita pups called 'Young Hachiko and His Friends" erected in 1965, and the other is one similar to the Shibuya statue that was installed in 1987.
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History of the breed
Genetic research performed at Tokyo University indicates that the Akita dog, along with the chow chow and Hokkaido breeds, came to Japan from the Asian continent before the archipelago was separated from the mainland by the Sea of Japan. Other common Japanese breeds such as the Shiba were brought later by settlers from China and Korea to the Hiroshima area.
Akitas were used as hunting dogs, especially in northern Japan, with mated pairs used to track large game such as deer and wild boar. The dogs were trained to hold the quarry at bay until hunters arrived. Later in the Edo period (1603-1868), the dogs were often pitted against each other in organized fights.
The lord of Odate Castle in what is now northern Akita Prefecture is known to have been a devotee of dog fighting and the demand for larger and more powerful dogs increased in the 1890s, leading to crossbreeding of Akitas with the bigger Tosa breed.
Concerned that the purity of the Akita breed was being lost, Odate Mayor Shigeie Izumi formed the Akita-Inu Preservation Society in 1927 and the Akita was officially recognized as a national monument in 1931.
Rabies epidemics in 1899 and 1924 nearly resulted in the extinction of the breed as many dogs were destroyed.
During World War II, the government confiscated most dogs to use their fur for military garments. Massive food shortages led to many dogs being killed for food or left to starve as anyone seen feeding a dog was considered a traitor. Barely a dozen Akitas survived the war and they were often crossbred with German shepherds in the late 1940s, when they became a popular pet for U.S. soldiers to take home.
The first Akitas to be introduced in North America belonged to blind and deaf American lecturer and activist Helen Keller, who requested and was given an Akita named Kamikaze-go after learning of Hachiko's story when she visited Japan in 1937.
The dog succumbed to distemper less than a year later and was replaced by Kenzan-go, one of Kamikaze-go's older brothers bred in Odate that became Keller's constant companion. She praised the breed for its contribution to peace when she visited Japan again in 1947.
Traditional canine values
Moving stories of loyal dogs abound, from the true story of Edinburgh's Greyfriars Bobby, the famous Skye terrier who stood by his master's grave for 14 years, to fictional canine heroes such as Old Yeller from Fred Gipson's novel of the same name, immortalized in the 1957 Disney film, and Buck from Jack London's The Call of the Wild.
While cynics may speculate that it was the regular handouts from yakitori vendors that kept Hachiko coming back--a number of wooden skewers were found in the dog's stomach after he died--it is the element of unyielding loyalty that has earned Hachiko his place in the nation's cultural pantheon.
"The story of Hachiko is particularly appealing to the Japanese because of the high value Japanese culture traditionally places on fealty to the group, boss or master--even if the master is absent in death," said Jesse Glass, a professor in the Foreign Language Department at Meikai University in Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture.
History bears out Glass' analysis. In 1936, the story was included in moral education textbooks for primary schools as an illustration of loyalty to one's master, intended to encourage patriotic fealty to Emperor Showa.
Turner agrees. "I think the story of Hachiko strikes a chord with Japanese because of the value Japanese culture puts on the faithful retainer. The most famous story in Japan is the story of the 47 ronin, who are celebrated not for winning a battle or for their bravery, but for being faithful to their master, even after his death and even when it meant their lives...Hachiko embodies these great traditional Japanese values of loyalty and faithfulness," she said.
Ando denies the statues were ever conceived as symbols of loyalty to the Emperor or embodiments of fealty, but says they were meant as iconic representations of the universally appealing values of unconditional love and devotion.
Yasuo Maruyama, deputy stationmaster at JR Shibuya Station, explains Hachiko's appeal this way: "The story tells of a sense of duty and for people today, that kind of morality is being lost. That's why the story inspires people."
He said the busier people become and the more they miss this sort of loyalty and sense of duty in their daily lives, the more the story of Hachiko means to them.
A dog's life
The male Akita later named Hachiko was born in Odate in northern Akita Prefecture in November 1923 and given to Hidesaburo Ueno, a professor at the School of Agriculture at Tokyo Imperial University (now Tokyo University) by a former student who knew of the professor's affection for the big, strong dogs traditionally bred in the town.
Hachi, so named because he was the eighth dog Ueno had owned, would accompany his master from home to nearby Shibuya Station each morning and then come back each afternoon to await his master's return on the 3 p.m. train. On May 21, 1925, Ueno suffered a fatal stroke at work. Despite a few initial efforts to send the dog to be adopted by new owners, Hachiko continued to go to the station every day to wait for Ueno and would spend his nights sleeping on the porch of the late professor's house in Shibuya.
Cared for by Ueno's gardener Nenokichi Takahashi and the stationmaster, the big cream-colored dog became a fixture at the station, often begging food from the numerous street vendors in the neighborhood.
Despite becoming nearly lame from arthritis in his last years, Hachiko continued to show up at the station like clockwork just before 3 p.m. each day, waiting until dark to return home.
His fame spread beyond the district in 1932, when he was the focus of a series of newspaper articles. Contributions poured in from across the country and even from overseas, and a statue was unveiled at the faithful dog's regular waiting spot on April 21, 1934, bearing the words "Chuken Hachiko" (Loyal Dog Hachiko), using an affectionate diminutive form of the name Hachi.
On the evening of March 7 the following year, the dog was found collapsed at his post in front of the station and died early the next morning.
The story headlined newspapers across the country and a day of mourning was declared.
Hachiko was stuffed and mounted and can still be seen at the National Science Museum near Ueno Station in Tokyo, but his bones are interred with those of his master in Aoyama cemetery.
Copyright 2005 The Yomiuri Shimbun
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