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Japan’s Favourite “Dog in
Waiting”
by Tim Young
From SATELLITE 55, Fall 1999
Tim Young, Editor
Shibuya is known today as a popular gathering point
for
Tokyo’s young people. But long before loose
socks and sandals with three - inch soles, before
Tower Records and
Studio Alta, Shibuya had another
claim to fame: Hachiko.
The year was 1925. Every morning, Professor
Eizaburo
Ueno walked to Shibuya Station,
accompanied by his loyal dog, Hachi, nicknamed
Hachiko. Hachiko didn’t accompany
his master to his
teaching job at the Imperial University (now known as
Tokyo University),
but when Professor Ueno returned
every day at 3 p.m., the dog was always at the
station waiting for him.
However, on May 21 of that year, Ueno died of a
stroke
while at the university. Hachiko went to
Shibuya as always to meet his master, but 3:00
came and went, and the professor
didn’t arrive.
So Hachiko waited. And waited.
The akita must have known something was wrong,
but
nonetheless he returned to the station every
day at 3:00 to meet the train. Soon people began
to notice the loyal dog’s
trips made in vain to meet
his master. Ueno’s former gardener, the Shibuya
Stationmaster, and others began feeding
Hachiko
and giving him shelter.
Word of Hachiko’s unaltered routine spread
across
the nation, and he was held up as a shining example
of loyalty. People traveled to Shibuya simply to see
Hachiko,
feed him, and gently touch his head for luck.
The months turned to years, and still Hachiko
returned
to Shibuya Station daily at 3 p.m., even as
arthritis and aging took their toll. Finally, on March 7,
1935, nearly ten
years after last seeing Professor
Ueno the 12-year-old akita was found dead on the
same spot outside the station where
he had spent
so many hours waiting for his master.
Hachiko’s death made the front pages of major
Japanese
newspapers. A day of mourning was
declared. Contributions poured in from all over the
country to memorialize the dog
that had won the
hearts of the nation. Sculptor Takeshi Ando was
hired, with the money that had been contributed, to
create
a bronze statue of Hachiko. It was placed on
the exact spot where Hachiko had waited for so long.
Within a few years, however, Japan was at war,
and
any available metal was melted down to make
weapons. Not even Hachiko’s statue was spared.
However, after
the war, in 1948, Ando’s son Teru
sculpted a new Hachiko, the statue that stands
outside Shibuya Station to this
day.
This is not the only monument to Chuken (“loyal dog”)
Hachiko to be found in Tokyo, however. Aoyama
Cemetery, two kilometers west
of TAC, contains a
memorial to Hachiko on the site of Professor Ueno’s
grave. Some of Hachiko’s bones are
reportedly
buried there, but in fact, Hachiko can still be seen,
in the fur, stuffed, in the National Science Museum,
northwest
of Ueno Station.
Back in Shibuya, Hachiko’s statue sits in
a noble
pose, forever waiting for his master. And,
appropriately, his statue, the best-known landmark
and meeting
place in Shibuya, is where hundreds
of people every day sit and wait for their friends.
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