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| [a] Loyalty RF |
What could be more authentic than the loyalty of a dog? The Japanese text, above, can be translated as "Loyal Dog Hachiko." If you think about it (and countless people have), we have stories and phrases abounding in languages all over the world regarding this particularly hairy form of best friend.
Those of you who follow the news closely and live in the United States might well already have guessed what led me to write on this topic. Some of what I have to say here is lighthearted, but most of it is just plain sad—in the most recent case in the news, terribly so.
There is something about dogs, though. Something.
There is something about dogs, though. Something.
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| [b] Hachiko RF |
Adam Gopnik recently wrote on the subject of dogs and humans and life together in an article in The New Yorker. He raises several interesting questions about the way we talk about dogs and the ways in which we interact. Gopnik might very well question why I would put discussion of dogs under the topic "displays of authenticity." From a biological perspective, I can see the point. As someone interested in human culture and how we express it, though, all I can say is (Gopnik also leads us in this direction in his excellent essay) that our social "reading" of canine companionship is exactly the point. A whole bunch of us—human beings—identify dogs with loyalty and devotion, and authentic loyalty, at that.
When it comes to devotion, it is hard to beat the story of Hachiko, the Akita pup given to a Tokyo University professor in 1923. Today, Hachiko's statue sits outside the Shibuya Station, one of the major stops on the Yamanote Line that circles Tokyo. Every day, hundreds if not thousands of tourists from Japan and abroad go to Shibuya to pet the statue (which has been worn by decades of dog-loving hands). I made my first pilgrimage in 2002, and had been planning it for years before that.
When it comes to devotion, it is hard to beat the story of Hachiko, the Akita pup given to a Tokyo University professor in 1923. Today, Hachiko's statue sits outside the Shibuya Station, one of the major stops on the Yamanote Line that circles Tokyo. Every day, hundreds if not thousands of tourists from Japan and abroad go to Shibuya to pet the statue (which has been worn by decades of dog-loving hands). I made my first pilgrimage in 2002, and had been planning it for years before that.
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| [c] Devotion RF |
Hachiko went with the old professor to the station every day and waited for him every evening. One day, the professor didn't return. You may read on, below:
The story rocked Japan, and then the world. It was eventually made into a movie about loyalty, devotion, and authenticity—first in Japan and then in Hollywood. This is the kind of story that has legs, as it were, and is transferable across many linguistic and cultural borders—not all of them, to be sure, but many.
A loyal dog waiting every evening for its owner until its own death nine years later is about as sad as it gets. The image in the news last month from Rockford, Iowa, though, can match it. This is not the place for analysis. I just can't get over how closely tied dogs and people are when we speak of devotion. We can say it is "cultural" all we want (and that, indeed, is saying something). It sure feels like there is something else—something authentic—going on, though.
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