An agricultural scientist at Tokyo’s Imperial University, Hidesaburō Ueno (1872–1925) might have been quickly forgotten after his death, from a cerebral haemorrhage during a lecture, 100 years ago this week.
But his dog could not forget him and, thanks to the dog, neither could Japan. A purebred akita, the animal had been in the habit of accompanying his master to Shibuya railway station every morning, then greeting him there on his return each evening.
And after the professor’s sudden death, the habit continued. Hachikō, as the dog was known (from Hachi, meaning the number eight, and -kō, meaning “little”) was first farmed out to foster carers.
But when he returned to Shibuya, to be minded by Ueno’s former gardener, the dog resumed his evening vigils at the station, scanning the alighting passengers for a face that would never return.
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At first, he was considered a pest, ill-treated by station vendors and children. Then in 1932, a Japanese daily newspaper romanticised the dog’s vigil and turned him into a cult.
Even while Hachikō still lived, admirers erected a statue of him, while donations of food poured in.
By the time of his death in 1935, the dog might have been a martyr to yakitori chicken. A postmortem later found the remains of several wooden skewers in his stomach, although it turned out those hadn’t killed him.
His funeral made international headlines. A Reuters report carried in The Irish Times said he had been buried in Tokyo “by sixteen priests, according to the rites of Buddhism, and mourned by the whole nation”.
Promoted as a symbol of devotion and other prized virtues, the dead Hachikō was a nationalist hero, his story featuring in schoolbooks.
In what sounds like a cautionary metaphor, the bronze statue was later melted down for munitions during the second World War. But the cult survived. In 1948, a new statue took the place of the old one. It went on to be a Tokyo version of Clerys clock: a meeting place for generations of Japanese.
Among the other things, Shibuya is known for today is a celebrity road junction. During the Rugby World Cup in 2019, I caught the metro there to partake in one of the city’s rites of passage: the mass, six-way pedestrian crossing, triggered by the appearance of the little green man.
Up to 3,000 people cross the junction simultaneously, many pausing to take iPhone pictures of themselves and each other. The bronze Hachikō looks on, unmoved.
His is probably the most famous (and one of the better documented) examples of a universal legend: the faithful dog pining forever for a dead master.
More typically, the dog keeps a vigil at the owner’s grave: as in the tale of Greyfriars Bobby, a Scottish legend whose popularity almost rivals the Lough Ness monster and may be about equally factual.
A Skye terrier, Bobby, is said to have guarded his master’s grave in Edinburgh for 14 years until his own death in 1872. But the historicity of the story is something of a grey area – or even a Gray one, since two different John Grays, a farmer and a nightwatchman – have been advanced as the dog’s owner.
There may have been more than one Bobby too. It has been suggested that when the first one died, having become a tourist attraction, canny local traders found it imperative to replace him.
Even the dog’s pedigree has been questioned. He could have been a Dandie Dinmont, a popular breed at the time, but perhaps not as easily romanticised as a Skye.
A better-documented case in Europe was Fido (the popular dog name derives from the Latin for “faithful”), whose story made headlines in Italy in the 1940s and 50s.
Of uncertain breeding, he was found injured on a street one day in 1941 and nursed back to health by a local factory worker.
Like Hachikō, he then developed the habit of accompanying his master on the commute every morning and greeting him at the bus stop in the evening.
Then in 1943, the owner died during an Allied bombing. Thereafter, until the dog’s own death in 1958, Fido kept the daily bus stop vigil in vain, garnering several Italian magazine articles in the process, and a 1957 mention in Time. He too earned a statue while still alive. He also enjoyed the affections of the townspeople of Luco, including a butcher who fed him and the bus company which let him wait indoors in cold weather.
The owner’s impoverished widow, however, had to keep renewing his licence every year, at least until 1957, when as Time reported:
“Last week, despite the desperate straits of his own treasury, the mayor of Luco himself decreed that Fido should henceforth live tax-free as the only legally unlicensed dog in Italy. ‘He has set an example of fidelity to our village,’ said his honor, ‘and deserves to be placed on the list of Luco’s honored citizens.’”
It was a populist move, but also a cost-efficient one. Tax-free Fido died a year later, of old age.
