Akita inu

The Akita inu comes from the mountains of this prefecture, where it was bred to hunt large game — bear, boar, deer — in deep snow. It is a big, thick-coated, upright-eared, curled-tail dog with a famously reserved temperament: not demonstrative, not effusive, and extremely attached to one household.

Hachiko

Hachiko was born in Odate, in northern Akita, in 1923 and went to live in Tokyo with a university professor. Every day he met his owner at Shibuya Station. In May 1925 the professor died at work and did not come back.

Hachiko continued to come to the station at the same time, and did so for nine years, nine months and fifteen days, until his own death in 1935. A national newspaper picked up the story in 1932 and he became famous across Japan. A bronze statue was raised at Shibuya in 1934, while he was still alive and present at the unveiling.

The wartime statue was taken down in 1944 and melted for metal in August 1945. The one at Shibuya today was cast in 1948 by the son of the original sculptor.

Nearly gone, twice

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the breed was heavily crossed with imported Western dogs for dog fighting, and the original type nearly vanished. A preservation society was founded in 1927, and the Akita became a designated Natural Monument in 1931.

Then came the war. Dogs were culled for their pelts and because there was no food; by 1945 the number of pure Akita is often put at somewhere around a dozen or so animals. Everything alive today descends from that remnant.

The diplomatic dog

Akita Prefecture now presents Akita inu to foreign figures as a formal gesture — most famously to Vladimir Putin in 2012 and to the figure skater Alina Zagitova in 2018, after which registrations of the breed rose sharply overseas.

Odate has a museum devoted to the breed, and cafés and displays around the prefecture keep dogs you can meet. They will not jump on you. That is the breed working correctly.