Abstract
If one were to write a biography of a nonhuman animal, a likely candidate is Hachikō, an Akita dog who became popular in 1932 when a newspaper claimed he had been awaiting the return of his master at a Tokyo train station since his owner’s death seven years earlier. That fame led to the production of an enormous variety of source material that a historian could use to reconstruct his life’s story. This chapter uses Hachikō to explore the methodological and theoretical challenges of animal biography. It argues that two new(er) kinds of primary sources—taxidermy and photography—allow Hachikō (and some other animals) to “speak” and play a collaborative role in telling their own stories.
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Notes
- 1.
Skabelund, “Can the Subaltern Bark?” 194–243.
- 2.
Hayashi, Hachikō.
- 3.
Miklósi, Dog Behavior, 1.
- 4.
Miklósi et al., “Personality,” 198–199.
- 5.
Ibid., 200.
- 6.
Ibid., 206–208.
- 7.
Beck, Ecology.
- 8.
“Itoshi ya rōken,” 8.
- 9.
Saitō, Nihon no inu, 271.
- 10.
See Sax, Animals.
- 11.
Ibid., 271.
- 12.
Saitō, “Aiken monogatari,” 12, 60–61.
- 13.
Saitō, Nihon no inu, 334–335.
- 14.
Ibid., 332.
- 15.
Shiina, Taishō, 262–268.
- 16.
Alberti, “Constructing Nature,” 79, 81.
- 17.
Saitō, Nihon no inu, 337; Nihon inu hozon kai, Shadan hōjin, 55–57.
- 18.
Chūken Hachikō kiroku.
- 19.
Imagawa, Inu no gendai shi, 163.
- 20.
Kaigo et al., Nihon kyōkasho, 245.
- 21.
Monbushō, Jinjō shōgaku, 134–145.
- 22.
Kobayashi, “Sangatsu,” 115–116.
- 23.
For more on Nachi and Kongō, see Skabelund, “Breeding Racism.”
- 24.
Hiraiwa, “Watakushi no inu,” 9, 69–70.
- 25.
Masson, Dogs Never Lie, 53, 61 (original emphasis).
- 26.
Saitō, Nihon no inu, 338–339.
- 27.
Hayashi, Hachikō, 300.
- 28.
Kishi, Chūken Hachikō, 46.
- 29.
Pycior, “The Public and Private Lives of ‘First Dogs’,” 179.
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Skabelund, A. (2018). A Dog’s Life: The Challenges and Possibilities of Animal Biography. In: Krebber, A., Roscher, M. (eds) Animal Biography. Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98288-5_5
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