Hachikō

Hachikō (undated recording)

Hachikō ( Japanese ハチ公 or 忠犬ハチ公 chūken hachikō , the faithful dog Hachikō ; born November 10, 1923 in Ōdate , Akita Prefecture ; † March 8, 1935 in Tokyo ) was a Japanese Akita dog that is still known in Japan today The epitome of loyalty applies.

Life

Hachikō was in on 10 November 1923 Ōdate in Akita prefecture born. In 1924, Hidesaburō Ueno , a professor at the Imperial University of Tokyo , took him to Shibuya, Tokyo , as his pet . From then on, the dog picked up his master at Shibuya station every day when he returned from university .

Shibuya train station in those days

Tomb of Professor Hidesaburō Ueno in Aoyama Cemetery in Tokyo. The stele with the large characters on the right side was erected in memory of Hachikō.

He continued undeterred, even after the professor had died of a cerebral haemorrhage during a lecture on May 21, 1925 , every day until his own death ten years later. After Professor Ueno's death, Hachikō was given to relatives living in the city, but ran away from there and continued to come to the train station every day at a fixed time to wait for his master. Finally, Kikuzaburō Kobayashi, the former gardener of Professor Ueno, who lived near the train station, had taken care of Hachikō.

While Hachikō was viewed as a troublemaker in the first few years on the station premises and was only tacitly tolerated, in 1928 a new station master even set up a small resting place for him. That same year, a former student of Professor Ueno who was doing research on Akita dogs accidentally recognized the dog. When he found out that Hachikō was one of only about 30 purebred Akita dogs left, he took a closer look at Hachikō's story and wrote several articles about it. In 1932, the publication of one of these articles in a Tokyo newspaper made Hachiko known throughout Japan, and he became the epitome of the faithful dog in his lifetime. The respect for Hachikō culminated in the erection of a bronze statue on the west side of the station in 1934, whose inauguration ceremony was also attended by Hachikō.

When Hachikō was found dead on a street in Shibuya on March 8, 1935, the media reported his death nationwide. Research in 2011 by a research team from the University of Tokyo showed that Hachikō had suffered from severe filariasis as well as lung and heart cancer . Any of these diseases could have caused his death. His body is now preserved in the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Tokyo's Ueno district .

Honors

During the Second World War , the Hachikō statue was melted down due to the prevailing copper shortage. After the war, Andō Takeshi, son of the creator of the original statue, who has since died, was commissioned to create a new version, which was placed in the previous place in August 1948. A similar statue stands in front of the vordate train station in Akita Prefecture , Hachikō's birthplace.

Tokyo’s Hachikō statue is the most popular meeting place at Shibuya Station. The western exit of the station, where Hachikō had always waited, is officially called Hachikō Exit . It leads to the diagonal cross between Bahnhofsstraße and the Center-gai shopping street , one of the most famous street crossings in the world.

In 2003 the minibus line Hachikō bus was set up, which to this day consists of four lines and whose buses are decorated with Hachikō drawings.

On the 80th anniversary of Hachikō's death, the University of Tokyo had a bronze statue erected showing the excited jumping Hachikō together with his owner Hidesaburō returning from work.

Film adaptations

1987: Hachikō Monogatari ( ハチ公物語 ) (Japan; Directed by Seijirō Kōyama )
2009: Hachiko - A Wonderful Friendship (Hachi: A Dog's Tale) (USA, director: Lasse Hallström ; leading actor: Richard Gere )

Pop Culture

In the manga series One Piece , which has been running since 1997 , Hachikō is honored in the form of the dog Chouchou , who stays in front of his owner's shop and guards it after the death of its owner.

In Jurassic Bark , the seventh episode of the fourth season of Futurama , a longer homage to Hachiko appears. Seymour, the dog of the main character Fry , waits twelve years in front of the pizzeria where Fry worked, even after his disappearance, until he finally dies.

In the 2007 action role-playing game The World Ends with You , Hachikō and the statue erected at Shibuya Station play an important role in the narrative. Reference is also made to the associated legend.

In Pokémon: Master Quest , the fifth season of the anime series Pokémon , there is a similar story, according to which the fire Pokémon Vulnona waits 200 years for its owner to return.

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