Animal Welfare & Abuse in Japan

[beentheredonethat]

The exploitation and abuse of animals in Japan is a modern, capitalistic and now 'technologicalized' phenomenon. Please don't support the pet industry and their cronies, please support the independent welfare groups.

Amongst developed nations, if we accept Japan to be a fully developed nation, it has one of the worst records and attitudes towards animals. For the vain, immature and self-centered, animals are just 'things', fashion accoutrements to be dumped when trends, or boyfriends, are changed (some petshops even offer bins to dump your unwanted animal when you turn up to buy a new one). Munipical "Animal Welfare Centers" are, in fact, killing machines employing metal containers they euphemistically call "dream boxes".

It is estimate that each year the State kills approximately 300,000 to 400,000 unwanted domestic cats and dogs in a terrible fashion, mainly using highly automated carbon monoxide poisoning plants in which it takes about 10 minutes for their barking to down into whimpers as the dogs writhe in agony, and another 20 minutes before their twitching bodies finally become still. Not all are dead at that point, but they are still dumped with the rest of the corpses. Many don't even make it to the Welfare centers to be re-homed, such a futile concept as that is, but are instead killed aboard anonymous blacked out trucks between being picked up and arriving at the center's crematorium. Probably as many, even days old, are just dumped like garbage usually at riversides, temples or graveyards for the Buddha to take care of them.

Breeders and pet shops have appallingly low standards, social stigmas against "second hand", and an unwilling to spay go against the animals' chance.

Here is part of the process ... (note the lovingly high-tech application of sacks of cats, the authorities don't even bother counting the cats).

[beentheredonethat]

At typical pet shops like this, it is estimated that somewhere between 70% to 90% of the animals passing through the system are killed rather than find homes and kept under strong light 24/7 until sold or disposed off. They are separated from their mothers and litters too young and often kept without water and food so as to avoid creating "bad smells" that might put buyers off.

You will often find rare breeds and exotic animals.

[beentheredonethat]

Behind the scenes are non-atypical breeding mills looking like this ...

The animal breeding industry traditionally belongs at the lower end of the social stratas (ex-buraku etc) and often involves organized crime. It is very poorly and usually "self" (meaning not) regulated.

In some notable cases, were Japanese animal welfare activists have stepped in to stop or document abusive breeders, police have instead charged them with trespass and taking photos in much the same way they charged the Japanese Greenpeace activists when they uncovered and reported the common place fraud within the whaling industry.

One campaigner, who asked for ­anonymity, spent two years trying to get the authorities to shut down a pet mill near Fukuoka in southern Japan.

“Hundreds of animals were crammed in a tiny space,” she said. “The stench was overpowering, with carcasses lying around and dead animals being dumped with the garbage.”

The campaigner was arrested and charged with trespassing as she tried to gather evidence. No action was taken against the owner.

[beentheredonethat]

Mostly the hoovering up of strays and unwanted pets goes on unseen. Typical attitudes and the rigid, efficient bureaucratic disposal mechanism is shown here:

[beentheredonethat]

A close of the killing here, note the multiple animals placed in "dream boxes" and that even perfectly docile and well behaved pedigrees are killed. (I, personally, know of one absolutely, beautiful English Setter in a local no kill shelter if anyone is willing to save it).

The concept of pedigree breeding is very new to Japan and, again, entirely unregulated to the point ethical breeders outside of Japan will no longer supply it with animals (unethical ones will). Consequently, inbreed is common causing weakness, illnesses and mutations. Bitches are made and kept pregnant far too often.

Tastes in pets are highly faddish like any other consumer products in Japan and collapsing demands mean an increased disposal of unwanted animals. The trend towards 'kawaii' being strong leads to pups being removed too early from their mothers to increase their shelf life at pet stores.

[beentheredonethat]

The Japanese pet industry is worth more than £20billion a year and there are now more than 23 million pet cats and dogs in Japan ... more than the number of children.

The big 4 government and industry sponsored organizations are complicit in the slaughter and abuse.

Dogs might get 7 days at a hokenjo to find an owner, domestic cats (not feral or strays) will be killed the same day. They are often not fed at them as it is seen as a waste of resources (as they are going to die) and, of course, causes smells and waste. Puppies and kittens die more slowly because the gas takes longer to penetrate their small bodies.

90 per cent of abandoned pets are dumped in government pounds and destroyed each year, that compares with just nine per cent in the UK.

[HarryHurry]

The exploitation and abuse of animals in Japan is a modern, capitalistic and now 'technologicalized' phenomenon. Please don't support the pet industry and their cronies, please support the independent welfare groups.

Amongst developed nations, if we accept Japan to be a fully developed nation, it has one of the worst records and attitudes towards animals. For the vain, immature and self-centered, animals are just 'things', fashion accoutrements to be dumped when trends, or boyfriends, are changed (some petshops even offer bins to dump your unwanted animal when you turn up to buy a new one). Munipical "Animal Welfare Centers" are, in fact, killing machines employing metal containers they euphemistically call "dream boxes".

It is estimate that each year the State kills approximately 300,000 to 400,000 unwanted domestic cats and dogs in a terrible fashion, mainly using highly automated carbon monoxide poisoning plants in which it takes about 10 minutes for their barking to down into whimpers as the dogs writhe in agony, and another 20 minutes before their twitching bodies finally become still. Not all are dead at that point, but they are still dumped with the rest of the corpses. Many don't even make it to the Welfare centers to be re-homed, such a futile concept as that is, but are instead killed aboard anonymous blacked out trucks between being picked up and arriving at the center's crematorium. Probably as many, even days old, are just dumped like garbage usually at riversides, temples or graveyards for the Buddha to take care of them.

Breeders and pet shops have appallingly low standards, social stigmas against "second hand", and an unwilling to spay go against the animals' chance.

Here is part of the process ... (note the lovingly high-tech application of sacks of cats, the authorities don't even bother counting the cats).

Such a tragedy and shameful waste..

Well done for posting. Not sure what it can achieve here, but education never harmed anyone, I guess.

[twelvedown]

Yes, just terrible these orientals.

Not like the wonderful way we treat animals in the west is it?

Have you ever thought of focusing your indignant rage on a local problem rather than another race?

[beentheredonethat]

Have you ever thought of focusing your indignant rage on a local problem rather than another race?

Are you condoning the slaughter?


Japan is my home. I am a resident not a tourist or an ALT ... 'Think Global, Act Local' ... and apply solutions where the needs are the most and the returns the greatest.

I would like to encourage those abroad with some time, money and energy come to Japan and do something positive rather than just take.

How about you? Have you ever done anything altruistic for any other living thing whilst you've been here?

Have you ever reduced or put to an end some other innocent creature's suffering?

I'll tell you the people doing this stuff will accept any help from where ever it comes.

[YokohamaTommy]

I want to ask you,
What do you expect us all do regarding this?
Rush down to the Animal center in a riotous mob and free these animals?
Then what? You're on a goddamned island.

As I have lamented previously, Japan has a serious stray cat problem.
So you set up a no-kill shelter. That takes lots of money.
Who's going to pay for that?
Aren't taxes high enough?

The solution seems simple enough; Spay or Neuter your cat.
You are simply appealing to people's sense of guilt and the shock value with these videos.
And maybe that's a good thing for people to think about.
But in itself, that will accomplish nothing to solve the basic problems which are unique to Japan's stray animal issues.

Why not focus on a realistic and sustainable plan?

Let's start with the kill method, because I actually think the capture method is pretty efficient.
In America, the animal is usually given a week before destruction. Why only one day in Japan?
My feeling is that because of the numbers are larger?
Or is it more of a realistic view? That they realize there's almost no chance for the animal to get adopted even if they gave a week?
I find it hard to believe that the Japanese have not examined and measured this in great detail already.

[beentheredonethat]

I want to ask you,
What do you expect us all do regarding this?

I expect you do no nothing. I just thought it would be useful to dump all evidence and information is one place where foreigners are likely to find it easily ... if they are interested about the issue. I guess there are a lot more readers than contributors to this forum.

As for the groups, I am sure that if anyone dropped a few bags of kitty litter or dog chow on them, they would be more than grateful. For those of us that had dogs back home, especially big dogs, there is a pleasure to be had taking one of them for the best walk it is ever likely to have in the rest of its sorry life here.

As I have lamented previously, Japan has a serious stray cat problem. So you set up a no-kill shelter. That takes lots of money. Who's going to pay for that? Aren't taxes high enough?

State or art, even in Japan, suggests 'Trap Neuter Release' (TNR) is the cheapest and most effective route to go. The current system is choked beyond capacity and stupidly expensive. As part of people's education in Japan, I serious suggest going to seeing one of the Aigo centers is you want to see your tax yen is wasted in such a sad way ... with real human cost to. Imagine "emptying the rubbish" like that day in day out.

In the wild, feral cats will survive perhaps 5 years ... and they do provide a service to society of killing vermin populations in check. Low numbers are acceptable. Indeed, historically, this is how and why they exist. They are not native to Japan and were specifically released by order to do just so (saving the silk crop). Culling does not work because as soon as you remove one population, another population expands into the void you have created.

The 'human-bureaucratic' problem is an attitudinal one in favor of non-intervention (not neutering) which then leads to overpopulation and 'nuisance' which then leads to genocide which as it can never be successful ... and underlines the streak of cruelty and the undervaluing of life in Japanese society.

Just 60 - 70 years ago you could remove domestic animals from the equation and replace with 'Chinese peasants' and you would have very much the same machine and infrastructure doing the same thing.

With the death of Buddhism, and the rise of materialism, the traditional valuing of life has been reduced to lip service. Itadakimasu ...the "whole personality" has been replaced with "no personality".

You are simply appealing to people's sense of guilt and the shock value with these videos. And maybe that's a good thing for people to think about. But in itself, that will accomplish nothing to solve the basic problems which are unique to Japan's stray animal issues. Why not focus on a realistic and sustainable plan?

That is fair to say but perhaps starting the discussion is the beginning. Such ideas are "foreign" to modern Japan ... but then so are most of the cats and dogs.

I think the other human problems are the the worship of the kirei (emp. 'tidy'), 'shikata ga nai and keeping your nose out of problems' factor. It needs people to come forward, get their hands dirty, take the brunt of the authority's rejection ... and then let the locals get on with it wonderful. It also needs people to speak out and berate others until they get the message it is unacceptable.

This is happening. Almost all of the shaker and movers were and still are foreigners in Japan. One that can get out of bar/Roppongi (although I dare say Roppongi has its cat problems too).

Let's start with the kill method, because I actually think the capture method is pretty efficient. In America, the animal is usually given a week before destruction. Why only one day in Japan? My feeling is that because of the numbers are larger?

At present, they realize there's almost no chance for the animal to get adopted because ... like the women ... everyone wants a young, pretty, fashionable and kawaii one ... and less people wants a second hand one. Restriction need to be made at the supply (shutting down breeders and pet shops as has happened in other nations) and changes at the demand end (abroad, a save dog or cat is a cool thing to have).

Germany, for example, has wonderful dog laws and expensive licensing which would kill dead instantly 95% of dog abuse in Japan, i.e. a dog must have a set minimum floor and movement space. (Of course, it would also reduce 95% of dog ownership as few can afford such space but that is the point!).

From what I hear from friends and read, workers at the Aigo centers are just as gutted and carrying a significant burden. The resistance point is the usual 'government - industry - bureaucracy' complicity. "If there is big money to be made ... damn the cost to society and the animals" The "Big 4" mentioned above.

I find it hard to believe that the Japanese have not examined and measured this in great detail already.

This is about the only point that I will disagree with you on. I think partly they are stuck by the status quo and largely they lack alternative experiences/imagination. The Japanese instigators who are involved do see to have done time abroad ... and then are finding local supporters.

The whole animal rights/animal welfare thing is way behind the times in Japan and the tradition of brutality not so long ago.

I would emphasis that it is part of the tradition of Japan prior to the Western intervention in the 1870s which ended 1,000 of Buddhist vegetarianism and co-existence (... you can blame the Ambassador Townsend Harris for putting the milk and steak on the table) and the general level of kindness still exists at the foundations of the society.

[HarryHurry]

Yes, just terrible these orientals.

Not like the wonderful way we treat animals in the west is it?

Have you ever thought of focusing your indignant rage on a local problem rather than another race?

OP's not saying 'this OR that', but just taking an opportunity to point out what's going on here in a place relevant to most of us. Yours is a typical anti-animal knee-jerk, ignorant, what-if-it-was-your-cute-little-daughter response.

You've really got a thing against the animal species, ain't ya? Did a dog abuse you as a child? Go eat some whale meat or something. You'll feel better then...

[oxymoron]

What can you do, as an individual, to resolve this problem? Very little! But every little bit helps!

My wife and I are chicken farmers, producing organic, free range eggs. We don't kill our hens that have passed their egg laying days. They are free to range across our 10 acres of pasture until old age gets them.

Our 2 dogs come from dog pounds and are part of our family.


If each one of you adopts just one pet, you can make a difference. Don't whinge about the problem, just take one small step to fix it. If I could show you the love in our dog's eyes, when they look at us, you'd know what I mean.

[beentheredonethat]

I'm in the midst of deliberation

THANK YOU.

I'll state my bias immediately. I am a proponent of the sustainability movement, not in a hippie-dippie way, but from a logical, engineering standpoint. Benefit for all at the lowest (if not dispersed altogether) financial, emotional, engineering/architectural-minded governmental cost ... Using our brains to solve our problems.

I'd like to rewind that position one notch, and this answers the 'Great White Defenders of Nippon' as well, it is not just a common sense sustainability issue ... in the case of domesticated animals it is our moral responsibility as well as we created them. We created them and we created them as they are (as unnatural parasitic or symbiotic creatures for our selfish purposes, not theirs or evolution's). It is our cost to shoulder, even within a capitalistic framework.

Yes, I agree the wonder of money is that you can use it to apply strictures and create solutions. The owners, breeders and industry *should* pay for the entire cost and not even the rest of us. It's pretty much the same argument as for drug taking, as in you pay for your addiction not society.

You whole re-wilding theory sounds perfectly moral and sensible. All the Shiba Inus will do OK, the chihuahuas are going to end up as someone's deftly despatched dinner as they should. It strikes me that with all the dying country villages, Japan has more than adequate forested and rivered valleys to make this possible. Even ex-farm animals can fit into such an equation.

In a sense, now that Fukushima is going to shut off for 20 years, it will become an study in how this happens as there are now feral herds of everything from dogs and cattle to ostriches. The wildlife did excellently well out of Chernobyl. Animal don't need humans.

Many people simply don't equate animals as "living things" with a perspective into reality that may be shockingly similar to our own.

Speaking to old folk, I don't see this as a traditionally Japanese view point, influenced by Buddhist/animist awareness but rather a "modern/rationalist/capitalist" concept brought in from the West (Descartes Denial). Japan was *predominately* vegetarian (actually *predominately* ovo-vegan because it did not do milk) right up to the 70s. A 1,000 years tradition according to Imperial edict. Its tradition is plant based and agrarian, not in animal husbandry (which is part of the problem), with a little seafood, including sea vegetables on the sides.

Unfortunately, of course, the Western capitalists got in there quick and sold all the same industrial agriculture concepts with the usually disastrous effect, e.g. 100,000s of milk cows being slaughtered due to dropping demands in the North, 300,000 mass slaughtered due to foot and mouth diseases recently in Kyushu.

[HarryHurry]

I see nothing wrong here. it's all context

Which makes any futher effort to discuss on my part futile, so I'll go and find some more productive task to be getting on with. Perhaps you could ask the other idiot for a piece of that whale...

[beentheredonethat]

I see nothing wrong here. Japan is doing the same thing that the rest of the world is doing. I think the only reason why people have issues is because it's "asians" abusing animals (which is a normal stereotypical assumption).

Such a response is just a shirking of responsibilities, switching off any compassionate feeling you might have and diminishing the information ... and the necessity for you to do anything about it. It's just a cop out.

e.g. "I don't need to do anything, take any moral or environmental stand ... because it is just "bad foreigners being racist". I could even be, "It is in my self-interest to do and say nothing because it might risk my supply of pussy/money/work etc".

From experience, I think you'll find anyone motivated in this area was just as motivated where they came from. We are here now and the needs are greater.

The West also has a direct and immediate responsibility for the creation of industrial scale animal husbandry and its utterly callous actions, the pet industry and the capitalistic theories applied to them.

I think if you look closer, you will see that my criticism of the West's influence is far greater and more persistent.


Do you know there is a memorial erected to the first cattle killed for food?

Townsend Harris, the first American Consul General to Japan in 1856. Harris remained in residence at the temple for two years and ten months.

During his stay, Harris demanded that the Japanese provide him with milk and beef.

Gyokusen-ji today has a monument decorated with the image of a cow, which the temple claims to mark the site where the first four-legged animal to be slaughtered for human consumption was killed. Its English language sign reads: "This monument, erected in 1931 by the butchers of Tokyo, marks the spot where the first cow in Japan was slaughtered for human consumption. (Eaten by Harris and Heusken)".

Of course, one of the additional insanities is that now the pet and particularly pig industries have become the greatest marine predators on the planet hoovering up millions of tonnes of marine life in equally or more cruel ways.

Capitalism only makes a profit by not paying the full price. If we take oxymoron's example, the "food price" of a egg includes the retirement age of the hens. That has a cost to the industry which it wants to take as profit instead, so it just kills them. Capitalism has pushed and been deliberately designed *not* to value the animal lives in order to profit ... and this is what all this, and the dolphins, is all about.

We have all been infected with such a concept.

From the natural environmental balances of land and animals which Tommy is talking of attempting to restore, we have created insane imbalances which are endangering even our own lives (damage to greenhouse gas, water sources, vast consumption of pollution producing energy etc ... the animal industries are sub-oil industries).

The case for Japan is different from other countries, and more urgent, due to its lack of resources.

[beentheredonethat]

Some idea of the scale of burial in Miyazaki

[beentheredonethat]

so what you're saying is japan has to fix itself now while other countries can continue doing so because they have more resources. Do you know how stupid you sound?

Doesn't it seem to you to be a rather illogical response to deflect from any discussion of unpleasant events within Japan by saying, "So why don't you go and fix ... Australia/America/China and Korea then?"

The answer to that is simple, "because I don't live and pay taxes in them".

It's like a kid who has done wrong arguing it is OK for him to do wrong because someone else is doing wrong too. If someone complains about the state of the roads, do they have to go and fix every road in Africa too?


And I don't follow your point about a memorial fund either. I only used it to pin point the date when Japan's traditional diet and values were changed, and under which foreign pressures (the next quantum leap would be the development of refrigerators in deep sea fishing boats, a Scots/American invention).

I certainly agree, as has happened, that erecting a monument or shrine to a whale and saying itadakimasu does not fix the environment or undo the suffering the slaughter causes.