Toby Burke
.com

 

The World's Most Loyal Dog is Made of Bronze

It is early January and the regular, ongoing New Year’s festivities can’t quite distract us from the cold. This is the Year of the Dog – perhaps that’s why Hachiko the Dog’s statue, seems to be staring just a little further into the horizon than you’d expect.

It stands outside the Shibuya subway station in the centre of Tokyo. In the 1920s, Hachiko would come to the station every afternoon to greet his master upon his return home from work. After the man died in 1925, Hachiko continued to arrive at the station every afternoon for the remaining ten years of his life.

For his loyalty Hachiko has been honoured with the statue, and as we approach it, it occurs to me that he also holds the honour of marking one of the only places on Tokyo’s streets where people stand still.

People smile and have their photo taken. Smokers huddle around a ‘smoking point’, marked with a large butt bin, students make arrangements that may or may not be kept, and friends wait for tardy friends.

We have no one to wait for and nothing more to see. I take my new wife’s hand and walk away from Hachiko, into the molten mass of busy people. Feeling that for some reason, some twinge of an unknown social custom, perhaps we should have stayed still just a little longer.

 

<back