A seventy-year-old mystery concerning the cause of death for
Japan’s most illustrious canine has been finally solved.
The dog’s undying loyalty to his owner was forever captured in a
2009 Hollywood movie, Hachi: A Dog’s Story, which
starred Richard Gere.
Hachiko would go every day to wait at Shibuya train station for
his master, who was a professor at the University of Tokyo. For
more than a decade after the professor died, and in fact every day
until the dog died in 1935, he traveled to the station to greet his
master.
For the residents of Tokyo, the dog’s loyalty was moving and it
needed commemoration. They erected a statue dedicated to his memory
that stands today at the train station. It remains a popular
meeting spot.
Hachiko seeped into pop culture as well and he became the hero
of several Japanese children’s books.
University of Tokyo veterinarians have dismantled the legend
surrounding his death, which claims that the dog swallowed a
chicken skewer that ruptured his stomach. They have determined by
examining his innards which ahd been preserved that the animal died
of that the famous dog died of cancer and also a filaria infection
(worms).
“Hachiko certainly had yakitori given by a street vendor at
Shibuya, but the sticks were unrelated to his death, and the rumour
is groundless,” said veterinarian, Kazuyuki Uchida
A sad ending for a most loyal pooch whose every life’s breath
was devoted to his master.
Here’s to you Hachiko, wherever you may be!