Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast, episode 551, Dog Days, Part 3.

On May 21st, 1925, Dr. Ueno Hidesaburo went to work.

He was a professor of agricultural engineering at the Agricultural College attached to Tokyo Imperial

University, which was also his alma mater. As a student, he'd apparently been very bright

and shown an aptitude for the mix of technical and scientific knowledge, necessary to study

one of the hot new fields of the Meiji era, scientific farming, intended to make use of the latest and

greatest findings in the fields of the sciences to produce as much food from a nation's arable land

as possible. And as a result of his aptitude, he'd shot through the academic ranks, graduating

from his undergrad program in 1895, being accepted for grad research at Tokyo Imperial

University shortly thereafter, and completing his doctorate in 1900. Immediately afterwards,

he was hired first as an assistant and then as a tenured professor. His academic career

was frankly pretty impressively distinguished. Apparently, some of his

research into land reclamation was actually utilized in the aftermath of the 1923 Canto

earthquake as Tokyo was being rebuilt. Naturally enough, given that resume, nobody actually remembers

Ueno Hidesaburo for his academic research or his

intellectual gifts.

They remember him, instead, for his dog.

That dog was named Hachko, who was by the time of May 1925, just a little under two years old.

Hachko was bred at a dog farm in Odate in the northern end of Akita Prefecture in November

1923, being sold and shipped to Professor Ueno by rail just a few months later as a pet.

Dr. Ueno was, by all accounts, a very doting dog owner, and Hachko was in turn exceptionally devoted to him.

Dr. Ueno's home was in Shibuya in the western part of Tokyo, while the campus of Tokyo

...