Japan: Animal cruelty rife

[Guest guest]

Animal cruelty rife in Japan

 

Novelist Masako Bando is now a household name, thanks to an article

she wrote last month for the Nihon Keizai newspaper about her

practice of slaughtering the kittens her cats produce. The heroic

airs she gives herself as an anguished champion of a cat's right to

give birth and not be spayed have struck most readers as

disingenuous, and the image of her tossing the newborn kittens over a

cliff near her home in Tahiti has seemed to many here in Hello Kitty

land nothing short of monstrous. But Bando declared herself unfazed

in advance, writing in her article, " I am fully aware of the severe

criticism I will face. " The Bando affair almost begs for a discussion

of cruelty to animals, and Weekly Playboy (Sept 18) rises to the

occasion. What it finds is that the cuddly defenselessness of cats in

particular works both ways, inspiring in some of us an almost

maternal tenderness while provoking in others a compulsion to torture

and mutilate.There is the case, for example, of a 38-year-old

Kawasaki man who strangled a stray cat in a Tokyo Park and then,

having evidently derived satisfaction from that, got hold of another

stray, taped it till it couldn't move, stuffed it into a plastic bag,

and left it to starve to death in his car.A 26-year-old Fukuoka man

took a stray cat home, bound its legs and cut it up with scissors,

providing live Internet coverage of the animal's agony for the

benefit of 2-Channel fans who enjoy that sort of thing.Both men ended

up in court. Both were given six-month suspended sentences in

June.The sentences were imposed under the Animal Protection Act of

2000, which provides for up to a year's imprisonment and fines of up

to 1 million yen for cruelty to animals. " And yet, " observes Weekly

Playboy, " the cruelty continues unabated. " Why should that be?For

Yuri Shirai of the Japan Pet Society, the people who have almost as

much to answer for as the perpetrators are pet owners who grow tired

of their four-legged charges and simply abandon them.A dramatic case

in point occurred in Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture. A 42-year-old

woman disappeared from her rented house in March. In June, 22 dead

cats were found in the house. Subsequently arrested, the woman

reportedly told police, " The cats were cute, but there were so many

of them I couldn't take care of them any longer. " There are an

alarming number of abandoned cats around, " Shirai observes.

Starvation is one danger. Crossing paths with stressed, troubled or

sadistic humans is another. " In Japan, " says Shirai, " there is less

awareness than elsewhere of the connection between cruelty to animals

and crimes against children and other weak members of society. "

Weekly Playboy encounters a Gunma Prefecture man who devotes his own

time and money to rescuing strays from a neighborhood park, taking

them to the vet for shots and seeking homes for them. " Once, " he

explains, " I saw a man turn his dog loose on a stray cat. The man was

never caught. It made me want to do what I can for the cats in this

park. " We come in the end to the relationship between humans and

nonhumans. Is companionship across the species barrier sustainable in

an urban setting? If so, how close is it meant to be? Are the

Japanese, amid an aging population, a scarcity of children and

increasing social isolation, investing more affection in their pets

than is healthy for either party in the relationship, thus provoking

a backlash reflected in the escalating cruelty?The answers are not

obvious, but Weekly Playboy offers us a statistic with which there is

no arguing: In 2004 nationwide, 243,850 cats were put to sleep by

local governments. That's about 668 cats a day.

 

September 8, 2006

 

Click the link below to view this article and related discussions on Crisscross

http://www.crisscross.com/e/?content=kuchikomi & id=431

 

 

Crisscross is the leading online news network covering politics,

business, crime, sport, new products, technology, Internet,

environment and weather.

http://www.crisscross.com/

 

(The sender's IP address was 220.15.88.16)

 

 

--

Kim Bartlett, Publisher of ANIMAL PEOPLE Newspaper

Postal mailing address: P.O. Box 960, Clinton WA 98236 U.S.A.

CORRECT EMAIL ADDRESS IS: <ANPEOPLE

Website: http://www.animalpeoplenews.org/ with French and Spanish

language subsections.

=