The Japanese fascination with dogs is long-standing, but the pampered pooches of today would cringe at the horrid treatment of their predecessors during wartime Japan and extensive extermination campaigns before that. In Empire of Dogs, author Aaron Skabelund explains how the dog-eat-dog world of late 19th-century imperialism transformed canines' place and role in Japan and how Japanese breeds evolved from reviled targets of eradication into paragons of national identity. There is much to be learned about a society from a dog's eye view and readers will never look at the statue of Hachiko in quite the same way after reading the back-story of this celebrated Akita.
All the imperial nations brought dogs with them as they spread across the globe conquering and occupying. Canine imperialism propagated Western breeding and dog keeping norms and also played out in the relationships between colonizer and colonized. Certain breeds came to represent nations and symbolize national traits such as the English bulldog, German shepherd and French poodle. Racist discourse naturally spilled over into concerns about bloodlines and pedigrees and dogs spread from companions for the elite to accessories of the middle class.
As in the human world, dogs were divided by class — with recognized breeds and coddled pets lording it over mongrels and strays — while the traits of colonial dogs were invoked in assertions of superiority over indigenous people and their curs. Japanese emulated the same prejudices and favored Western breeds over local varieties until the 1930s when the rising tide of nationalism boosted the status of Japanese dogs.