Under the big top of Japan’s Kinoshita Circus
Michael Howes claims his job is "no more dangerous than driving a car." "If you make a mistake driving a car, is it going to be a slight accident or a life-changing accident?" asks the 49-year-old Englishman. "It all comes down to the mistakes you ...
2020 Tokyo Olympics puts spotlight on animal welfare
The International Olympic Committee sets procurement standards for materials used in conjunction with the games. One of these standards is sustainability, which was first established for the 2012 London Olympics. In terms of meals supplied to athletes and others, ingredients must be produced and ...
With free-range, Japan shows signs of a slow improvement
Hiragai (平飼い), or free-range husbandry, where the animals can move around freely outdoors for at least part of the day, is still a somewhat foreign concept in Japan.
Olympic athletes unlikely to eat free-range eggs in 2020, if Japan's farmers have their way
Welfare standards for hens are at risk of flying the coop in 2020 because eggs from caged hens are likely to be served up to athletes at the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Having set sustainability objectives for the 2012 Games, the London Organising Committee of ...
Circuses are made from the stuff of dreams, and one that lasted 146 years has come to an end.
Cat cafes facing more scrutiny as owners' top priority not always felines, experts say
The prospect of an afternoon of relaxation in the company of fluffy, purring friends has earned cat cafes a top spot on the itineraries of visitors to Japan, but not all operators have the interests of their feline employees in mind, animal experts warn. The ...
As perceptions of animals evolve, so does English
In a language like English, which implicitly categorizes animals as things rather than persons, adopting the personal pronoun would embody the same recognition — and remind us who animals really are.
Reconsidering man's dominion over animals
If Pope Francis can change people's views of animal welfare, he will have done more good than any other pope in recent history.
Amid a rash of dog abandonment cases across the nation, 80 additional instances have been reported since October 2013 in Saitama, Yamanashi and Saga prefectures, according to local communities and animal welfare groups. Officials in Saitama Prefecture said 46 abandoned dogs of various breeds, mainly ...
Tallying the environmental cost of meat
What are the costs of the meat we eat — the hamburgers, pork chops and chicken breasts? Not the price we pay for ground beef and so on, but the full costs of meats: the environmental and societal impacts, from birth to burger, and beyond. ...
What we can learn from cats and dogs
Chikao Muratani is a veterinarian and owner of Anima Animal Hospital in Tokyo's Chuo Ward. Having worked in the United States for years, Dr. Muratani is fully bilingual and his spotless and beautifully designed clinic is known as a neighborhood hangout. People with pets ...
Millions of dogs and cats coddled, 200,000 gassed each year in pet-mad Japan
Cast in bronze, Hachiko sits in a position of prominence befitting a storied daimyo or prime minister, right next to the busiest intersection in Japan, if not the world.
