At the end of World War II, there were no more than 16 Akita dogs left in Japan. What had been the national breed had been slaughtered for use as food and fur coats for Japanese military officers.
In the United States, the Akita was barely known. The first Akita in this country seems to have been owned by Helen Keller, who received a dog named Go-Go as a gift from the Japanese government in the 1930s. Keller worshiped the dog, and the dog returned the favor; Go-Go sensed that she was blind and was careful never to get underfoot.
Martha Sherrill's "Dog Man" (Penguin Press, 287 pages, $25.95) is the story of Morie Sawataishi, a legendary 91-year-old breeder of Akitas who has devoted his life to re-establishment of the breed in Japan. His accomplishment is all the more amazing because dogs have only been Sawataishi's hobby; in his day job, he was an engineer for Mitsubishi, building and operating power plants in the northern mountain country.
Sherrill structures her book around Sawataishi's primary dogs: Three Good Lucks, Victory Princess, One Hundred Tigers, Samurai Tiger, Shiro. Although Sawataishi has generally raised one litter per year, sometimes two, only a few dogs have achieved the congruence of physical and spiritual values he seeks. Sawataishi calls it kisho: spirit, personality, disposition, a kind of strength and life force, a dog capable of dominating through personality alone.
His commitment is such that he has never sold a dog. He gives puppies away as gifts, or barters one for services, but to take money for a dog strikes him as a violation of the proper, mutually selfless relationship between man and dog, where you feel "honored to even possess such an incredible animal, much less be loved by him."
To a great extent, Sawataishi's emotional life has been lived through his dogs. He was a combative husband, a rather severe father, able to express himself openly only with his dogs. But something clicked; one of his daughters runs a rescue shelter as well as an animal hospital, one granddaughter is a veterinarian and another raises Salukis.
The torch has been passed.
Today, the Akita is a flourishing breed worldwide, although Sherrill says American breeders have missed the point. The Akita is a hunting dog, a territorial dog, a potentially dangerous animal, not a fluffy toy.
