The Daily - 'Animal,' Episode 5: Wolves

Episode Date: June 30, 2024

In a broken world, what can we gain by looking another animal in the eye? "Animal" is a six-part, round-the-world journey in search of an answer. In Episode 5, the writer Sam Anderson travels to an obscure memorial in rural Japan: the statue of the last Japanese wolf.For photos and videos of Sam's journey to Japan, visit nytimes.com/animal. 

Hey, it's Michael. Today we have something really special for you, a blissful break from the news. It's a new series from NYT Audio called Animal. My colleague Sam Anderson from the Times Magazine traveled the world to have encounters with animals, not to claim them or to tame them, but just to appreciate them.

Each episode is a journey to get closer to a creature that Sam loves. For the next six weeks, we'll be running this limited series every Sunday here on The Daily Feed. But if you want to hear all the episodes right now, you can search for it wherever you get your podcasts. Today, episode five. Take a listen. From the New York Times, this is Animal. I'm Sam Anderson. Episode five, Wolves. wolves. Well, we should... The shop closes at 6. Do you think we'll be back by then?

Yes, 5.15. Maybe. I can't imagine that there'll be a ton to do. No, I agree. I don't think we need to do that much. I mean, we just want to make the pilgrimage to the statue, yeah. Do you know about the statue?

Okay, we're going to tell you in the car. And you can tell the driver. The first thing I remember about our trip to the wolf statue is that we almost didn't go. People told us not to bother the memorial is out in the middle of absolute nowhere on the edge of this tiny village in japan it would take all day to get there and probably be a giant anti-climax but i was already in japan because i was working on a story for the magazine about Hayao Miyazaki, the animator. And since I'd come this far, I just felt like I really needed to do this.

That's really boring. Bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto. Regular train from Kyoto to a smaller city called Nara, which is famous for its deer. We come out of the train station and it's pouring rain. That's another reason not to go on the pilgrimage because it's just soaking rain constantly all day long i'm with crystal duhaime who's carrying a gigantic microphone around everywhere and then samson yee our incredible interpreter and so we step out of the train station into the rain and there's this black car waiting for us and out steps our driver, who's this 30-something man, nicely dressed. He's wearing like a gray suit with a red tie.

Samson talks to him and says his name is Daisuke. Daisuke-san, to be polite. And Samson climbed into the front of the taxi to sit next to Daisuke so that he can interpret our conversation. It's okay for you to record his talk. He might not be able to meet your expectations.

We start heading out of the city on this kind of wild, windy back road and immediately we're sort of in the middle of nowhere and it's still pouring it's foggy we're passing through woods and bamboo and it is really beautiful it feels like we're driving into an old landscape painting so Samson let me tell you about the statue since you have no idea what we're doing yeah I remember asking um well maybe ask Daisuke-san if he knows anything about the Japanese

wolf can you ask Daisuke-san our driver if he knows anything about the Japanese wolf so Samson did and no he'd never heard about it but I don't know anything about the Japanese wolf. So Samson did and no, he'd never heard about it. But! I don't know anything about the wolf, but I love animals and I have a Chihuahua at home. I have a Chihuahua. What's the name of the Chihuahua? What's the name of the Chihuahua?

Gotaro. Gotaro. Boy's name. He has a boy's name, but he's a girl. And Samson laughed because Gotoro is a very male Japanese name. It's like apparently like some kind of warrior name. He said the Chinese character for it means like hard metal. The Chinese character for it means like hard metal.

And Daisuke named this Chihuahua the most masculine, tough name he could think of. Because Chihuahuas are so fierce and have such strong personalities. So he did that deliberately. And the fact that he would connect that to wolves, that was the funny thing about him. It's like instantly we said wolves and he was like oh i love animals and i have a dog a chihuahua which is on one hand a hilarious answer but on the other hand makes perfect sense because wolves and dogs i came to learn on this trip are essentially the same thing i I mean, we went to talk to one of the great dog scientists on planet Earth, and he was telling me that dogs are really just wolves that have developed over thousands of years

a very intimate relationship with human beings. He's done all this incredible research, including discovering that dogs cry when their owners come home after a long period away. They have moisture in their eyes, and wolves don't. So that's one of the ways they're different. But otherwise, it's more a continuum than it is a bright line that divides them. So Daisuke got that right away. He was like, you're asking me about wolves? I'm going to talk about my dog.

I'm just explaining what we've been doing in the last few days. So I'd been spending the last few days of my trip in Japan learning about wolves. And so I started telling Daisuke-san the epic saga of the Japanese wolf. The basic story is there used to be wolves in these mountains everywhere, all over Japan. I think of a wolf as an American.

I think of like a big timber wolf or a gray wolf, like a big, snarling, mean dog. Japanese wolves were different. They were smaller and sort of a reddish, khaki color and cute, weirdly cute for a wolf. Before I went on this trip, I read this book called The Lost Wolves of Japan by a historian named Brett Walker. And basically, for many thousands of years, wolves roamed all over Japan and people revered them. They saw them as sacred guardians. They protected crops. People worshipped at wolf shrines and they they left offerings of rice and

beans outside of wolf dens but then in the 1700s there was this big rabies outbreak that made wolves actually quite dangerous wolves were killing people and then in the 1800s there is a huge cultural shift in Japan where the country started to quote-unquote modernize people started doing western style agriculture huge cattle herds and so wolves began to seem like pests they were killing livestock they were you know encroaching on these cities that were growing deeper into the wilderness. And so Japan decided it was done with its wolves. And the government sends out these hunting parties to systematically exterminate the Japanese wolf. And they did.

They used guns, they used poison, they used traps. guns, they use poison, they use traps. As far as we know, the last Japanese wolf was killed in 1905, and it's historically documented, and they know where it was exactly, and they know which wolf it was. It was a male wolf, and it was brought dead and sold to a Western man in 1905. They say the last known Japanese wolf, it was seen kind of skulking around this lumber yard in a little remote village. And somebody shot it and sold it to a Western man who was passing through town collecting zoological specimens. a western man who was passing through town collecting zoological specimens and so

this statue that we're going to is the memorial to that last wolf it's a black metal statue based on the body of that wolf near where that wolf died and um so we were driving out to see So we were driving out to sea. I'm really happy that I'm able to be part of the trip because I really love dogs myself. And I'm able to maybe share how you might feel about this trip or going to look for the dog, look for the wolf. Daisuke was the chattiest, probably the chattiest cab driver I've ever had. And whatever he talked about, it always came back to Gotoro.

For instance, he was telling us, like, oh, I'm a YouTuber, and I have a YouTube channel about cars. And I said, oh, what's the name of the YouTube channel? Because I immediately wanted to look it up and he said something something i don't speak japanese so i couldn't understand her but i distinctly heard the word gotoro i said wait a second did he say gotoro again is his youtube channel named after the chihuahua and samson said yes it's basically uh driving with gotoro

driving channel wow so she really likes the dog yeah so where are we we really are out in the middle of nowhere on this tiny road so we are in this car for a very long time driving on these windy roads into the mountains through forests there's just occasional houses fog still pouring rain and then fog, still pouring rain and then Daisuke-san starts telling us his his life story which turned out to be much more than we were prepared for

so we are still in this car maybe we're halfway into the trip at this point and dice case started ruminating and then told us the entire story of his life basically i remember samson being like okay he's story of his life basically. I remember Samson being like, okay, he's telling me his life story now. So he's talking about his life story now and how he used to live in Osaka. Osaka? So he got married with his wife in Osaka and lived there for two years.

He used to drive a garbage truck and his wife in Osaka and lived there for two years. He used to drive a garbage truck and his wife's dad after they got married two years asked him to come live with them. So his parents-in-law asked him to come live with them and his her dad the wife's, worked in the same taxi company as this company. And hence he and his wife and Gotaro moved from Osaka to Kyoto, to Nara, and lived with his father for four to five years. But then his father-in-law left the taxicab. So, yeah, he's a garbage truck driver in Osaka,

and he got married, and they agreed to move in with his father-in-law, his wife's father. In Japan, traditionally, it's a very hierarchical society, so your wife's father would be someone you pay a lot of respect to, so they moved in with him. So actually, his father-in-law didn't like animals at the time,

but then he knew that if Daisuke's family would come and live with him, the dog would come along, the chihuahua would come along, and because Gotaro is a dog you have大輔の家族が来て、チワが来て、 ゴータローは家にいる犬なので、 父親が知って、犬を連れて行った。 連れて行ったんですね?そうそうそうお父さんが仕事を辞めることになったら

ずっと家にこもりっぱなしになって 父は仕事を辞めずに、車を運転しなくて 父親は家にいっぱいで そしたらね、虐待が始まったんですよ 父親は千葉にとっては すごく厳しい状態になっていた So he started, the father-in-law started being really rough to the Chihuahua. So like violent. So Daisuke says a couple times he came home from work and it seemed like Gotoro was hurt.

And there'd been no one home all day except Gotoro and the father-in-law. So at the time, for the first and second time, when he saw the scars, he knew immediately that the scars on the dog was caused by a person. So unless there is some thief who broke into the house, it could only have been his father-in-law. So he approached his father-in-law and told him to stop, stop hitting a dog. And he was telling his father-in-law that you wouldn't like it if someone hit your grandson or grandchild, his son or child. So please stop, is what he said. で、2回、忠告があって

I warned him twice. で、そこで話し合いで、うんうんってね We talked about it. で、3回目 The third time when i got home so the third time when i got home the chihuahua's left eye was like really red and and was like bulging uh we took the chihuahua to the hospital and赤くて、ぼうじんしていたチワワを医院に連れて行って

左目が失われた 犬ですけど、やっぱり家族ですから 僕も許せなくて ゴータローは犬で、ゴータローは家族で 私は彼を許せなくて 一緒に生活できないですトータローは家族で、私は彼を許さないことができませんでした。 私は彼に、もう一度、一緒に住めることができませんでした。 私たちは彼の家を出て行きました嫁さんと子供らにもどっちでもいいって

俺についてくるのやったらついてくるでいいし ここに残るのやったら残るでいいけど どっちにしても生活できませんって 私の妻と子供に言って 彼らが自分でちが住んでいる場合、 自分の妻が自分の父や母と一緒に住んでいる場合、 私はコータローと住んでいます。 そこから引っ越して、また別の所にまた新しい生活を送って最後に、私の妻と2人と、千葉は、その家を離れて、

父から離れている それからお父様とはあまりお会いしない 絶縁状態ですね We've never seen her dad ever again after that incident. When we fact-checked the story, we talked to Daisuke's wife and the vet who treated Gotoro for her injuries. And they both corroborated what Daisuke told us. And we tried to reach the father-in-law directly, but we weren't able to talk to him. Daisuke told us his father-in-law denied hurting Gotoro.

We also found out a couple of other things. First, Gotoro actually lost the vision in her right eye, not her left. It was a detached retina. And also that Gotoro was not always named Gotoro. Originally, she was named Love. That's actually the name the vet knew her by. And Daisuke says when his father-in-law got angry, he would shout the word love over and over. And Daisuke decided

he didn't want to relive that trauma anymore. And that's when he thought of this name, Gotoro. He wanted to give the dog this tough warrior name. Sorry the story's gotten all serious. That's very intense.

So Gotoro has no left eye.今は左目が見えないことですか?そうそう、左目が見えないでも犬は分原が片目失明したとして生活に影響が出ます生活している動物でありますそこまで人間がもうほどはいはい まあ人生において人生というか 人生でいいですよ 人生なんですか そうですよね 人間は アギさんのように 人間は

目を一目に見つけると 人間の生活に影響を与えることができますしかしそれは犬にとっては大きな影響はありません use your sight of one eye it can really affect your everyday life but then it's not so much for a dog because for a dog of course the dog can see but he also rely on his smell a lot more so perhaps it doesn't affect the dog's life it's interesting when he said life when he referred to人生とは人間の生命と言うのは面白いです。 人間の生命とは人間の生命と言うのは面白いです。 人間の生命とは人間の生命と言うのは面白いです。 人間の生命とは人間の生命と言うのは面白いです。それは可能だった。めっちゃ口させてるなブロックの顔みたいな感じでそれでも、大きな事はないと思うけど 僕はこうやって

そうやって 生きていく と思っている すごい元気ですよ 犬自体は 健康で ゴータローは 全然大丈夫

機会があるタイミングがあったらゴータローは大丈夫です 機会があったら後でゴータローの動画も見せますもしチャンスがあれば後で動画を見せてもらいます チワワもね、オオカミみたいに遠吠えしますよ チワワがウォルフに好きな人はどうするのかを教えてくれます They say how Chihuahua like wolves, how too. So, I just saw a sign that said the name of where we're going. Yes. What is it called again?

Higashi Yoshino. Yeah, and it had a wolf on it. It had like a little wolf silhouette. Did you see that? I think we are closer, maybe four or five minutes away. Okay. Wow, this life story of his has become so much more intense than I imagined. I thought we were just gonna sit on a taxi and go and see a statue. Yeah, I mean, as we approach the wolf statue here, I think that's actually the perfect conversation for us to have approaching the statue.

Because conversation for us to have approaching this statue because part of why I think I felt drawn to see this statue was that it does represent one individual animal it's not just a symbolic wolf it is an animal that was as much an individual as Gotoro or as walnut my dog or as any of us in this car this was a specific creature This was a specific creature. And as the last wolf, it had lost everyone.

It had lost its family, its friends, its whole community in pack. And that's just, that's really deep to think about. So, yeah, suddenly we're there. It's just like the GPS was like... We're here. And it was really a nothing. Like it was... It's really quiet maybe because it's Sunday as well. There was like a little roadside sign

and then you just had to kind of pull off the road onto the shoulder. Traffic, you know, cars driving by were just right there driving by right next to you. And so it was really a nothing of a sight. That said, we get out, it's pouring rain, Daisuke gives us umbrellas and it's so beautiful we truly are out in the country i mean there's a road that runs by but right on the other side of the road is this beautiful river rushing with all this rain and then just these cascading mountains with fog all over them that really look like a beautiful classic Japanese painting. Be careful.

I don't think cars stop. I don't think anyone ever comes here. It was completely quiet except for when occasionally a car would go racing past. except for when occasionally car would go racing past there's a big sort of stone tablet with a lot of Japanese on it that Samson read to us what does it say so it says wolf died and its spirits exist lives lives on. So wolf dies, but its spirits live on. Well, I feel like shy to approach the wolf. We've come all this way and I feel like hesitant to. But I guess let's go see him there was something there's something really powerful about the scale of it

being the actual scale of the body of the animal itself it's so much smaller than i thought i've seen a photo of it before but standing in front of it it looks like a it looks like a pet dog it looks like a pet dog it looks like a million dogs that I've played with just kind of like a small

medium dog it's just like cute but it's also fierce it's this black metal it's got its mouth wide open you can see its teeth i think it's howling which reminds me they call it hold on looking at my japanese term i'd learned this word earlier on the trip, this incredible Japanese word, which is power spotto, which is just an adoption from English, power spot. So just a place that's really full of power. And this to me, standing by this statue was powerful. Just this humble, modest little thing, kind of an afterthought of a memorial.

One Japanese term from the book we were reading, it says the Japanese once revered the wolf as Oguchi no Magami, or large-mouthed pure god. And you can see the large mouth. I mean, the jaws are wide open. It's howling. I really would love to hear what that howl sounds like. So yeah, we stood, and Samson, who, one of the great things about Samson is he is just completely unflappable, unimpressed by anything.

So how do you feel having been on this journey with us, knowing all that you know now about the wolf story, coming all this ridiculous way to make this pilgrimage to stand at this statue that no one ever comes to, I think pretty much. How do you feel standing in front of it? Was it worth it? Do you feel anything? When I first heard about the story that we were going to go after an animal that was supposed to be extinct like over 100 years ago,

I wasn't sure what I was going to expect. And then we're here now. And I do feel, listening to you talk about how this guy here we have in front of me, particular, lost everything. And he's the last one.

Like, what would the last statue of a person be like? What would the last statue of a dog or cat be like? How would humans think of that? Especially in Japan when he's literally a god. Big god. And now he's just a stone in a middle of the street.

It's even difficult to park your car because there's no road to this thing. Whilst we pray on other things that we call god that has replaced this thing.

That's pretty deep now. Yeah, so you're having some feelings and thoughts. The unimpressable Samson. It's kind of sad, what you think about it. It is really profound. This was the last thing of its kind. And the rain is coming down. It's just like dripping off the fangs of the statue. And then Daisuke pulls out his phone and says, oh, I want to show you a picture of Gotoro.

Sure, let's see Gotoro. And as we're standing next to the statue of the last Japanese wolf, he shows us on his phone screen this picture of this little white chihuahua. She's so cute. We were just like

our hearts melted. She's laying on her side in like a nest of blankets and having her belly rubbed and her eyes are closed and uh it just looks like the sweetest little thing and like she's so happy and in heaven one last question for daisuki-san So the wolf is howling. I really wonder what his howl sounds like. And I wonder if maybe while he's waiting, could he find that video he told us about? So he went back to wait for us in the car and we stood for a while longer in the rain.

And then eventually everyone was starving and we had to go get something to eat and we got back in the car and Daisuke said I found it I found the video and he played us this video of gotro the chihuahua howling her little brains out at an ambulance and it's like the most like tender she's howling so hard and it's such a soft little, such a soft little tender Chihuahua howl. It's so primal. Imagine it coming out past the fangs of this Japanese wolf,

echoing across the wilderness. Gotoro. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. This episode was produced by Crystal Duhaime and Larissa Anderson, with help from Caitlin Roberts. It was reported by me, Sam Anderson, and edited by Larissa Anderson and Wendy Dorr. It was engineered by Marion Lozano.

The executive producer is Paula Schumann. Original engineered by Marion Lozano. The executive producer is Paula Schumann. Original music by Marion Lozano. Fact-checking by Samson Yee and Josh Hunt. Special thanks to Jake Silverstein, Sasha Weiss, and Sam Dolnick. Very special thanks to Songwoo Kim, Alex Martin, Hiroshi Yagi, Hiroyuki Yoshimura, Hajime Suzuki, and Takafumi Kikusui. Thank you so much for teaching us all about the Japanese wolf and its relationship to dogs and humans and crying and all of that. You can listen to all of our episodes wherever you get podcasts or visit our website at nytimes.com slash animal. I'm Sam Anderson. Thank you for listening. Thanks for watching!