The Curse of Kawaii

Kawaii is a Japanese word meaning cute, sweet, pretty, etc. It’s often applied to babies, children, young girls, and – pet animals. And therein lies a problem.

I have lived in Japan for four decades and regard it as a privilege to have been granted the right of permanent residency. After immigrating to this wonderful country, I have always endeavoured to accept the way the Japanese manage their affairs, to fit in as best I can, and not to be overly critical.

There are, however, a few matters over which I do not hesitate to raise my voice whenever the opportunity arises. One such, of which I write today, is about pet shops. The Japanese on the whole are not deliberately cruel, but by failing to appreciate companion animals’ needs, and sometimes by putting profit before welfare, they may inflict unintentional cruelties.

Recently in Tokyo I came across a new pet shop. It upset me for the rest of the day. In some dozen transparent plastic boxes or cages there were puppies and kittens on display; they were adorable – and that was their misfortune.

The prices for these animals were around half-a-million Yen ($3,300). Clearly, they had been bred for sale, were taken away from their mothers and siblings at an unsuitably young age, and there they were: intelligent, curious, sociable animals in solitary confinement, dying of boredom. Some of the kittens I noticed were so young they were being fed by syringe – clearly, they should not have been taken from their mothers at such an age. Cats are very clean animals and spend a large part of their day in self-grooming. It is behaviour they learn from their mother who will clean their fur with her tongue. One tiny kitten I noticed was being ‘cleaned’ by one of the shop staff with a kind of vapouriser, to its evident distress.

When I approached these animals, they came towards me with a look in their eyes that said, ‘Please, please buy me and get me out of here!’

Gentle reader, I could not bear it.

Worse, at another pet shop near where I live, I noticed they were selling exotic wild animals kept in small cages in isolation with no ‘enrichment’. There was a marmoset from Brazil, a common squirrel monkey, and a miniature pig that had no water in its cage, and others. Keeping wild animals in such conditions is extremely cruel.

I asked the Japan Animal Welfare Society to investigate. They did so and offered guidance to the shops, pointing out where improvements were needed. Better than nothing. But exotic animals are not suitable to be kept as pets and face a life of suffering even if people buy them.

Both these establishments are part of chains of pet shops. They have slick websites and are staffed by attractive uniformed young men and women – but they sell and perpetuate misery. They should be closed down.

If you want a pet animal in Japan there are innumerable, equally adorable, cats and dogs in desperate need of a good home. They can be adopted through a charitable organisation called ARK for a nominal fee to cover neutering, vaccination, and micro-chipping.

A related problem is to be seen in the summer in parks across the land. Doting parents or grandparents buy small children butterfly nets. And what do the children do with these? As the name indicates, they catch butterflies and other insects with them, and transfer the prisoners to a plastic box to take them home. And then what happens? The budding entomologists study their captives as groundwork for a school essay in biology? Even if they do, the insects will be half dead by the time they have been investigated, but more often insect hunting is done for fun and amusement. Once when I was walking through a local park, I came upon a child aged four or five who had caught a pigeon in his butterfly net. Did his mother say anything? No, she was unconcerned. I intervened to let the pigeon escape. The mother and child were speechless, but I think I had done my good deed for the day.

The underlying point, I believe, is that young children should be taught in schools, as well as at home, that insects and other animals in public parks and elsewhere are living creatures which should be treated with respect and not be interfered with.

Text and photo © Gabriel Symonds