'Animal,' Episode 5: Wolves

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.

Episode five, Wolves.

And you can tell the driver. Okay. 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 anticlimax. 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 pouring.

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.

it's okay for you to record his dog. He might not be able to meet your expectations.

So, Samson, let me tell you about the statue, since you have no idea what we're doing. Yeah, I remember asking, 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...

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 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 they're just, 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 so we were driving out to see.

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 driving with Gotoro.

So,

he really likes a dog.

where are we?

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 Daisuke-san starts telling us his life story. Which turned out to be much more than we were prepared for.

And Daisuke started ruminating and then told us the entire story of his life, basically. I remember Samson being like, okay, he's telling me his life story now.

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'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 her dad, the wife's dad, 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 taxi company.

Because the dad left his job and no longer drive, his father-in-law is at home all the time.

So, he started, the father-in-law started being really rough to the chiba. So, like, violent.

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 it was, like, bulging. We took the chihuahua to the hospital and he lost his left eye.

Even Gotaro is a dog, Gotaro is also a family, and I just couldn't forgive him.

And I told him that we just can't live together anymore.

I told my wife and my children that they are free to stay if they want. So, my wife can stay with his parents and his dad if she wants, but I'm leaving. I'm leaving with Gotaro.

We never see her dad ever again after that incident.

We also found out a couple of other things.

First, Gotaro actually lost the vision in her right eye, not her left. It was a detached retina. And also that Gotaro was not always named Gotaro. 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, Gotaro. He wanted to give the dog this tough, warrior name.

Right now,

the eye is pretty much a part of the body and he's mostly living with his nose.

But the more you think about humans, well, in life, yes, in life.

I mean, despite the fact that the incident made me really angry, and really sad, and it was like a huge thing to me, perhaps, and I try to think it this way, I try to put it this way, perhaps for the dog, it's almost like a blocked nose, you know? And maybe it's not that big a deal for him. I try to think it like that, so that I can keep safe, I guess.

And it's really, you know, the dog itself is really healthy, and Botaro is just fine, doing just fine.

If we have a chance, later, I can show you a video of Botaro.

And he's saying how Chihuahua, like wolves, how to.

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 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.

And as the last wolf, it had lost everyone. It had lost its family, its friends. It's a 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...

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.

There's a big sort of stone tablet with a lot of Japanese on it that Samson read to us. What does it say?

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, 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, I'm looking up my Japanese term. I learned this word earlier on the trip, this incredible Japanese word, which is power spot, which is just 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 obuchi, no magami, or large-mouthed pure god. And you can see the large mouth, 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's 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?

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 the middle of the street. And 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, no?

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. Our hearts melted. She's laying on her side in a nest of blankets and having her belly rubbed, and her eyes are closed.

It just looks like the sweetest little thing and she's so happy in heaven. One last question for Daisuke-san.

The wolf is howling. I really wonder what its howl sounds like and I wonder if maybe while he's waiting, could he find that video he told us about of Gotoro? 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 Ah, I found it. I found the video. And he played us this video.

of Gotoro, 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.

tender chihuahua howl.

It's so primal. Imagine it coming out past the fangs of this Japanese wolf echoing across the wilderness.

Gotoro.

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 Marian Lozano. The executive producer is Paula Schumann, Original music by Marian Lozano. Fact checking by Samson Yee and Josh Hunt.

Special thanks to Jake Silverstein, Sasha Weiss and Sam Dolnik. Very special thanks to Sungwoo 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.