Canine research at 春雨直播app
Veterinary surgery, ethology, robotics, archaeology, chronological dating, law and animal assisted intervention, veterinary epidemiology, classic literature, and contemporary literature – specialists in these nine fields introduce their canine-related research activities.
Dogs and archaeology
Understanding the Edo period through canine bones unearthed at the Hongo Campus
Tsuneki Abe
Former member of the Archaeological Research Unit
(Part-time lecturer at the Faculty of Letters, Rissho University)
春雨直播app’s Hongo Campus used to be part of the estate of the Kaga Domain, and a range of relics that show what life was like in the Edo period (1603-1868) have been discovered there. In the following, former long-time Archaeological Research Unit member Tsuneki Abe shares findings about canine bones that have been dug up at the campus.
I conduct research in a field called zooarchaeology, with a focus on the early modern period. I examine shells, fish bones and bones of mammals such as dogs and cats as well as birds unearthed at historic sites to reveal how people lived during the period in question and their relationships with animals.
Did daimyo estate dogs crossbreed with town dogs to produce bigger dogs?
The walls built around daimyo (feudal lord) mansions seem to have had holes, making the grounds relatively easy for animals to enter. As people during the Edo period basically let their dogs run loose, it’s likely that some simply wandered onto the daimyo estates by themselves. The daimyos, meanwhile, kept large hunting dogs that had been brought in from overseas. Under these circumstances, there seem to have been many cases of crossbreeding between the dogs belonging to daimyos and the dogs living in the surrounding towns (“town dogs”), which led to the average size of dogs becoming larger over time. Looking at canine bones unearthed at historic sites, we see that dogs had a body height of around 30 cm in the 17th century. By the 18th century, however, 45 cm became the average height, which then increased to 50 cm in the 19th century (according to the presentation “Canine Bones Excavated from Early Modern Edo Period Sites” made by Minami Kobune at the AY2011 academic meeting of the Japanese Society for Zooarchaeology).
In Japan, the most popular toy dog breed was the “Chin” (Japanese Spaniel). Shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi loved this breed, and Commodore Perry took some back to his home country of the United States. Novelist Takizawa Bakin also loved these dogs, whose name is said to be an abbreviation of chiisai inu (“small dog”). The Japanese-made kanji for “Chin” (狆), formed with the radical for “dog” and the character for “medium,” means an animal that is “of intermediate size between a large dog and a small cat.” The dogs that we call “Japanese Chin” today were brought to Japan from China during the Nara period (710-794). But during the Edo period, other breeds of toy dogs, including chihuahuas, were also referred to as “Chin.” As of today, bones seeming to be those of the true Chin breed have only been unearthed at a historical site on the grounds of Unkouin Temple located in Koto City, Tokyo, as far as I know. However, canine bones similar to those found at the temple also have been dug up around the location of Inpatient Building A of the University of Tokyo Hospital (on the former estate of the Daishoji Domain). The bones indicate a dog measuring about 31 cm in height, so the dog must have been called “Chin” at the time, although it is not clear whether it was the Japanese Spaniel or not.
Dogs disposed of as “trash” in Hongo
Lots of canine bones have been unearthed at the sites of former daimyo mansions in Edo (Tokyo), including those of both puppies and old dogs. Few of these dogs were given a careful burial. Many seem to have been discarded as trash, indicating that most of them were town dogs that had simply been living on the grounds of the mansions, rather than being actively kept. This includes the dogs whose bones were unearthed at the Hongo Campus.
At the time, the Edo shogunate government specifically ordered people not to discard dead dogs and cats as trash, which means that this was something that was actually happening. According to historical materials related to the Mito Domain, on one occasion a dog bit a female servant after becoming agitated by a fire, with the result that all dogs on the premises were put down by feeding them poisoned buns. Perhaps dogs living on the estate of the Kaga Domain were treated similarly and their bodies had been discarded.
Looking at the bones of these discarded dogs, including those unearthed from a large trash pit around the current location of Building No. 1 of the Faculty of Engineering (on the former estate of the Kaga Domain), we sometimes see indications that the bodies were disassembled or butchered. Such dogs might have been used as food for hawks, or perhaps were consumed surreptitiously by clan members. However, of the 1,449 bones unearthed from the trash pit, only one shows signs of such disassembly, and indeed there are only a handful of such indications among all the canine bones found at the Hongo Campus.
Rather, many of the dogs living on the daimyo estates might have been seen as “cohabiters” by the clan members, who were forced to live in Edo apart from their families due to the sankin kotai system implemented by the Tokugawa shogunate government. The dogs may have been cherished by these households for the companionship and comfort they provided.
