Photos of Hachi-kou Statue and Hachi-kou Bus at Shibuya, Tokyo

I'd like to continue to talk about Shibuya. This is a famous dog statue in front of Shibuya Station and a well-known land mark as a meeting spot around Shibuya. When people try to get together in Shibuya, this statue is often mentioned in the conversation “Let’s meet up in front of Hachi-kou!” “All right!”.

This dog statue has an actual model, named Hachi. The word "kou" following the name is one of the casual honorific placed after nicknames or pet's names. Since the story of Hachi became a Hollywood movie(“Hachi: A Dog’s Tale” in 2009) with Richard Gere, now more people know about it, but anyway I will introduce the story briefly.

Hachi was an Akita Dog owned by a professor of Tokyo University about 100 years ago. The professor loved Hachi so much and Hachi also loved his owner a lot. Hachi started to see off the professor at Shibuya station every morning and also went to welcome him at the station every evening on his own. However the professor suddenly had a stroke and died at work. Probably Hachi couldn't understand his beloved owner's death, and even after he was adopted by another family, Hachi kept his routine of going to Shibuya Station every day for about nine years until he died.

Apparently, Hachi's story didn't end with it. There was another episode between Hachi and the local people in Shibuya...

Years later after the professor’s death, a newspaper reported the story ot Hachi's routine visit to wait for his owner. It was a touching story and more people were impressed as they saw Hachi kept visiting Sibuya Station day after day. Thus when Hachi was getting old, people in Shibuya Station found a space inside of the station to let him sleep there, moreover the station workers made a special task to keep an eye on old Hachi, and they took care of him in turn. Hachi became a favorite dog to everybody around the area.

In his later years, the local people thought of making a statue of Hachi for his memories. A famous sculptor was hired for the project. When the sculptor finished the statue, Hachi was still alive and attended the unveiling ceremony. He died about one year after the ceremony. People held a big funeral for him and he was buried beside his owner’s grave.

Years later towards the end of world warⅡ, materials for weapons were running short in Japan and most of statues were asked to be provided to the government. The statue of Hachi-kou wasn’t an exception. However, the local people didn’t want to lose the statue, and eventually people decided to hide it until the war ended. Unfortunately the statue was somehow lost from the chaos at the end of the war, but after the war ended people tried to get it back. They attemped to re-make it although it was really hard to find bronze material at the time. 

Moreover the sculptor, who originally made Hachi-kou statue, had already passed away. Yet his son grew up and became a sculptor by then. The son happily accepted the request to re-make Hachi-kou statue, and he even sacrificed one of his father’s pieces, which survived the war, to get enough bronze for the Hachi-kou statue.

Therefore, the current Hachi-kou statue is in fact the second one and it was the fruit of the people’s effort and love for Hachi. In addition, Hachi-kou became a major symbol of Shibuya today and the design can be found easily in the area, even on buses as in the left lower photo.

☆To read more about Hachi-kou, click here!