From The New York Times, this is Animal. I'm Sam Anderson. Episode 5, Wolves. Well, we should... The shop closes at 6. Do you think we'll be back by then? Yes, 515. Maybe. I can't imagine that. Don't be like a ton. 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. Okay, okay. 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 anticlimax. But I was already in Japan because I was working on a story for the magazine about Hyomi Azaki, the animator. And since I'd come this far, I just felt like I really needed to do this.
That's really boring. Bulletin from Tokyo to Kyoto. Regular train from Kyoto to a smaller city called Nara, just 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 Duhaim, 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 are driver. We use this 30-something man nicely dressed, wearing like a gray suit, the red tie. Samson talks to him and says his name is Dysuke. Dysuke's on to be the polite. And Samson climbed into the front of the taxi to sit next to Dysuke so that he can interpret our conversation.
Thank you for your time, Yola. Yes, it's okay for you to record his dog. 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 statues. And so you have no idea what we're doing.
Yeah, I remember asking. Well, maybe ask Dysuke-san if he knows anything about the Japanese wolf. So Samson did and no, we'd never heard about it. But... I have a chihuahua. What is your name? Go Taro. He has a voice name, but he's a girl. And Samson laughed because Go Taro is a very male Japanese name. It's like apparently like some kind of warrior name.
or name. He said the Chinese character for it means like hard metal. And Daisuke named this chihuahua, the most masculine tough name you could think of because chihuahua 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 a 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, 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 of way. 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. So I've been spending the last few days of my trip in Japan learning about wolves.
And so I started telling Daisuke's on the epic saga of the Japanese wolf. The basic stories 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 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 there is 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 sewological specimens. And so the statue that we're going to is the memorial to that last wolf. The black metal statue based on the body of that wolf near where that wolf died. And so we were driving out to see.
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. I'm going to look for the dog and come for the wolf. Daisuke was the chattyest. Probably the chattyest 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 can understand her. But I distinctly heard the word Gotoro. I said, wait a second. Did he say Gotoro again? It's his YouTube channel named after the Chihuahua. And Samson said, yes, it's basically driving with Gotoro. Driving channel. Wow. So, she really likes dogs. Yeah. So, where are we? We really are out in the middle of nowhere.
That's a 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, dice case on starts telling us 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 telling me his life story now. So he's talking about his life story now and how he used to live in Osaka. He used to, 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 his her dad, the wife's dad, worked the same taxi company as this company.
And hence, he and his wife and older brother moved from Osaka to Kyoto to Nara. And I lived with his father for four to five years. But then his father in law left the taxi. 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, is 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 Goudaro is a dog you have in the house, so his father in law knew that and then they brought the dog over. Because the dad left his job and no longer drives, his father in law is at home all the times he came home from work and it seems like Goudaro was hurt.
And there'd been no one home all day except Goudaro 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, he could only have been his father in law.
So he approached his father in law and told him to stop hitting the 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. I want him twice. We talked about it. The third time, when I got home, so the third time, when I got home, the Chihuahua's left eye was really red and it was like bulging. We took the Chihuahua to the hospital and he lost his left eye.
Even Goudaro is a dog, Goudaro is also a family and I just couldn't forgive him. I told him that we just cut left together. So we decided to leave the house. We decided to leave the house. I told my wife and my children that they are free to stay if they want. So my wife can stay with his parents if she wants but I'm leaving. I'm leaving with Goudaro. So we decided to leave the house. In the end, there are five of us. We were living our life in my two children and the Chihuahua left that house.
Now we are living away from the dad. 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 Goudaro for her injuries and they both corroborated what Daisuke told us. 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 her name Goudaro. We also found out a couple of other things.
Daisuke lost Goudaro lost the vision in her right eye, not her left. It was a detached retina. And also that Goudaro was not always named Goudaro. 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 Goudaro. He wanted to give the dog this tough warrior name.
Sorry, it's just... Sorry, the story's gone all serious. That's very intense. So Goudaro has no left eye. I remember Goudaro said a lot of it. She was born many times and there are many group Polish men that speak English. Because they really calls it a character. You are observing fifteen Poles, you are an English boy, act, that's right. I think it's a good thing to say that. That's why I'm not talking about English. Yes. Well, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that. I'm saying that.
So he's saying how, you know how when humans... Like you are just saying it. You know how when humans, when you lose sight, use your sight of one eye, it can really affect your everyday life. And then it's not so much for dog because for dog, of course the dog can see, but he also relies on his smell a lot more. So perhaps he doesn't affect the dog's life. It's interesting when he said life, when he referred to dog, he says, Jin-ze, which means human's life.
So he really think that the dog is just like human. And the fact that he has lost his left eye might not have as much of a effect to the dog as it was a person. I think when humans are trying to find a sign, it's a very sad thing to say, but I think it's a sad thing to say. In the past, I think that the words are not that bad, so I'm not saying that. I'm saying that.
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 tried to think it this way. I tried 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 it. I tried to think it like that so that I can keep my keeps, keep saying. It's really game-tale. And it's really, you know, the dog itself, it's really healthy. And then Gotaaro is just fine.
It's really just fine. The timing was a little bit... Gotaaro's Gotaaro is also there. If we have a chance, later I can show you a video of Gotaaro. I'm going to show you a video of Gotaaro. And he's saying how Chiba was like wolves, how true. So... I just saw a sign that said the name of where we're going. Yes. What is it called again? He has a... He has a Yoshino. Yeah. And he had a wolf on it. He had like a little wolf silhouette. Did you see that?
I think we are close, maybe four or five minutes away. Okay. Well, this... This life of the story of this has become so much more intense than I imagined. I thought we were just going to sell our taxis and go and see a statue. Gotaaro. 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. Um... 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 Gotaaro 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, its a whole community and pack. And that's just... It's really deep to think about. So, yeah, suddenly we're there. It's just like the GPS was like... This is it. We're here and... And it was really a nothing. Like it was...
It's really quiet maybe because of the sun days, 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 we're 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. Dice cake gives us some brellas 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 thoughts. I don't think anyone ever comes here. It was completely quiet, except for when occasionally a 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 on. So wolf dies, but its spirits live on. I feel like shy to approach the wolf. We've come all this way and I feel like hesitant too. But I guess let's go see him. There was something really powerful about the scale of it, being the actual scale of the body of the animal itself. There'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 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 it's 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 Powah Sputtle, 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 Oh, Buchi Nomagami, or Large Mouth 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 in the 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 a 9 and more that was supposed to be extinct, like over a hundred 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 it, 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 can't be like?
How would human think of that? Especially in Japan when he is literally a god, big god. And now he's just a stone in a middle of street. It's even difficult to park your car because there's no road to this name. While we pray on other things that we call God, that has reprised his name. That's pretty deep now. Yeah, so you're in some opioids and thoughts. The unimpressable sandson. It's kind of sad. Are you thinking 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 Dyscape pulls out his phone and says, oh, I want to show you a picture of 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're just like our hearts melted. She's laying on her side in a nest of blankets and having her belly rubbed and her eyes are closed.
And it just looks like the sweetest little thing and she's so happy in heaven. One last question for Dyscape. 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? So, 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 Dyscape said, oh, I found it.
I found the video. He played us this video. He's got a lot of attention. He's got a lot of attention. Of Gotoro the Chihuahua howling her little brains out at an ambulance. And it's like the most 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. Go, Gotoro.
This episode was produced by Crystal DuHame 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 Luzano. The executive producer is Paula Schuman. Original music by Marion Luzano, fact checking by Samson Yee and Josh Hunt. Special thanks to Jake Silverstein, Sasha Weiss and Sam Donick.
Very special thanks to Song Woo 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. 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.