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    Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain
    Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain
    Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain
    Audiobook6 hours

    Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain

    Written by Martha Sherrill

    Narrated by Laural Merlington

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    As Dog Man opens, Martha Sherrill brings us to a world that Americans know very little about-the snow country of Japan during World War II. In a mountain village, we meet Morie Sawataishi, a fierce individualist who has chosen to break the law by keeping an Akita dog hidden in a shed on his property.

    During the war, the magnificent and intensely loyal Japanese hunting dogs are donated to help the war effort, eaten, or used to make fur vests for the military. By the time of the Japanese surrender in 1945, there are only sixteen Akitas left in the country. The survival of the breed becomes Morie's passion and life, almost a spiritual calling.

    Devoted to the dogs, Morie is forever changed. His life becomes radically unconventional-almost preposterous-in ultra-ambitious, conformist Japan. For the dogs, Morie passes up promotions, bigger houses, and prestigious engineering jobs in Tokyo. Instead, he raises a family with his young wife, Kitako-a sheltered urban sophisticate-in Japan's remote and forbidding snow country.

    Their village is isolated, but interesting characters are always dropping by-dog buddies, in-laws from Tokyo, and a barefoot hunter who lives in the wild. Due in part to Morie's perseverance and passion, the Akita breed strengthens and becomes wildly popular, sometimes selling for millions of yen. Yet Morie won't sell his spectacular dogs. He only likes to give them away.

    Morie and Kitako remain in the snow country today, living in the traditional Japanese cottage they designed together more than thirty years ago-with tatami mats, an overhanging roof, a deep bathtub, and no central heat. At ninety-four years old, Morie still raises and trains the Akita dogs that have come to symbolize his life.

    In beautiful prose that is a joy to read, Sherrill opens up the world of the Dog Man and his wife, providing a profound look at what it is to be an individualist in a culture that reveres conformity-and what it means to live life in one's own way-while expertly revealing Japan and Japanese culture as we've never seen it before.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJun 2, 2008
    ISBN9781400177264
    Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain

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    Reviews for Dog Man

    4/5

    53 ratings9 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Recommended to me by the man in the next seat on the airplane while we were talking about the current research into the structure and reality of the dog-man interaction. The subject of this nonfiction book, a man who lived in the snow country of northeast Japan for most of his life, was largely responsible for the revival of the Akita breed of dogs after World War II. It's a tale of stubborn obsession to the exclusion of his family or virtually any other interest. Unfortunately, while the man's true interest in the dogs is obvious, the writer's style somehow detached this reader from understanding the relationship between the dogs and their owner. The book has little warmth even in its core -- and it's not all because of the snow. Having read the classic "Snow Country" some time ago, I had higher hopes.
    • 4/5
      This man, with all of his shortcomings towards his wife and family, has proven himself quite endearing. I loved the story (not all about dogs, but they are the running theme throughout the book). It's a very short read and I would recommend it to dog lovers and lovers of nature. Morie Sawatashi loves the outdoors, the ruggedness of the mountains in Japan and, of course, Akitas. I was slightly sad that there wasn't more to read about this man and his dogs.
    • 4/5
      Coming to an understanding of a foreign culture through reading often involves a combination of frontal and oblique approaches. Straight-forward books on history and society will almost get you there, but then add some good fiction and you are almost across the line. What really seals the deal though are stories of eccentrics in those cultures, of outsiders who live on the inside, and their relationship with the mainstream. Or with what you perhaps mistakenly have assumed up till now to be the mainstream. Cultures are 'polished' for foreign consumption, assumptions are made about what we want to hear and unpleasant truths are minimised or suppressed. Authors and readers alike come with preconceived notions and there's a general tendency towards keeping everyone happy. But the eccentric, and the story about the eccentric breaks all those conventions. The eccentric is more likely than anyone in that culture to pass judgement on it. It's true that the judgement may be wildly wrong, but at least it can be counted upon to be an honest expression. And how the culture that incorporates the eccentric reacts to their presence is usually so visceral as to disallow - or expose as false - any tendency towards the conventional in how their story is dealt with in print. These oddities don't define a culture, but they do illuminate them in interesting ways.Dog Man does all of this for our notion of Japanese culture. The editors have pitched it as a story of a man and his love for an endangered breed of dogs. But it is also a story of a man who alienates his wife and children with his obsession, someone who is admirable but also flawed. And if we recognize some of the aspects of his love for these dogs and that obsession with showing them competitively, there are also aspects of his life that remind us that this is an example of an stranger within a strange culture. Not someone like us, but someone twice removed from us. But having made the effort to travel so far from what we know and what we are comfortable with, we are rewarded with a story that shines a light from the inside of Japanese mainstream culture, albeit a faint one. But from such small gems we can build up a much more authentic pictures of what we seek to understand. Recommended as a book about eccentrics and Japan, but perhaps less so as a story about the dogs themselves. Their role it seems is to give boasting rights to the Dog Man and though there is love there, you have the sense that he feels it most keenly (or is only willing to express it) in his preserving their pelts in his house long after each one has died. Not stuffed in some pose recreating life, but skinned and tanned, and rolled in a bundle. But to understand that you have to understand that these dogs were once eaten as food, and their coats used for winter clothing. And so you begin to mine through the layers of Japanese thought and culture, beneath the surface of conventional imagery and narrative. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      I really liked this book. This book is about Morie Sawataishi, his wife Kitako and their family. By that I mean both their children and their dogs - Akitas. Check out Wiki to see how beautiful these dogs look. There you can only see their appearance. Every dog breed has not only an appearance, but also a particular personality. Morie saved this breed from extinction. In Japan after WW2 there remained only 16 Akitas. During the war they were killed to provide fur vests for soldiers, and there simply was no food to nourish dogs when people were starving. In fact this is not the only breed almost driven to extinction by the war. During the war, Morrie kept his dog No-Name alive, at the expense of his family. After the war he worked to expand and unify the breed. The point of breeds is to ensure that a litter is uniform. When you buy a dog of a particular breed you know in advance what you are getting, both mentally and physically. It is important to note that not only appearance is uniform, but also a mental conformity is achieved through breeding. The character of a Golden is not that of a Huskie or an Airedale or a Flat. Appearance and character are both genetically inherited. This is not to say that how you train and raise your dog isn’t equally important. I appreciate that Morie saw the importance of shaping the breed’s mental disposition over simple physical attributes. It is a tricky balance act. First you have to strive toward creating a healthy, alert, intelligent mentality; only thereafter can you play with the color and thickness of the coat, curl of the tale, and shape of the ears! All too often breeders fixate on appearance, forgetting the importance of character, humor and spark, the spirit of the dog.This book is much more than a typical dog breed book. It is about Morie and the family and how Morie’s love for his dogs shaped every element of family life. This is about a person who goes after his goal, and everybody else has to follow. That sounds pretty brutal and selfish, but you know in the end I believe their life was good. That is what is interesting about this book! You get to look at another’s life and judge for yourself what you think of their life. It is also about living life with a passion. It is about living life for one you love; some of us don’t have these strong passions, maybe we want to follow rather than lead. It is about learning who you really are. I think it took Kitako quite a while to realize that she was in fact living a good life. Was it really being forced upon her? Sometimes it is easier to just grumble, but do nothing to change anything. When you read this book you cannot but compare it with your own family relationships and choices. Who won in the long run? Who suffered most? Each one in the family and each reader will have a different opinion. Is life best in the city or in the country? That is another theme.The narration by Laural Merlington was fine. She just read the text. The thoughts presented are what engage you. Ok, the Japanese names are in the beginning a little hard, but after a while you recognize who is who. I pulled out a map to find the cities Akita and Sendai.So, you get life with a passionate dog lover, a lot to think about in terms of how people relate to each other and what life choices each of us wants to make. Very good book. Lots to think about.Completed July 17, 2013
    • 5/5
      As much about his wife, his country and his culture as it is about Morie Sawataishi who worked to ensure the survival of the Akita species during WWII in Japan. Wonderfully told would be a good choice for a book discussion group.
    • 4/5
      Unabridged audio (6.5 hrs) Thoroughly enjoyable! A true story, not sentimentalized by the author or the narrator, is still deeply touching. Morie Sawataishi, the Japanese "dog man," was born the same year as my parents, and I tried to view the events of his life through their perspective. I learned a lot about Japan in the early and mid-20th century, Without this man's courage and perseverance, one dog at a time, the Akita breed would probably no longer exist.
    • 5/5
      An extraordinary book about Morie and Kitako who forge a remarkable life for themselves in the snow country of Japan, a life defined by their work rescuing the Akita dog breed from near-extinction. Sherrill provides a sympathetic and balanced portrait of two strong-willed and very different people who live a difficult but rewarding life together. She tells their story from the beginning when Kitako leaves her upper-class Tokyo home at the age of nineteen and joins Morie on the side of a mountain to their final years when they live in comfort, surrounded by a loving extended family, and with one last dog. In between are years of hardship, including the loss of two children. Kitako struggles to feed her family while Morie, who purchased his first puppy on a whim, insists on feeding the dog what the children eat. These and other struggles reveal much about Japanese post-war culture. This is a Japan I did not know. Most surprising was their friend, Uesugi, a matagi, or professional hunter licensed by the Japanese government to hunt year around and protect the villages from marauding animals. He was a man of great knowledge about the natural world and who lived by his own rules, as, largely, did Morie. Perhaps that is was makes this book so extraordinary. It is seldom that you meet someone with so much independence of character and integrity. The 2008 Penguin Press hardcover edition I read has numerous black and white photographs and was printed on high quality paper. The presentation added to my pleasure in the book. Sadly, such books seem to be as rare as the characters portrayed in Dog Man.
    • 4/5
      Not terribly into either dogs or Japan, but I enjoyed this book about how raising Akita dogs shaped a man's entire life.
    • 5/5
      This was a very interesting book. It is about a man who is Japaneese and who lives from before WWII to present day. During WWII, a lot of the Akita dogs were being killed and they were going extinct, so this man brought home a puppy, which was illegal. After the war it turned out that there were only 16 Akita's in Japan and this is his and their story of servival.