Kawaii Pets and Animal Abandonment in Japan

• In Event: 215. Interspecies Intimacy: Evolving Human-Animal Socialities in Asia

Abstract

Kawaii animals are everywhere in Japan, as cute mascots for corporations or train stations, as Youtube stars, as cat cafe playmates ready to alleviate loneliness, and, of course, as pets. This trend is prevalent throughout Japanese culture, offering warmth, joy, and amusement via products in a society in which human-human relationships may be strained (Kinsella 1995).The number of pets continues to rise as the human birth rate declines – primarily coming from pet shops advertising and selling the youngest, most kawaii, or cute and innocent, living products legally allowable. Notably, this increase in pet keeping is matched by a rise of abandoned companion animals, a problem exacerbated by the limited social safety net for homeless pets. As animal welfare concern and awareness gradually rises in Japan, animal rescue non-profit organizations and supporters seek a solution to this social problem. In the seminal work “Why Look at Animals”, John Berger questions the physical and cultural marginalization of the urban pet, which co-opts them into the family and spectacle and transforms them into “realistic toys” whose biological needs are largely ignored. Through this lens, this paper combines results from 12 months of multispecies ethnographic fieldwork at a non-profit animal shelter with content analysis of local pet shop advertisements, to address an underlying cause of animal abandonment. Specifically, I will illustrate how pet shops cleverly capitalize on selling kawaii “realistic toys” to recruit buyers, only to see the pets neglected or discarded when the animals exhibit their biological and social needs.

Author

• Seven Mattes, Michigan State University