mr rainmaker777
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(5/24/04 12:08 pm)
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Japan's woodland dog with no bark
www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-...0520mb.htm
QUOTE
On the trail of Japan's odd woodland dog with no bark
By MARK BRAZIL
The first Ezo-tanuki (Hokkaido raccoon-dog) I ever found was a
long-dead carcass along a woodland trail I used to frequent near
Nemuro.
After that I saw the remains of several more road kills, but the
prospect of encountering a live specimen in the wild was something
I had long anticipated with relish.
Tanuki are found throughout Japan's main islands. In ceramic form
they are particularly widespread, appearing outside drinking
establishments in villages, towns and cities from one end of the
country to the other. These tanuki are depicted as upright creatures
with swollen, drumlike stomachs and outstanding scrotal
endowment.
Folklore would have us believe that the jolly, carousing tanuki
drums on his rotund belly and sings to the moon to attract the
ladies, with whom he then enthusiastically exercises his
endowment. Typically, the womanizing, hard-drinking tanuki sports
a straw hat, a sake bottle and a notebook, for they are jovial
fellows believed to bring good fortune to drinking establishments.
For all that he drinks, however, he never has sufficient cash on him
for payment, hence the notebook in which he writes down his
dues.
In reality, the wild creature is as nocturnal as the mythical one, but
differs in almost all other characteristics. After all, the tanuki of
legend is also reputedly capable of shape-shifting, as is Japan's
mythical fox.
Ezo-tanuki are actually rather stout-bodied, short-legged creatures
that are atypical members of the dog family. They sport a
distinctive facial mask. Beware, though, the mistakes that are often
made, for "tanuki" is commonly mistranslated as "badger" (an
altogether different species); while its English name, "raccoon dog,"
is the term employed in North America for the dogs used to hunt
raccoons (a different species too).
Though doglike, tanuki are different from other canids in that they
frequent heavily wooded areas rather than open areas, and they
are more omnivorous -- taking a wide range of small prey and
considerable plant material. Coastal tanuki will scavenge the
tideline, and all will take amphibians, reptiles and birds, as well as
gorging on nuts, fruits and berries. I wonder whether the
association between tanuki and inebriation isn't founded on the
sight of some tipsy tanuki drunk on over-fermented late-autumn
fruit.
There is little doubt that the tanuki's habit of living on the fringes of
human habitation, where it can benefit both from the fruits of the
forest and the fruits of farmland, has led it into encounters with
people ever since the latter first settled these islands. The animal's
crepuscular and nocturnal habits place it on the edge of sight, so
perhaps it is little wonder that tanuki have become the stuff of myth
and folklore, performing sophisticated metamorphosing magic, as
well as impish tricks and japes at the expense of the local human
inhabitants -- especially when the reward for their efforts is food!
I first encountered a real tanuki one night while I was lost in the
mountains southwest of Tokyo. Later, I was introduced in more
civilized fashion, over dinner, to tanuki that were attracted to a
loyal reader's garden. Subsequently I have bumped into them only
occasionally, most memorably very early one morning when I was
squeaking to attract birds in the Hakone area of Kanagawa
Prefecture. After an unruly rustling in the dwarf bamboo, a
bemused tanuki popped out onto the trail nearby; I don't know
who was more astonished, it or the birdwatchers I was guiding at
the time. After all, it had appeared as if by magic.
Tanuki are also un-doglike in various respects other than their diet
and living habits. They are, for example, barkless and reputedly
silent, and they come as close to hibernating as any canid can.
They retreat to their burrows from November until about April
after putting on weight in autumn. However, they emerge more
readily during warm spells of weather, and so do not hibernate in
the true sense, at least in the south. I wonder whether they may
perhaps hibernate properly in Hokkaido where spring often does
not arrive until May. After all, there is little for them to eat above
ground given all the snow up here.
The Ezo-tanuki is a paler subspecies of the tanuki found elsewhere
in Japan, and though I had long looked forward to seeing one
alive, when I did it was with far less than elation.
I had expected to bump into one on a forest trail at dusk or dawn,
but instead I came upon one bumbling across a country road in
bright sunlight.
This winter has been long and hard in eastern Hokkaido, with
heavier snows, some say, than for 30 years (one person even told
me that it was more than for a century). Even during Golden Week
the snow lay heavily draped across the forested flanks of many a
mountain, and the evidence of deer having a hard time foraging
was to be found in the torn bark of many trees. I wondered about
the smaller forest creatures.
Timing the end of winter sleep for hibernating animals is critical.
Emerge too early and the land may still be in the grip of winter and
food in short supply. Emerge too late and earlier-comers may have
snaffled the best territories and mates. But with warm springs and
cold winters arriving with less predictability than in the past, timing
must be even more difficult now.
Of course there comes a point when an animal must become active
again. The food stores it laid down before winter, either stored in a
burrow or as body fat, will become depleted; eventually they must
emerge to forage, come what may. When I spotted this tanuki
slowly making its way onto the grass verge, I knew that there was
something very wrong with it. I thought that perhaps hunger had
driven it out in the daytime, but when I approached closer it
seemed that sickness rather than hunger had overwhelmed it.
In areas of Honshu where tanuki live in high densities, they
frequently succumb to skin deterioration and hair loss brought on
by a parasitic mite -- a condition called sarcoptic mange. Infested
animals commonly die from hypothermia during winter. But this
animal had a full coat and so was not infected.
No, this one was suffering from the scourge of the summer woods
-- ticks. Deer are common in mountain forests here, and deer ticks
even more so. Mountain hikers can strip and then shed any ticks
they have inadvertently collected at a hike's end, but the
forest-dwelling tanuki must somehow groom them out, and this one
had failed to do so. Some ticks here apparently carry
heart-damaging Lyme disease, but whether tanuki suffer the effects
I don't know. So whether the creature I saw was in a weakened
state because of the ticks, or whether it was susceptible to ticks
because it was already in a weakened state, I shall never know. It
was, though, a long way from the image of a tanuki as a boisterous
carousing character, and a far cry from the exciting encounter I had
imagined with Ezo-tanuki.
Now, though, I do know that tanuki are not entirely silent, for this
one, at death's door, was crying a dirge.
--------------------
For a picture and detailed information:
www.lioncrusher.com/animal.asp?animal=25
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