How Should We Read the Hachikō Moral Lesson “Do Not Forget a Favor” (1935)?

— Distinguishing It from “Militarist Education” and Reconsidering It through Institutional and Reception History

1. Prologue: Two Canine Lessons That Became Entangled

In the same school year (Shōwa 10 / 1935), two dog-themed lessons were adopted in prewar elementary schools:

• Moral Education (shūshin), Elementary Year 2, Do Not Forget a Favor: the story of the Akita dog Hachi, who kept going to Shibuya Station. Theme: gratitude/thankfulness for favors received.

• National Language (kokugo), Elementary Year 5, A Dog’s Deed of Valor (Inu no Tegara): the tale of military dogs Nachi and Kongō (German Shepherds) who died on the first night of the Manchurian Incident. Theme: military merit and selfless service.

These two have often been conflated in public discourse, yielding the simplistic claim that “Hachikō = a symbol of militarist education.” This article disentangles that confusion and rereads the Hachikō lesson as moral education (shūshin), focusing on the lesson text, teachers’ guides, institutional setting, and the divergence of breeds and movements.

2. Framing the Question: What Do We Mean by “Militarist Education”?

Much criticism projects an undefined label, “militarist education,” onto the past. We therefore propose lesson-level criteria:

1. Direct military subject matter: soldiers, weapons, or battlefields presented as objects of study or emotional edification.

2. Overt incitement to war spirit: glorification of combat and self-sacrifice that orients pupils toward enlistment or donations.

3. Doctrinal nationalization: lessons designed to internalize the imperial-historiographical view or “Greater East Asia” ideology.

4. Institutional linkage: connection of materials to procurement/mobilization systems of the military or affiliated bodies (training, requisition, donations).

By these lights, Do Not Forget a Favor does not meet ①, ②, or ④. Inu no Tegara, by contrast, strongly satisfies ①, ②, and ④. Historically, different educational regimes were operating in parallel within the very same year.

3. The Hachikō Text and Teachers’ Guides: The Core of Lesson Design

3.1 Narrative Skeleton

As is well known, the story unfolds as a sequence of scenes about an “aged dog who continues to wait at the station even after losing his master.” No vocabulary of battle, the military, donations, or enlistment appears; the lexical field remains that of everyday life, feeling, and the passage of time.

3.2 Attainment Targets in the Teachers’ Guide

• Sequencing of virtues: gratitude (kann) → remembering favors (ki’on) → (repayment is a later stage), i.e., a progression calibrated to age.

• Scope of “favor”: organized narrowly/broadly across parents, teachers, friends, society, nature, and the Imperial Household.

• Caution against over-didacticization: the guide refrains from asserting that Hachi’s behavior is a moral will (raising a meta-question about treating instinct as morality), while legitimizing the lesson as affective education—by analogy to the pupil “deriving moral insight from nature and events.”

In short, the core of this lesson is cultivating sensitivity to beneficence received; the study of military self-sacrifice lies outside its design.

4. How the “Hachikō = Militarism” Thesis Arose: Confusion, Anachronism, and Postwar Discourse

Tracing postwar discourse (materials from democratic-education circles, weekly-magazine rumor, etc.) reveals a telephone game produced by (A) conflating two different lessons from the same year, (B) reversing chronology—treating the social phenomenon of 1932 as the cause of the 1935 lesson, and (C) overextending the category of “the state.” Responsible critique minimally requires cross-checking text, institutional setting, and practice (classroom use/compositions).

5. Divergent Breeds and Institutions: Akita Preservation vs. “War Dogs for the Nation”

5.1 Akita Dogs as Nativist Cultural Resource (Ministry of Education / Preservation Movements)

• Networks such as the Japan Dog Preservation Society promoted protection of indigenous dogs.

• Natural Monument designation wore a nativist cultural-policy dress yet remained distinct from direct militarization.

• Hachi belongs to this line as an urban-cultural icon, serving in class within a shūshin frame of affect/gratitude.

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5.2 German Shepherds as Military Resource (Army Ministry / KV / Purchasing Association)

• Institutional bases included the Imperial Military Dog Association (KV), the Military Dog Purchasing Association, and KZ registries, etc.

• In metropolitan areas, the spread of Shepherds was driven first by demand for guard dogs and fashion; it then became a reservoir for military dogs.

• Inu no Tegara functioned as a national-language lesson that linked supply networks to publicity (mobilization).

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→ Akita (cultural preservation/affect) and Shepherd (military supply/mobilization) exhibited a clear policy division of labor. Any discussion of “the state and dogs” must distinguish breeds and institutions.

6. Media History and the Public Sphere: Birth, Disappearance, and Rebirth of the Hachikō Statue

• 1932 (Shōwa 7): nationwide circulation of the “faithful dog” story via a letter to the Asahi; 1934 (Shōwa 9): statue erected (civic initiative).

• 1944 (Shōwa 19): statue removed for metal requisition; 1948 (Shōwa 23): rebuilt. Hachikō coexisted seamlessly with GHQ democratization.

• This trajectory indicates that Hachikō functioned not within a military propaganda system but as an emotional urban-cultural resource and civic lieu de mémoire.

7. Classroom and Children: Fragments of a Reception History

• Pupils encountering Hachikō in Year 2 (shūshin) and those encountering military dogs around Year 5 (kokugo/art) faced different psychological themes.

• In wartime reflections on military-dog demonstrations, “Nachi/Kongō” were frequently recalled; Hachi seldom was.

• In practice (compositions, autograph scrolls, donations), Hachikō operated along lines of affect, sympathy, and tenderness.

8. Reframing Anti-“Militarist Education” Critique: A Method for Analyzing Lessons

At minimum, critique should rest on:

1. Close reading of the text: vocabulary, themes, and action patterns (who asks what of whom).

2. Teachers’ guide: instructional aims, sequencing of virtues, and design of questioning (age appropriateness).

3. Institutional linkages: which ministry and which policy the lesson connected to (purchasing, donations, requisitions).

By this method, Do Not Forget a Favor is not a mobilization text but an affective-stage shūshin lesson. Placing it side by side with Inu no Tegara makes visible the period’s polymorphous educational field.

9. Hachikō in Timeline with Education and the Dog World

• Taishō–early Shōwa: cross-breeding of Akitas; rise of preservation movements.

• 1925 (Taishō 14): death of Ueno Hidesaburō; Hachi continues going to the station.

• 1932–33: organization of Akita/Japan Dog Preservation societies.

• 1931 (Shōwa 6): Mukden Incident; in the same year Akita designated Natural Monument / deaths of war dogs (e.g., Nachi) reported.

• 1932–34: Hachikō articles and statue—urban-symbol formation / consolidation and publicity of the war-dog system.

• 1935 (Shōwa 10): Do Not Forget a Favor (shūshin, Year 2) and Inu no Tegara (kokugo, Year 5) adopted; Hachi dies.

• From 1937: Inu no Tegara-type lessons revised with the war; the Hachikō lesson quickly replaced.

• 1944–48: metal requisition → postwar rebuilding; affective re-acceptance as moral material under democratization.

The image of “Hachikō as the main pillar of militarist education” contradicts this chronology.

10. Palimpsests of Postwar Discourse: A Genealogy of Hachikō Critique

Amid postwar reorientation of thought, social criticism targeting familialism/filial loyalty and the emperor system symbolically consumed the Hachikō image. Weekly-magazine rhetoric (exposés, trivialization of motives) furnished an emotional counter-narrative, reinforcing the label “symbol of militarist exploitation.”Returning to primary sources on lessons and institutions shows that the core of militarist pedagogy lay on the Shepherd side, whereas the Hachikō lesson was an age-appropriate shūshin unit (gratitude/remembering favors).